“We knew the movie [business] isn’t in good shape, but the write-down was a total surprise,” Damian Thong, an analyst at Macquarie Securities told MarketWatch.
But maybe this should not be a surprise because Amazon now rents more movies than Redbox does. It has been many years since Blockbuster shut down and even Best Buy has started to shrink its DVD displays moving them to less desirable locations in stores.
Add in the fact that a growing number of shows, such as Fox’s “The Simpsons,” no longer release new seasons on DVD but posts them on streaming services such as Vudu, iTunes, and Amazon Video. Even Sony pointed to the move to streaming services such as Netflix for the huge write-off.
Though all of this has to be taken with a grain of salt because many of the big name movies Sony had hoped would sell fell flat. Leading the way was the new Ghostbusters movie that failed to meet market expectations.
So the question now is how long do DVDs have and how long will it be until you walk into a Best Buy and find the DVD section gone?
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