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Businesses Entertainment Games

World of Warcraft Floats Vivendi Games 44

Posted by Zonk from the nice-to-have-someone-to-borrow-from dept.
Gamasutra reports that Vivendi Universal Games posted strong revenues for the third quarter, largely thanks to some MMOG. From the article: "The previously troubled game division, which the company had earlier been attempting to sell off, saw revenues increase by 88 percent to 158 million ($189m), thanks to the global success of Blizzard's massively multiplayer role-playing game World of WarCraft. The game's success has also had a positive effect on operating profits, which rose to 7 million ($8 million), from a loss of 32 million ($37m) at the same time last year." Unrelatedly, but humorously, Joystiq reports that WoW showed up as a Jeopardy! question recently.
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World of Warcraft Floats Vivendi Games More

World of Warcraft Floats Vivendi Games

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  • WTS (Score:5, Funny)

    by jlavarj ( 541976 ) on Thursday November 17, 2005 @03:46PM (#14055476)
    [Vivendi Games] PST with offer

  • Jeopardy! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by BigDork1001 ( 683341 )
    I saw that. It was the $2000 dollar question. And none of the contestants got it right! I mean c'mon, you'd think that college kids would know what WoW was. Of course maybe the fact that they are on Jeopardy! shows that they don't play. All the WoW addicts are too busy to leave Azeroth.
    • All of the answers in the video game category were easy. I was expecting a game a little bit more obscure, or at least one that wasn't a top seller.
    • Not sure if it was the same episode, but a few months back, they had college edition and a games category. One of the contestants was obviously a gamer, as I think he swept the category (along with me). But he may have gotten one wrong. Best part, in final Jeopardy, he wagered 1337.

  • LEEEEEROY JEEEEEENKINS!!!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Errandboy of Doom ( 917941 ) on Thursday November 17, 2005 @03:54PM (#14055549) Homepage
    Referencing WoW, that's one thing, it's been popping up in NPR stories and on freakin' Marketplace.

    But referencing Leroy Jenkins, an obscure reference to a spoof clip by a machinima clan?

    What's next, mainstream references to the Fruit Fucker?

  • Jeopardy Clip? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Blackwulf ( 34848 ) on Thursday November 17, 2005 @04:35PM (#14056061) Homepage
    Apparently, the entire category that the Leeroy Jenkins question was found in was about computer games, however every video clip I can find ONLY shows the WoW question. Is there a clip online of all five questions? (Apparently the others were about Halo and GTA.)

  • Forget the WoW factor... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Thursday November 17, 2005 @04:47PM (#14056165)
    What I want to know is when the prices for the older Blizzard Battle Chest games (i.e., Diablo, Warcraft and Starcraft) will drop in prices? They been selling them for $39 USD for years now.
    • Well www.gogamer.com has them a little cheaper:

      $29.00 Warcraft 3 Battlechest
      $17.90 Starcraft Batthechest
      $27.90 Diablo Battlechest

      But yeah it's still pricey. I imagine as long as they keep selling they'll stay at these price points.
      I think it's amazing that Age of Empires 2 Gold still sells for close to $30. Hell, Age of Empires 3 is only about $10 more.
    • The constant high prices are turning me off from purchasing the Battle Chest right now, since I already have WoW and a few other MMOs. If the price dropped by even 10 dollars, though, I'd run out and buy it right away. They would sell a lot more copies, it seems, and capitalize on the sucess of WoW by lowering their prices or ofering a WoW Warcraft bundle.
    • When they stop selling at that price, or it is decided that the increase in unit sales at a slightly lower price will lead to more profits than the current price point.
    • Buy them from target or walmart, I see them on sale there for $20 all the time.

  • newsflash.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by moosesocks ( 264553 )
    Now that's news!

    A solid innovative product that people actually want to buy helps a company turn a profit!

    Now if only the rest of the gaming industry (I'm talking to you, EA!) would catch up, we might be able to escape the FPS monotony we've fallen into.

    It seems that the popularity of a game is solely determined by the level of hype surrounding it. Halo specifically comes to mind. I'll concede that it's a solid FPS, but the level of hype surrounding the launch of Halo 2 was obscene.

    I'm sorry, but there ar
    • Freespace 2 didn't do good mostly because of Interplay. There's probably a thousand examples of solid games that they barely even tried to sell. Die by the Sword comes to mind. Good game, completely unique playstyle, even if it did seem like a tech demo sometimes. I think that between DBtS and the expansion, I saw a grand total of one magazine ad for both six months after they'd come out, and never saw them on shelves anywhere. Same goes for Freespace, which I only once saw on shelves. That could be because
      • Holy crap, there was an expansion for Die By the Sword?

        I might have to look for that and see if I can find my copy - it ran pretty well under Wine back in the day, can't see why it wouldn't work now...
        • Yeah, the expansion was called Limb from Limb. Added a few new monsters, a second campaign. Interplay sold Die by the Sword and Limb from Limb in a dual-jewel pack just like they did with Fallout and Fallout 2, you can probably find that for $10 online.
    • Freespace 2 is hard. Freespace 1 had a much smoother difficulty progression. Tie Fighter is still better than either of 'em.
    • Technically all of the EV games have been ported to PC, as there are plugins for EV Nova that basically turn the whole game into EV or EV Override.
  • The previously troubled game division, which the company had earlier been attempting to sell off,

    Damn.

    I guess VU is better than Electronic Arts or Sony, though.

  • Be sure to stick to you "TIME PROVEN METHOD" of not releasing new things until they are good and ready.

    I've heard murmurings of Vivendi pressuring Blizzard to release it's expansion on a quicker timetable, thus changing the focus from quality product to *money*...

    Hold fast Blizzard... and remember what made you great! and what makes great companies falter.
    • Hold fast? What, like their patching methods have proven so solidly tested and deployed, havn't been rushed to the live servers?

      They should spend some of this profit to add more login/authentication machines so Tuesdays aren't a multi-hour wait for the pipes to get unclogged. Also spend some money fixing bugs and stop "rebalancing" characters.

      Yeha, they do some work. But it seems significantly less than what they should be doing given the size of the audience and profit they are making.
  • If you're going to copy/paste the friggin article into the summary for slashdot, make sure you also copy/paste the money symbols and/or edit out the bits so that it actually makes sense when you say "7 million/ ($8 million)"

    I wonder if they actually still teach writing in school? Oh, that's right, they teach leetonix. "I r 2 l33t 2 wri73 gud". But then again, maybe that's why some of us don't bother reading the blurb text anyways and just read comments and occasionally the actual article. ;)
  • Holy crap they could buy alot of gold with that much money

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