If you believe the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), millions of PlayStation 3 gamers all over the globe are watching movies on their consoles. That's just not true, says HD DVD man Olivier Van Wynendaele, and it doesn't really work for HD DVD movies on the Xbox 360 either.
Van Wynendaele - who's the spokesman for the HD DVD Promotion Group - made the claims during an exclusive interview with Tech.co.uk conducted yesterday. He also said that the majority of PS3 owners didn't know their consoles could play movies, period:
"[According to] the independent figures we have from independent research companies and so on, it appears that 60 per cent of games consoles owners don't know they can play movies - either DVD or Blu-ray - in the PS3. That means at least 60 per cent are not active.
"Even among the remaining 40 per cent... 13 per cent are actually using their games console as a player, and the rest are not. People are buying their consoles to play games, not to watch movies."
The HD DVD experience
For further evidence, Van Wynendaele turned to Microsoft's record with the HD DVD add-on for the Xbox 360:
"The attach rate is less than two digits. So [Microsoft has] sold a lot, but it's an expensive accessory for a games console. It was the cheapest HD DVD player in the market, but still less than 10 per cent of [Xbox 360] games console owners have purchased it."
He also said that Microsoft's own research had concluded that console owners play a game for an average of 400 hours, but only spend three hours a month watching movies.
"That's why we don't see on the PlayStation 3 side why gamers would behave differently than on the Microsoft side."
Perhaps someone from the Blu-ray camp would care to explain?