MTV has struggled to make profits from their game division over the past year. Still, with The Beatles: Rock Band having outsold Guitar Hero 5 in the U.S. its first month, Viacom chief financial officer Tom Dooley said that the situation was "improving" for Rock Band "though not as quickly as we’d like."
“We expect it to break even or be slightly profitable in the fourth quarter from a margin point of view. It really depends on how many units we sell in the holiday season," said Dooley on a financial conference call [thanks Edge]. "That’s what we’re building the business for. The economy has made it tough but we’re out there and we think we’re being very competitive in the space and it really depends, literally on the next three to six weeks.”
Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman was also happy with the release of The Beatles: Rock Band. “The Beatles: Rock Band eclipsed the competition in its first month on the market," said Dauman. "As we enter the all important holiday season, we are reaching out beyond the core gamer audience to first time buyers and passionate music fans… At this time of year we await the holiday season to begin as the month of November unfolds so we will start putting more marketing dollars together with our retailing partners behind that product."
“We also expect to see continued growth in our downloadable content business," continued Dauman. "The Beatles music as well as the hundreds of other songs we have available for Rock Band. We now have more than 900 songs available for download and that number will expand to 1,000 by year-end. Consumers have paid for more than 60 million downloads to date.”
Viacom's Q3 2009 result saw revenues of $3.32 billion, a slight decline of three percent, with an increase in income of 14 percent to $784 million. The Media Networks division that includes MTV Games saw flat revenue of $2.12 billion with income up a modest two percent to $773 million.
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