AfterDawn: News

Black Friday DVD sales focused on older titles

This year's Black Friday sales on the day after Thanksgiving saw consumers passing on recent DVD releases in favor of bargain priced fare, in some cases below $5 per movie.

The discounts on catalog titles were even more numerous than in past years. At Borders book stores they sold such titles as 300, The Departed and Night At The Museum for half their normal price. In addition box sets of titles like Family Guy, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and House for only $19.99. Other retailers, including Sears, Target, and Kmart had titles like Spider-Man 2 and Batman Begins for only $4.



“We’ve done sales like this in the past, but this selection was the deepest that we’ve done for Black Friday,” said Borders spokeswoman Ann Binkley. “The merchandising team worked with the vendors to be able to offer this deeper selection.”

According to Ian Leshin, a buyer for Newbury Comics, “We created a lot of deep discount opportunities with the help of the studios through rebates and other programs, and we were definitely very aggressive with the sales.” He added that, “it did seem more catalog-driven this year than new release.”

Source: Video Business

Written by: Rich Fiscus @ 1 Dec 2007 17:41

• Previous article

• Second generation iPhone suffers delay already

• Next article

• Venturer HD DVD finally arrives

• 11 comments

• svtstang

  No doubt, I bought the 300 for $3.90 shipped from buy.com on Black Friday! Can't beat that me thinks!

  1.12.2007 23:44 #1

• tucker001

  black friday is the only day of the year I can afford to buy dvds

  2.12.2007 11:39 #2

• flyingv

  If these companys would start these movies out at these prices they would 1)sell more and 2)cut way back on people copying DVDs! The way I see it is that if they can afford to sell them at this price now what keeps them doing it at release? I know at this price I'd rather just buy the origional rather than back it up. By the time that I buy the blanks, get the movie and take the time to back it up, I'd save a small fortune! $8-$12 to start with rather than $16-$20 is much easier to swallow!

  2.12.2007 17:22 #3

• ZippyDSM

  Originally posted by flyingv: If these companys would start these movies out at these prices they would 1)sell more and 2)cut way back on people copying DVDs! The way I see it is that if they can afford to sell them at this price now what keeps them doing it at release? I know at this price I'd rather just buy the origional rather than back it up. By the time that I buy the blanks, get the movie and take the time to back it up, I'd save a small fortune! $8-$12 to start with rather than $16-$20 is much easier to swallow!Yes and unlike games a price culling on DVDs would work because they are cheap to press(make) and dress(pack) and are nearly everywhere and always being sold.

  2.12.2007 19:52 #4

• emugamer

  Quote:Originally posted by flyingv: If these companys would start these movies out at these prices they would 1)sell more and 2)cut way back on people copying DVDs! The way I see it is that if they can afford to sell them at this price now what keeps them doing it at release? I know at this price I'd rather just buy the origional rather than back it up. By the time that I buy the blanks, get the movie and take the time to back it up, I'd save a small fortune! $8-$12 to start with rather than $16-$20 is much easier to swallow!Yes and unlike games a price culling on DVDs would work because they are cheap to press(make) and dress(pack) and are nearly everywhere and always being sold.Yeah, and with DVD's, the producer, actors, etc have already made a killing from box office sales. DVD's are just some icing on their cake. Game devs are struggling to make a profit right out of production. DVD's should always be $3.99. Man, I would have a nice collection if that were the case!

  3.12.2007 07:35 #5

• ZippyDSM

  Quote:Quote:Originally posted by flyingv: If these companys would start these movies out at these prices they would 1)sell more and 2)cut way back on people copying DVDs! The way I see it is that if they can afford to sell them at this price now what keeps them doing it at release? I know at this price I'd rather just buy the origional rather than back it up. By the time that I buy the blanks, get the movie and take the time to back it up, I'd save a small fortune! $8-$12 to start with rather than $16-$20 is much easier to swallow!Yes and unlike games a price culling on DVDs would work because they are cheap to press(make) and dress(pack) and are nearly everywhere and always being sold.Yeah, and with DVD's, the producer, actors, etc have already made a killing from box office sales. DVD's are just some icing on their cake. Game devs are struggling to make a profit right out of production. DVD's should always be $3.99. Man, I would have a nice collection if that were the case!I think 9.99 is a good price for new DVDs and 15$ for collectors crap, but they being them are ass holes and refuse to change to meet the times to gain a profit...
  
  Also I still think games would be better of to lower prices by 20-30$ this would do 3 things push mroe product and keep it selling longer it would also keep 30-50% of new retail product out of bargain bins.
  
  just think of the spike in gamers who would buy new systems if the games where cheaper, both industries refuse to see what can be done with what they have without upping prices on everything,digi downloads are a joke +10% of retail price for half the product.....fcking A man......

  3.12.2007 14:57 #6

• wetsparks

  Lets take a look shall we at how much money these companies make off of movies. Since Pirates of the Caribbean 3 came out on dvd this past week, I will use it as an example. It had a production budget of 300 million, pretty big. It made 309 million back from the US alone, and another 651 million from foreign markets. So that is 660 million in profits from theaters. (Source) Then they make money from dvd sales, then they will make money on pay-per-view. Then Starz/HBO/Showtime/Encore will buy the rights to show it on their station. Then FOX/Turner will buy the rights to play it some more. I don't have the numbers from dvd sales and how much they make from ppv and tv, but it wouldn't be to hard to figure that they make about 1 BILLION dollars in profits off of that movie.

  8.12.2007 17:29 #7

• ZippyDSM

  Originally posted by wetsparks: Lets take a look shall we at how much money these companies make off of movies. Since Pirates of the Caribbean 3 came out on dvd this past week, I will use it as an example. It had a production budget of 300 million, pretty big. It made 309 million back from the US alone, and another 651 million from foreign markets. So that is 660 million in profits from theaters. (Source) Then they make money from dvd sales, then they will make money on pay-per-view. Then Starz/HBO/Showtime/Encore will buy the rights to show it on their station. Then FOX/Turner will buy the rights to play it some more. I don't have the numbers from dvd sales and how much they make from ppv and tv, but it wouldn't be to hard to figure that they make about 1 BILLION dollars in profits off of that movie.But not all movies make 3-5X profit, however most do break even or better when you add up DVD,PPV and such, they still would make a killing if films where 10 a pop.

  8.12.2007 18:00 #8

• wetsparks

  You say not all movies make big profits, but you think all games do? Look through box office mojo, A LOT of movies make a profit. Some may fall a bit short in the US but they make up for it over seas (unless it is an absolutely dreadful movie, but even then they are able to convince some idiots to pay to go watch it).

  8.12.2007 21:28 #9

• ZippyDSM

  Originally posted by wetsparks: You say not all movies make big profits, but you think all games do? Look through box office mojo, A LOT of movies make a profit. Some may fall a bit short in the US but they make up for it over seas (unless it is an absolutely dreadful movie, but even then they are able to convince some idiots to pay to go watch it).Not all games do,however unlike DVDs games build up more losses in unsold new stock that has to be shipped off to wholesale or bargain bins.
  
  Lowering the price on games by as much as 30% will help them more than it will hurt, the same can be said by letting people return them again, the industry is wholly ignoring the damage badly made products do..at these prices returning a game thats poorly designs should be a no brainier, still at 30% or more lower than retail price you are protected from bad products because of the lower price.. one or the other would be helpful for the game indutry.

  8.12.2007 23:44 #10

• borhan9

  Discounting is the way to go.

  21.12.2007 22:36 #11