Vivendi continues sales climb

As heavily laden as this year's release lineup may be, all the hot new releases can't keep Vivendi and its massively multiplayer online game juggernaut down. The France-based media company announced revenue of $22 billion for the first nine months of 2007, a year-over-year climb of 7.9 percent. For the third quarter ended September 30, Vivendi tallied revenue of $7.9 billion, a 10.9 percent rise over the same period in 2006.

Though several of its businesses achieved double digit growth, once again the biggest climber was Vivendi Games backed by the massively popular MMOG World of Warcraft. Vivendi Games posted $1 billion in revenue through September, a 49.8 percent rise over last year. Blizzard Entertainment's online fantasy role-playing game was again credited as the largest contributor, with Vivendi calling out strong sales of Burning Crusade, the Chinese version of which was recently rolled out. Vivendi claims the game currently boasts more than 9.3 million subscribers.

While Vivendi Games is making the largest percentile gains, it still by far contributes the least to Vivendi's portfolio. SFR, Vivendi's French mobile phone company, posted $9.7 billion for the first nine months, a 2.3 percent climb over the first nine months of 2006. Vivendi's French premium television operation Canal+ Group and worldwide music outfit Universal Media Group brought in near-equal revenue of $4.73 billion and $4.78 billion, respectively. Vivendi's Moroccan telecommunication company Maroc Telecom also posted significant gains of $2.6 billion, an increase of 17.1 percent year-over-year.