HD DVD Group Claims Dominance Over Blu-ray

Despite reports back in April claiming a landslide victory so far for Blu-ray in the current hi-def war, the North American HD DVD Promotional Group wishes to inform everybody that their format is still very much alive and kicking. In fact, according to their statistics, HD DVD players currently make up 60 percent of all high definition media players sold in the North American market to date.

This news comes in the wake of relatively recent price drop announcements for standalone players of either hi-def format. Last week came Sony's announcement that their next model of Blu-ray player would be reduced in price from US$600 to $500 this summer, but Toshiba announced a similar price drop for their dedicated HD DVD players two months earlier in the year. Back in April, the company reduced prices of their popular HD-A2 players from $499 to $399, resulting in notable sales increases with each successive promotion.

The promotional group also notes that HD DVD sales reached an all time high last month, stating that the last week of May yielded sales of more than 75,000 movies sold. However, the group's press release does not offer statistics of Blu-ray sales for comparative analysis.