Remember when people used to compare Blu-ray to Betamax? Well, we never heard about Beta scoring well over a billion in sales, even in time-adjusted dollars.
According to the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG), the Blu-ray format took home approximately $1.8 billion in sales last year. It's important to note that this number is strictly sales of Blu-ray software.
This is quite a big deal for the format and its fans. Despite total consumer spending going down 3.3 percent last year, the total haul for home entertainment in 2010 was $18.8 billion. so Blu-ray sales are up to 10% of that total entertainment spend. Contributing to the overall home entertainment total was broadband electronic sell-through (EST) and video on demand (VOD), which brought in a combined $2.5 billion.
About $11.25 million of the income came from game consoles and stand-alone Blu-ray players. Those new sales have brought the total number of Blu-ray playback devices in the home to around 27.5 million. That's up 62 percent from 2009.
Of course, that $1.8 billion in software is a nice incline as well, up 68 percent from 2009. Blu-ray rentals also saw a 34-percent increase.
Figures compiled by accounts Swicker & Associates say that more than 170 million Blu-ray discs shipped to market in 2010, with 73 million in the fourth quarter alone. Since launch, almost 350 million Blu-ray discs have been shipped.
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