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HD DVD Prices Slashed By Toshiba
Hellburner writes "Hoping to stop the inevitable, Toshiba has slashed the price of entry-level HD DVD players to $150 — down from the previous $300. 'It's a half-empty, half-full moment for retailers, who could see a sales boost at the same time that some may be faced with price matching from holiday sales ... The theory: play up the acceptance by consumers who have already paid for HD DVD versus those who get it with something else like a gaming console, get more players out there--and dare studios to ignore those consumers. In addition to the sales cuts, Toshiba will launch major initiatives, including joint advertising campaigns with studios.'"
Actualy, the ps3 has quite a few games rated 80% or above, something like 40. Toss in the upper tier titles like folklore, uncharted, and rachet, and it's got some nice stuff. the whole 'ps3 haz no gamez!' thing is pretty outdated.
The way most manufacturers enforce pricing is through advertising co-op funds. They can't tell a retailer what price to set, but they can tell them "We won't reimburse you for your advertising unless you set the price at $$$". When Best Buy runs their sale flyers, manufacturers are compensating Best Buy for their portion of the flyer. If Best Buy runs a price too high or too low then the manufacturer will refuse to pay co-op money.
Co-op is paid at anywhere from 50% up to 100%, and is based on how much a retailer purchases from the manufacturer. For example, in my hardware store we buy products from Scott's (fertilizer) and accrue 6% of our purchases into co-op funds. If I run and ad, feature Scott's products, and follow their price guidelines I get reimbursed up to whatever my accrued co-op fund is.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
Especially when Disney is Blu-Ray exclusive
Only in North America. In some other parts of the world Disney titles (at least some of them) are HD-DVD, due to different agreements with local distributers. And HD-DVD has no region encoding.
-- Alastair