Vivendi Universal News - Healthy Profits, 'Universal' Dropped

[fitbabits]

IGN (http://www.ign.com) has more details (http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/702/702593p1.html).

Financial news (http://pc.ign.com/articles/702/702531p1.html):

As part of Vivendi Universal's first-quarter financials, the French company reported particularly juicy numbers for the VU Games division, thanks in no small part to the fantastically successful World of Warcraft.

VU Games division's revenue totaled 134 million Euros, representing an 18.6 percent jump (last years results 113 million Euros) during the same period. VU also noted the Ice Age 2 game based on the movie of the same name was a "solid performer." 50 Cent: Bulletproof and Crash Tag Team Racing reportedly performed well despite mixed critical reception.

Overall Vivendi Universal saw an increase of 5.7 percent from 4,509 million to 4,766 million.
Name change (http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/702/702593p1.html):

...media conglomerate Vivendi Universal also indulged in a change of clothes: the company has dropped the second part of its name to become just Vivendi.

According to an AP report, the name change complies with 2004 agreements between Vivendi and General Electric which created NBC Universal. Vivendi had planned to change its name by 2009.
World of Warcraft, Crash Tag Team Racing and 50 Cent: Bulletproof... The good, the bad and the ugly of the videogame industry.

[Kefkataran]

FIFTY CENT BULLETPROOF IS FUCKING SWEET.

I should seriously just rent that game so I can do a parody review of it on Toybane.

[Saladin]

They can't be including WoW in those revenue figures surely? Unless they really mean profit and not revenue?

[The Continental]

They can't be including WoW in those revenue figures surely? Unless they really mean profit and not revenue?

Even if you do look at it on the basis of profit vs. revenue, that's still absolutely absurd. There is no way they could be looking at that little profit with a game like WoW bringing in the money that it is. Lets be conservative and say that only 3,000,000 of the 6,000,000 world wide subscribers are in North America and Europe and are therefore paying the standard $14.99 a month. They're looking at $44,970,000 in revenue per month, just from HALF of their subscriber base, and that's not counting the initial sales of the boxed copies of the game.

Blizzard either has the most obscenely lopsided deal this side of Microsoft's DOS deal with IBM, or server maintenance is ungodly expensive.

[netcraazzy]

Somebody over at IGN got the decimal in the wrong freaking place. It's supposed to be 134 million euros not 1.34. The actual press release can be found here (http://finance.vivendiuniversal.com/finance/download/pdf/PR200406RevenuesQ106.pdf).

[Reanimated]

It's sad that a shitty company like VU reaps the benefits of WoW like a fucking leech.

[digitalErich]

It's sad that a shitty company like VU reaps the benefits of WoW like a fucking leech.

Maybe with the sucess of WoW Blizzard is just riding it out until their contract with VU runs out?? That or VU dump truck full of cash pulls up the Blizzard offices every Tuesday.
Seriously though, there's alaways specualtion and armchair accountants throwing numbers around about how much Blizzard is making from WoW. VU is a publically traded company, no? Shouldn't they have to make detailed earnings statements public? Any gamers out there with a financial background? I would guess if this info was available, it would have surfaced by now, though.

[Pumped'Up]

VU's got an untapped cash cow - DIABLO 3....bring it out already man! :mad:

[Deadend]

VU's got an untapped cash cow - DIABLO 3....bring it out already man! :mad:
I'd rather play a good game as opposed to this... rushed Diablo 3 you seem to want.

[Borys]

It's 134 M Euros not 1.34 M.

[Liquidize105]

Yeah, 1.34 million is Interplay on its last breath :D

[The Continental]

Maybe with the sucess of WoW Blizzard is just riding it out until their contract with VU runs out?? That or VU dump truck full of cash pulls up the Blizzard offices every Tuesday.
Seriously though, there's alaways specualtion and armchair accountants throwing numbers around about how much Blizzard is making from WoW. VU is a publically traded company, no? Shouldn't they have to make detailed earnings statements public? Any gamers out there with a financial background? I would guess if this info was available, it would have surfaced by now, though.

http://www.vivendi.com/ir/download/pdf/annualreport2005.pdf
*Please note that I converted Euros to Dollars for all relevant figures.

VU's Games division had approximately $789,000,000 in revenue last year according to their earnings statement on pg. 195. As is custom for companies that have their hands in as many jars as Vivendi, their financial statements are consolidated. One thing that stuck out, was just how high VU Games' operating expenses were approximately $683,000,000 in 2005, and were even worse in 2004. VU's actual earnings were a mere $50,000,000 in 2005, which is still a vast improvement over their very large loss in 2004 (to the tune of a quarter billion).

Their earnings prospectus (http://www.vivendi.com/ir/download/pdf/FY05Earnings.pdf ) gives a little more insight into the matter by stating that 49% of all of VU's games earnings come from their "Online" division, which if you see their top 10 selling titles on pg. 46, WoW is the only game labeled as Online. Page 46 also contains the distrubution of subscribers by country, with Asia making up just slightly over 50% by visual approximation.

While there isn't exact info by any means as to WoW's contribution to Vivendi's bottom line, it's not hard to extrapolate based on the information they provide.