Nearly half of Paramount's Blu-ray titles are in stock at Amazon again
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Feb 23rd 2008 8:55AM
posted Feb 23rd 2008 8:55AM
Way back when Paramount dropped Blu-ray for HD DVD, we saw something very odd happen as some titles were snatched from shelves and within a few months Paramount Blu-ray titles were going for a premium via 2nd hand services like Amazon and eBay. Now just as quickly as they disappeared about half of the 32 titles are back in stock on Amazon.com. No one really knows what the deal is, but we'd bet that these discs have been in a warehouse all along -- just in case. If this is in fact how it went down, Paramount certainly did play its cards right on this one.
Well you gotta consider that when they did go HD exclusive, they couldn't have possibly shipped out every single BluRay title on hand to retailers, so they were bound to have to just lock them away in storage. The chance of destroying a large amount of DVDs is unlikely, until you know that format is gone, and since BluRay came out on top, time to open up the warehouse doors.
Oh and if someone says this is irrelevant and to stop posting about this crap, I'm saying it now: Suck one.
This is an odd case because what most retailers do is either sell through their inventory or send it all back to their warehouse, where yes they are destroyed and a credit given to the retailer from the manufacturer or distributor. Either way this is good news, the only problem I have is that they don't have Shooter available yet.
Now, more importantly, when is Paramount releasing Team America on Blu-ray?
I already have the DVD, but I would definately buy it again on Blu-ray.
Team America F~@k Yeah.
Playing on my TV every F~@king day Yeah.
Most important question of all. Will Engadget please now get rid of the stupid asterisk on the "number of titles in each format" statistic? Sheesh.
Paramount made out like a bandit. They played both sides perfectly
Wrong. Warner made out like a bandit. They played both sides until they got the highest bid. They knew HDM's fate was theirs, so they kept playing that card going back and forth between both opposing groups for over 4 months.
Actually Big Sam is right John,
Warner waited the longest time to go Blu Ray exclu, despite 2007 having been Blu on top -every- single week.
Not 60% of the weeks, not 70%, not even 90%, but 100%.
Warner even gave HD DVD (at its own risk and losing money for that) some of its best catalogue titles on exclusive (V..., The Matrix, Batman Begins).
As per going Blu due to a payoff (or even because Fox didn't come), those are all rumors, even denied falt out publicly by Warner themselves.
On the other hand, Paramount dropped Blu Ray from one day to the next, on a -publicly admitted- payoff ($150M, eventually admitted as "Commercial promotion deal"), and now we see that they did all that while counting going back to Blu at the first chance they had.
Some even suspect that they were still feeding titles in smaller quantitites to retailers (explaining the odd paramount titles one could sometime find in a retail store).
Now I agree with the OP. Even if Warner played both sides, it appears that Paramount got a big pay off without really facing any consequences, other than a tiny amount of revenue loss from selling on HD-DVD and not on Blu for four months. They even have a whole backload of titles on Blu-ray ready to ship! How can you argue Warner got a better deal?
There was no reason to destroy them, and because they secretly expected Blu-ray to win they kept them around.
Just becuase the signed exclusive deal with Toshiba to release on HD DVD, doesn't mean they couldn't manafacture a warehouse full of Blu-ray to store just in case.