Our DVD and Blu-ray sales estimates are based on weekly retail surveys, which we use to build a weekly market share estimate for each title we are tracking. The market share is converted into a weekly sales estimate based on industry reports on the overall size of the market, including reports published in Media Play News.

For example, if our weekly retail survey estimates that a particular title sold 1% of all units that week, and the industry reports sales of 1,500,000 units in total, we will estimate 15,000 units were sold of that title. The consumer spending estimate is based on the average sales price for the title in the retailers we survey.

We refine our estimates from week to week as more data becomes available. In particular, we adjust weekly sales figures for the quarter once the total market estimates are published by the Digital Entertainment Group. Figures will therefore fluctuate each week, and totals for individual titles can go up or down as we update our estimates.

Because sales figures are estimated based on sampling, they will be more accurate for higher-selling titles.

Home Market Numbers: Home Market Really is Despicable

September 19th, 2013

As I mentioned last week, the new releases were terrible, so it is not a surprise that the overall home market numbers were so poor the week of July 7th. The best-selling new release on Blu-ray was An American Girl: Saige Paints the Sky, and it didn't even reach the top ten. Compared to the previous week, 16% fewer units were sold in total, 22% less revenue was generated, and the final figures were just 544,000 units / $12.08 million. Compared to last year, there were 20% fewer units sold, while the total revenue was 11% lower. The overall Blu-ray sunk even further to just 23% in terms of units and 31% in terms of revenue. Hopefully these numbers will bounce back once the summer blockbusters hit the home market. Unfortunately, TV on DVD releases will dominate for the next few weeks, so Blu-ray will suffer for a while. More...

Blu-ray Sales: Despicable Has Virtuous Result

September 19th, 2013

New releases were even worse on the July 7th, 2013 edition of the Blu-ray sales chart than they were on the DVD sales chart. Leading the way was Despicable Me with 88,000 units / $1.23 million for the week and 2.35 million units / $58.37 million after more than two-and-a-half years of release. This puts it just outside of the top 20 on the All-Time Blu-ray Chart, and it has already made it there as of the writing of this column. More...

DVD Sales: New Releases Feel Despicable

September 19th, 2013

The new releases were terrible this week with only two of them reaching the top 30 and none of them reached the top 5 on the July 7th, 2013 DVD sales chart. Despicable Me rose to first place with 196,000 units / $2.19 million for the week for totals of 8.96 million units / $147.10 million. More...