----- Original Message ----- From: "Jon Kamm" <kammagic@comcast.net>
What was meant by an "expensive process" is that manufacturing, advertising and marketing two formats is much more expensive than manufacturing, advertising and marketing one.
Except.... it isnt. Not if you do those two products at once. When you have two products coming out at the same time, you benefit from extra volume, you can advertise two products in the same advertisements, you have a sales team that work on two products rather that one (saves work and cost per product)... and earlier on in the process you have the authoring company doing the second format while they still are hot on the first, the artwork is being done simultaneously, etc. Basically, if you're going to buy two products from a company, you are more likely to get a volume discount than if you buy one. There are overhead costs to every product, but if you can do it all at the same time, you're more likely to streamline the process for both products and do them both while the machines are hot, so to speak. This is why artists in the 80s and 90s released LPs, CDs and cassettes at the same time, and did not "percentage out how big the cassette market is" first. What you are really saying with your above statement, is that if they first do the DVD and sell it, and then do the BluRay in 6 or 12 months and sell it, they will have two separate processes which each will be much more expensive than doing both processes at the same time, as on process. If you apply this explanation to your statement, then I agree.
Once they know that, they can percentage out how big the Blu-ray market will be. Smart marketing if you ask me. Not cynical.
Let me give you an example. Let's say I'm a CD and DVD sales guy at a music distributor. I'm phoning up a record chain and offer them one product at 10 euros. My profit will be 2 euros on that sales job, which takes me 5 minutes to complete. However, if I can sell them two products, my profit will be 4 euros for 5 minutes of work. It doesnt take a lot of time to say "oh, and you want the BluRay version too?". In addition, I only have to pay up for one set of ads where both products are promoted, and can ship both products in one package in stead of two. Never mind that I have worked in music shops, in a record label and in music sales and marketing for 13 years now. That time probably didnt learn me anything :-) Greetings from Glenn Folkvord Chief editor http://www.PlanetOrigo.com http://twitter.com/planetorigo Sci-fi movies | Electronic music