News from the Blu-ray Disc Association suggests that the impact of PlayStation 3 on sales of Blu-ray Disc movies in North America and Japan after the launch of the console last November has been "significant".

Early market data sourced by the association indicates that a similar trend is developing in Western Europe.

Industry data for the period from 1 January until the end of April shows a change in market dynamics in the European HD software market.

Up until the PS3’s launch on 23 March, HD DVD was comfortably outselling Blu-ray discs. However, in the week after PS3 was launched in Europe, Blu-ray discs accounted for almost 87% of all HD disc sales.

In the period since 23 March, Blu-ray discs have consistently out sold HD DVD's rival product by a significant margin.

In the latest week that the figures report, Blu-ray discs outsold HD DVDs by a factor of more than three to one.

This means that despite the PS3 being available for only one month of this four-month period, Blu-ray software sales account for over 64% of the total volume since the start of the year.

For the good of the overall Blu-ray cause, it looks like these figures justify Sony's inclusion of a Blu-ray disc drive in their next-gen console, despite the delays this caused to the launch of the product and partly accounting for its high price.