Vivendi rolling in World of Warcraft gold

By Tor Thorsen, GameSpotPosted Jul 27, 2006 11:08 am PT

MMORPG big factor in multimedia multinational's 4.8 percent quarterly revenue increase; 50 Cent, Ice Age 2 help raise game division's income 29.6 percent.

By now, the fact that World of Warcraft is fantastically profitable isn't really news anymore. Since its release more than a year and a half ago, GameSpot's 2004 Game of the Year has been a permanent fixture on the best-seller charts. During the week of July 9-15, 2006, the game was once again the top PC game in the US, according to unit-volume sales rankings from industry-research group NPD Funworld. It is also nearing 7 million subscribers worldwide, each of whom pays its developer-publisher, Blizzard Entertainment, a monthly fee.

But while news of WOW's success has become routine, it is news when Vivendi Games credits the massively multiplayer online role-playing game for increasing its bottom line. Today, the France-based multimedia multinational gave its game division credit for helping boost its revenues 4.8 percent during the quarter that ended on June 30, 2006. The three-month period saw Vivendi rake in 4.84 billion euros ($6.16 billion), up from 4.62 billion euros ($5.87 billion) the year before. For the first half of the year, Vivendi's revenue stood at 9.61 billion euros ($12.2 billion), up from 9.13 billion ($11.61 billion) during Q2 2005.

Virtually every sector of Vivendi's extensive television and telecommunications holdings saw increased profit. However, no sector saw bigger growth than Vivendi Games, which is the owner of Blizzard and the recipient of the buckets of ducats that WOW generates. The division took in 162 million euros ($206 million) for the April-June quarter, an increase of 29.6 percent over its Q2 2005 income. The first half of 2006 saw Vivendi Games' gross haul add up to 296 million euros ($376.4 million), an increase of 24.4 percent over the previous year.

"This increase was primarily driven by the continued worldwide success of Blizzard's World of Warcraft," said Vivendi in its earnings report. "Other solid performers in the first half of 2006 included the release of Ice Age 2, the game based on [the] Fox movie, and continuing strong sales from backlist products including 50 Cent: Bulletproof and Crash Tag Team Racing."

With WOW sales showing no sign of slowing down, Vivendi is poised for an even more profitable second half of 2006. In the fall, Blizzard is set to release the first expansion pack for the game, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.

38 Comments

  • GangsterPanda

    Posted Aug 2, 2006 12:42 pm PT

    ...people actually bought the 50 Cent game?

  • thepeter

    Posted Jul 29, 2006 8:35 pm PT

    all they need to milk is WoW.

  • chrisdojo

    Posted Jul 28, 2006 7:21 am PT

    i'm rolling in WoW gold too.

  • digit117

    Posted Jul 28, 2006 2:40 am PT

    itas a shame people have to say something stupid like that

  • SnuffDaddyNZ

    Posted Jul 28, 2006 12:25 am PT

    I wanted to boycott all future Vivdendi published products after they delayed the launch of Half-Life 2 for over a month even though all people who had pre-loaded the game over Steam already had the game on their HDD's.

    A couple of months later WOW was released, and so any thought of boycott was gone.

  • expaniol

    Posted Jul 28, 2006 12:10 am PT

    50 Cent: Bulletproof was profitable and actually gained money and was called a sucess? How bad taste in games has some people? Couldn't they tell it wasn't gonna turn out good? *is confused*

  • Valen_Ca

    Posted Jul 27, 2006 6:40 pm PT

    Wait, you mean 50 Cent: Bulletproof actually sold enough to be considered a strong seller ?

  • chefbake

    Posted Jul 27, 2006 6:03 pm PT

    Its too bad they don't spend a dime on fixing the servers or any of the massive lag that has been going on. Blizzards response to everything is to delete the posts or just ignore us. Blizzard has some of the worst customer service. If you don't believe me, go read any of the tech forums on Worldofwarcraft.com. I wish Gamespot would do a report on this. ITs a big news story.

  • PantsOfFury

    Posted Jul 27, 2006 5:50 pm PT

    blackleech - Why the hell wouldn't publishers and developers want to make money? That's the only reason they make and sell products anyway. It's a capitalist society, get used to it.

  • revelations

    Posted Jul 27, 2006 4:28 pm PT

    [This message was deleted at the request of a moderator or administrator]

  • NeoJedi

    Posted Jul 27, 2006 3:57 pm PT

    You can credit WoW all you want, I'm never buying that game.

  • DukeEdwardI

    Posted Jul 27, 2006 3:20 pm PT

    it's no use...eventually almost every gamer with a pc will give in and buy WoW. i vowed to never play it, but i was a sucker and gave in. Blizzard sure knows how to make their games addictive.

  • bigelf72

    Posted Jul 27, 2006 2:56 pm PT

    just wait.....Burnign Crusade comes out, and all the temporarily retired wow fans (waiting for the expansion to come out) will all come back to wow, breaking the 10million players mark.

  • dukerav

    Posted Jul 27, 2006 2:23 pm PT

    WoW obviously will boost revenue but what the hell did anyone buy the 50 cent game for, that game is not even rental worthy in my opinion. Heres to hoping that even though that game sold well, a sequel never sees the light of day.

  • blackleech

    Posted Jul 27, 2006 2:10 pm PT

    All publishers and game companies care about is $$$

  • SpareJesus

    Posted Jul 27, 2006 2:09 pm PT

    Please, don't associate poor titles like 50 Cent and Crash: Tag Team Racing with a company like Blizzard...please..

    They're too good for that! Set them free!

    Run, Blizzard! Run like the wind!

  • shortyelks89

    Posted Jul 27, 2006 1:59 pm PT

    no its sad that WoW has to be associated with games like 50 Cent Bulletproof and Ice Age 2 just because of company ownership
    thats the real sad thing
    otherwise go WoW
    cant wait for Burning Crusade either

  • marko1912

    Posted Jul 27, 2006 1:59 pm PT

    omfg WoW will corride the age of gamers until we will all die

  • runstalker

    Posted Jul 27, 2006 1:56 pm PT

    'Suppose the extra cash helps to buff their other games--like TimeShift--with better production values.

  • Zweihanderhero

    Posted Jul 27, 2006 1:45 pm PT

    Square Enix + Konami + Namco + Capcom + Blizzard = VOLTRON!

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