Media giant Viacom has announced its fiscal results for the second quarter ended June 30. From a game industry perspective, the most interesting aspect of this of course ties into MTV Networks, which publishes the popular Rock Band franchise from Harmonix. Sales at the Media Networks division (home to MTV Networks) dropped 8% for the period to $1.97 billion. The cause? Viacom put most of the blame on "a 41% decline in ancillary revenues driven by lower sales of the music video game Rock Band."
Operating income at Viacom's Media Networks also dropped 12% to $671 million, which the company said was a result of "lower advertising revenues, losses associated with Rock Band due to the soft retail environment and $16 million in severance charges." That soft retail environment seems to be hurting everyone these days - Ubisoft cited that as part of their 51% sales decline yesterday.
Overall revenues at Viacom were down 14% to $3.3 billion. Sumner M. Redstone, Executive Chairman of Viacom (and former Midway majority stakeholder), said, “As the leading pure-play content company, Viacom has the right portfolio of assets and the right vision to manage through this challenging climate while we continue to position ourselves for future growth.”
MTV is hopeful that The Beatles: Rock Band, which launches this September, will give the Rock Band business a jolt. The new Rock Band Network is also potentially an exciting development for the franchise, which could lead to further incremental revenue.
The music category is already down 30% worldwide, however, and EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich said in his bi-weekly column that it's not likely Rock Band and Guitar Hero will be able to sustain the kind of huge growth they had in previous years.
Post a Comment
Login With IndustryGamers
Create an account, it literally takes like 5 seconds and you'll never have to do it again.
Login / Register
Login With Facebook
Have a Facebook account? Just hit the button and you can comment on our site!