HD DVD shipments "near" one million

Los Angeles (CA) - In a direct rebuttal to Blu-ray’s recent sales announcements, the HD DVD promotional group is saying that its movie sales have nearly crossed the one million mark.

HD DVD says it is still in the game, pointing to hardware price cuts and upcoming titles, and the fact that HD DVD sales currently stand at 998,059 units.

Earlier this month, some HD DVD player prices were slashed to $400, pushing some online retailers to mark them down to as low as $300, almost half the price of the cheapest Blu-ray player.

Additionally, a collector’s edition of The Matrix will be exclusively released on HD DVD this summer, though a Blu-ray version is on tap for later in the year. The HD DVD camp also says many pre-orders were placed for the HD DVD release of BBC’s Planet Earth documentary series, which came out alongside an identical Blu-ray version of the same show.

The group also combatted Blu-ray hardware sales figures, saying standalone HD DVD players were outselling standalone Blu-ray players (e.g. non-PS3 players) by a margin of 4-to-1.