NPD Group retail sales tracking data released this week show sales of Blu-ray standalone players have decreased drastically since the beginning of the year.
Standalone Blu-ray player unit sales in the States dropped a whopping 40% from January to February and saw just a 2% increase between February and March, according to NPD.
Unsurprisingly sales of the now obsolete HD DVD standalone players sales also dropped dramatically seeing a 65% decrease.
But these Blu-ray stats are being considered surprising by some who assumed now the format war has been won, consumers would feel happier to splash the cash on a next-gen player, the price of which averages out at $400 in the US.
NPD suggests that consumers are not making the leap to Blu-ray as DVD is “good enough” for most – in the same time period that Blu-ray sales dropped, upconverting DVD players sales have actually increased 5%.
