With Vivendi Games having recently reported its own June quarter and first half results, Activision Blizzard today announced the stand-alone June quarter numbers for Activision, revealing net revenues of $654.2 million, a 32 percent increase. When combined with Vivendi's nearly $348 million, Activision Blizzard's strength is quite evident. By comparison, rival EA just reported $804 million in sales for its most recent quarter.

Activision's stand-alone net income for the period came to $59.0 million, more than double the previous year's net income of $27.8 million. The publisher said its incredible June quarter performance "was driven by strong consumer response to the North American launch of Kung Fu Panda early in the quarter, which was the company's largest launch of a DreamWorks Animation licensed property." The company also pointed to the success of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, which ranked as one of Activision's top-five North American multiplatform launches, and Guitar Hero: On Tour, which was the largest North American launch for the Nintendo DS in Activision's history.

Ultimately, looking at the June quarter and the first half of the calendar year, Activision was the #1 third-party publisher on Nintendo platforms in the U.S. (based on NPD data) and ranked as the #1 publisher worldwide on the PS2 (based on Charttrack, Gfk and NPD data).

Robert Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, commented, "Activision's June quarter stand-alone results were the highest ever for a non-holiday quarter, driven by two new Guitar Hero titles -- Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and Guitar Hero: On Tour --, Kung Fu Panda and continued sales of our catalogue titles. Our record performance highlights the continued strength of our business. We are well positioned to continue to capitalize on our strong product portfolio and the positive trends in our industry."

He continued, "We have completed our transaction with Vivendi and our integration plans have identified higher than anticipated cost-synergy opportunities. Both Activision and Blizzard Entertainment's businesses have maintained their momentum. Activision Blizzard's combined outlook for calendar year 2008 is set to exceed the comparable calendar year 2009 non-GAAP financial targets that we provided on December 2, 2007, by approximately $600 million in non-GAAP net revenues and $100 million in non-GAAP operating income."

"We are very excited to add Vivendi Games' multi-million unit selling properties Crash Bandicoot, Ice Age and Spyro, as well as two new intellectual properties -- Prototype and an as yet unannounced title -- to our game roster," said Mike Griffith, President and CEO of Activision Publishing. "The combination with Vivendi Games strengthens our holiday slate which is already anchored by three of the top-selling franchises in the industry -- Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, James Bond and includes such highly anticipated games as Call of Duty: World at War, Guitar Hero World Tour and Quantum of Solace, as well as Crash Bandicoot: Mind Over Mutant and The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon."

Mike Morhaime, CEO and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, added, "Since June 2007, World of Warcraft has grown its subscriber base by over 1.8 million, to 10.9 million players. Blizzard Entertainment also continues to launch World of Warcraft in new territories and we are very excited about its recent release in Latin America and the upcoming launch in Russia. Blizzard has a strong pipeline of products in development including World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, StarCraft II and Diablo III."

As Activision Blizzard moves forward, the company said it's anticipating the online sector to become increasingly important. "Activision Blizzard continues to expect that online functionality for certain key titles to be released in the December quarter of calendar year 2008 and thereafter will become a significant component of game play for certain platforms for which the company will have continuing performance obligations beyond the sale of the game. As a result, the company expects to begin recognizing a substantial amount of net revenues and costs of sales from these online-enabled games over a service period, which we currently estimate to be six months beginning the month after shipment," the company explained in a statement.

In terms of guidance, for the September quarter, Activision Blizzard expects net revenues of $636 million and a loss per share of $0.26. For the December quarter, the company expects net revenues of $1.85 billion and earnings per share of $0.11.