Yay....boring industry number-crunching.

But for those who care, there's been some interesting articles posted today about the sales numbers for Rock Band these days.

http://www.next-gen.biz/news/viacom-...ck-band-losses


While Viacom publicly blamed HMX & Rock Band for company losses in Q1 2010, and demanded payback on bonuses they had issued the company, looks like Q2 has seen a pronounced turnaround:

MTV and Harmonix parent company Viacom cut its losses on the Rock Band franchise in the quarter ended June 30, 2010.

The company’s Media Networks division, which houses its videogame business, saw quarterly revenue up six per cent year-over-year to $2.09 billion (£1.3b), while operating income rose 14 per cent to $789 million (£496m), “driven by higher affiliate and advertising revenues as well as lower losses from Rock Band”, the company said.

Company-wide revenue was flat at $3.3 billion (£2.1b), while operating income rose 28 per cent to $794 million (£499m), “on improving trends in the advertising market, continued strength of affiliate revenues and lower film and distribution costs for the quarter”.

Viacom blamed a decline in worldwide ancillary revenues on slow Rock Band sales for the prior quarter ended March 31, 2010.
I don't think GDRB contributed anything to that rise in revenue from RB (in fact, gamesindustry.biz wrote today that "the most recent full retail Rock Band titles, LEGO Rock Band and The Beatles Rock Band, failed to buck the trend, whilst add-on Green Day Rock Band sold only 82,000 in its first month in North America, despite MTV hoping it would be bigger than The Beatles game"), so I'm going to go out on a limb and give the shout-out to the RBN and to a revised strategy of releasing mainstream DLC over the past few months (and coming months) instead of the niche stuff that forum-goers have been constantly requesting.

Anyway, congrats on increasing revenue in Q2, HMX, and I hope that the sales juggernaut that RB3 will bring will finally get Viacom off your back (for awhile anyway).