Viacom, the parent company for MTV Games and Harmonix, has released its fiscal results for the quarter ended March 31. Sales for the quarter dipped four percent to $2.79 billion while net income actually jumped 37 percent to $243 million. Rock Band was one of the contributing factors to the sales decline.
“Worldwide ancillary revenues declined seven percent, reflecting lower sales of Rock Band music video games,” Thomas Dooley, Viacom's chief financial officer, pointed out.
Last November, Dooley had said that the economics of the Rock Band business were improving. If that's the case, it seems to be happening pretty slowly. Dooley commented that Viacom has “done a lot of things in this quarter to improve the Rock Band business." One thing that will help, Dooley noted, is the recent signing of Mad Catz as the official peripherals partner for Rock Band.
“That will substantially reduce any inventory risk we have associated with that,” Dooley said of the Mad Catz deal. “So those are all positive steps. And we would hope that Rock Band will move to being a profit contributor sometime in the calendar year.”
[Thanks to Edge]
