The HD-DVD Group has fired back at the sales figures we quoted earlier in the week with their very own collection of statistics. They’re trumpeting the fact that overall sales of high-def movies are pretty much neck and neck with HD-DVD sitting on 998,059, just a couple of thousand behind the Blu-ray camp who’ve just ticked over the magic one million number.

That’s all well and good but the fact is, Blu-ray has outsold HD-DVD by a considerable margin in the quarter just gone which indicates Blu-ray currently has sales momentum where HD-DVD is falling behind despite having a two month head start on Blu-ray — this must be a worrying sign for the HD-DVD group despite their rosy rhetoric.

Still, the news isn’t all bad for HD-DVD and they continued their rebuttal by saying they are in fact winning the battle of the players. Sales of dedicated HD-DVD players are out-stripping stand-alone Blu-ray players by four to one (they don’t count sales of PS3). HD-DVD players also tend to undercut Blu-ray players on price by a significant amount, so if you’re holding out waiting for a clear winner, be prepared for a long wait because there’s still plenty of life left in this format war yet.