Xbox 360 HD DVD holds one-third of market
The Inquirer today writes that the 360 makes up one-third of the HD DVD player market. A recently released report speculates that 750,000 HD DVD players are currently in homes and that 269,000 of them are of the Xbox 360 add-on variety.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Inquirer-sourced figure making the rounds on December 17, 2007 — that the Xbox 360 add-on accounts for about 269,000 of an estimated 750,000 HD DVD players in homes — is unconfirmed speculation, but it lands mid-arc for Microsoft's HD DVD push. September's announcement of a new HD DVD drive for the 360 showed Microsoft still investing in the add-on, and the console had just posted a holiday sales lead over the PS3, widening the base of households already wired for the peripheral.
The number also feeds a question the corpus has been circling since late 2005, when Cinematical asked whether the Xbox 360 works as a distribution model rather than just a games box. A third of the HD DVD installed base sitting inside game consoles would be the strongest evidence yet that the answer is yes.
First-order effects
- Microsoft gets its cheapest claim on the HD DVD living room: even if the 750,000 total is speculative, the add-on reportedly owns roughly one-third of it without Microsoft shipping a single standalone deck.
Second-order effects
- Standalone HD DVD player makers now compete against a peripheral attached to a console that just outsold the PS3 in initial holiday sales, forcing the price-and-bundle fight onto their own turf.
Third-order effects
- If console-attached drives keep taking share of the HD disc market, the HD DVD-versus-Blu-ray contest tilts from hardware specifications toward which ecosystem controls the console-attached audience — a structural shift in how next-generation formats get adopted.
The trend: Game consoles are becoming the trojan horse through which home video formats reach mass adoption, with Microsoft's add-on strategy as the clearest early data point.