Vivendi Games reports profits

Vivendi Games, the French conglomerate that owns Blizzard, has today reported its unaudited revenue information for the full year 2006, showing that revenues were once again on the rise. The games division revenue was up 25.4 percent from the previous year to 804 million euros (about $1 billion) for the full year 2006.

This increase was--perhaps unsurprisingly--primarily due to Blizzard's massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft, which the company describes as "the most popular MMORPG around the world." During 2006, the game experienced strong growth across all the regions where it was played. Its Burning Crusade expansion pack was released on January 16, selling 2.4 million copies in its first 24 hours and becoming the fastest-selling PC game to date in both America and Europe.

The Vivendi Games division also had the biggest year-on-year increase of all Vivendi's divisions. The Universal Music Group was up 1.3 percent to nearly 5 billion euros ($6.5 billion), TV company Canal+ Group was up 7.7 percent to 3.6 billion euros ($4.7 billion), SFR was down 0.1 percent to 8.7 billion euros ($11.2 billion), and Maroc Telecom was up 10.4 percent to 2.1 billion euros ($2.7 billion).

World of Warcraft recently announced that it now has 8 million active subscribers. It can be played in six different languages and is available in North America, Europe, China, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

Other Vivendi games that the company said performed well during 2006 were Scarface: The World Is Yours, Ice Age 2, The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning, Eragon, and F.E.A.R.

For the fourth quarter of 2006, which the company also reported today, Vivendi Games made revenues of 326 million euros ($422 million), up 33.1 percent from the same quarter the previous year.