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Activision Down, Vivendi Waaay Up

Posted by Zonk on Thu Nov 16, 2006 04:20 PM
from the sad-days-salad-days dept.
Businesses Entertainment Games
Gamespot is reporting that Activision faces delisting from NASDAQ due to non-compliance. They failed to report their quarterly earnings on time, a situation the company says they will correct as soon as 'practicable.' Meanwhile, Vivendi earnings are up 190% No, that's not a typo. Two guesses as to why. From the article: "Unsurprisingly, Vivendi Games attributed the profit spike largely due to what it describes as 'the higher margin of the World of Warcraft business.' It also cited other factors, including the start-up investments for the Sierra Online and Vivendi Games Mobile divisions and strong sales of Scarface: The World Is Yours in October." Translation: "We have a money hat machine! Yay!"
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Activision Down, Vivendi Waaay Up 31 Comments More /

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  • go figure, WoW is becomming a gamming super-power, just wait till EA buys it or worse, Activsion
    • .. being purchased by Sony Online Entertainment. If there's one company thats proven itself able to make a bad idea even worse, it's SOE.
    • I would certainly hope that this much financial success puts Vivendi/Blizzard in a situation where EA or Sony will never be able to buy them.

      I'd basically give up gaming all together if EA owned everything.

    • Hey now, what's the problem with Activision?
    • EA buying Blizzard? Uhh, way to go on your research, bud: Blizz is owned by Vivendi SA. In terms of revenue and employees, Vivendi [wikipedia.org] is like five times larger than EA [wikipedia.org]; Activision is about half the size of EA.

      But yeah, I'm sure Vivendi's looking to sell off this cash cow reeeal soon.
  • how all the old huge developers of yesteryear are dissapearing or becoming steaming piles of shit? Old sierra, activision, electronic arts, midway, konami, capcom...the list goes on. These people used to be at the very pinnacle of gaming in any form...now they are either dissapeared or corrupted into crap. I wonder where gaming will be and what companies will be carrying it in 20 years...
    • Atari, Sega, Infocom... Yep, we've noticed...
      The same can be said of just about any industry though. Just look at video card manufacturers. Hell, nobody was ever going to topple 3dfx.
      And computer manufacturers: look at the remnants of SGI, DEC, Amstrad, Atari (again), Commodore (Amiga), BBC, Honeybee, Sinclair... Damn, I shouldn't have started
      • You forgot Alpha and Cray:-) Man...remember the fight between the Rendition and 3dfx? LMFAO I remember getting into a fistfight with my friends when the monster 3d and the rendition verite first came out (I was younger and stupider then lol) Hell, I remember when the top of the line falcon mach V 200 MHz pentium was going for like 4,000 bucks... You also forgot to mention Tandy, that was another big one...Also TI, I know texas instruments is still around, but not NEARLY in the same capacity that they u
      • "BBC" computers were made of Acorn. Acorn is no more, but you may have heard of what became of their research department - a little company called ARM.

    • No big mystery... (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      When a game studio is young, it attracts hot, young talents who are willing to put all of their passion into the work. They go for a while releasing cool, cutting edge titles, sometimes at the cost of other parts of their lives (or other parts of the business).

      As the studio grows, the other business realities start to take hold. The founders and other talent brought on board earlier in the life of the company often get a little burnt out and leave, or in the case of a merger/aquisition, the new management d
      • Maybe I was a little misleading...I meant not nearly what they used to be. Yes, Konami and Capcom are still around, and yes they still have a couple tricks up their sleeves, but there is no way you can sit there and tell me with a straight face they have nearly as deep of a market penetration or string of instant classics like they did in the mid 80's-90's
  • Nintendo is at an all time high [gamesarefun.com] as investors expect the Wii to make large profits(well, large for Nintendo anyway)

  • Delisting isn't a big deal. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lpangelrob (714473) on Thursday November 16 2006, @04:46PM (#16876344)

    Dell, Novell and Apple [crn.com] have also received delisting notices at some point. Let me know if/when Activision actually gets pulled off the exchange.

    • This is a good point, this is probably just standard practice. Once a quarter somebody probably goes down a checklist and anyone who doesn't have everything done gets a form letter. Yes, it suggests that Activision is having a hard time cooking the books enough, but this isn't really a shocking move.

  • Woah! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ThePyro (645161) on Thursday November 16 2006, @04:59PM (#16876562)
    7.5 million subscribers, all paying a monthly access fee? That makes World of Warcraft a $1 billion industry all by itself. Have any other games broken the $1 billion barrier?
    • No it doesn't.

      Many (most!) of those subs are in the asian market -- they don't pay $15USD per month to play. It's less. Much less.

      Still, WoW is a money hat machine, regardless.

      • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        World of Warcraft makes well over 1 billion in revenue each year from subscriptions, box sales, merchandise, and paid services such as character transfer. There will also be a huge increase next year from the expansion release.
    • And more like a 100 million dollar industry if all of the Asian subscribers payed the full $15. You were by a factor of 10.
        • Ahh, I was just thinking monthly. Anyhow a video game that makes even 10m in profit is doing something good. And its clear they make a significant amount more than that over and over, every year.
      • 7.5 million users x $15 each a month (assuming everyone pays 15 USD a month) x 12 months in a year leads me to a total figure of $1,350,000,000.00

        looks like he's correct.

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