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Viacom Profits Rise As Rock Band Sales Slide
During a conference call today, Viacom representatives were happy to announce a jump in fourth quarter profits from $173 million last year to $694 million in 2009. While the huge jump can be mostly attributed to heavy restructuring charges last year, one area that didn't show improvement was the performance of MTV Games' Rock Band.
Viacom division Media Networks saw a loss in revenue of $142 million (6 percent) and places the blame on lower Rock Band and advertising sales.
Viacom president and CEO Philippe Dauman added the following: "As to Rock Band, it certainly was a challenging year in 2009 for the video game industry in general and certainly for our Rock Band franchise. As we go forward, we are continuing to focus more on software than hardware, looking to reduce the cost structure associated with Rock Band, being selective in the music titles that we choose for Rock Band based on their cost. The music industry will assist with this category to make sure that it can continue on a profitable basis in the future and then finally we think we have the best games in the category, we'll continue to rollout exciting products."
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