Despite Sony’s marketing team deciding to change the focus of the PS3 more to the console’s movie downloading and Blu-ray capabilities, it appears consumers are still purchasing the system mainly for gaming.
Last August, the NPD Group released a study that showed that about 37 percent of PS3 owners had never once watched a Blu-ray film on their system. The second edition of the study was released recently, and the number hardly changed, moving down to 34 percent.
NPD did note however that the number of PS3 owners watching Blu-ray was higher then PS2 owners watching DVDs at the same point in the console’s life cycle.
“It’s at a fairly high level, where it took years for PS2 owners to use [that console] for DVD,” NPD analyst Russ Crupnick added, via VB. “Most PS3 people think of it as a gaming device, but there is a reasonable level of awareness and intended use for Blu-ray.”
The new study gave the following figures to the question of why PS3 owners had purchased the console:
58 percent - Mostly to play games
34 percent - For games and movie, equally
8 percent - Mostly movies
NPD also noted that PS3 owners who have had their machines for a couple of years of more tend to buy more Blu-rays over standard definition DVDs and vice versa for newer owners.
“Newer owners are somewhat more oriented to DVD than Blu-ray,” Crupnick says. “The later you get into an adoption cycle, the more you’re not getting the super aficionado. These are people who are tougher to convince about the benefits of Blu-ray and who are sensitive to price.”
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According to the Kindle Nation Daily blog, the Amazon Kindle edition of the new Dan Brown novel The Lost Symbol is outselling its hardcover counterpart, an interesting development.
It is important to note however that the hardcover has been on sale, via pre-order, for 150 days already and it would appear that most excited buyers put in there orders sometime during that period. The Kindle edition is also significantly cheaper.
The whole situation is interesting to note however, as the Kindle edition is outselling any book available at Amazon, whether in print or digital, a good sign for the device, which many have called overly expensive for its functionality.
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Sony’s latest Blu-ray player, the BDP-N460, will add for the first time, streaming video and audio, from Netflix, YouTube and Slacker.
The company does note however that regardless of what TV you have attached the wireless will work better with a Linksys WET610N Ethernet-to-Wi-Fi bridge.
The player has oboard decoding of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, is BD-Live compliant, and will output HDMI Deep Color. The player can read photos and MP3s off USB drives and will upscale DVDs and AVCHD videos.
The BDP-N460 will begin shipping in October, with a price tag of $250 USD, the same price as other BD players with similar specs, and $50 cheaper than the PS3.
