Guitar Hero tops $2 billion, Activision Blizzard earns $981 million in Q1

They make a huge amount of money out of WoW. I bet it's the game that give it's company the biggest monthly profit by... A LOT.

Activision are the new Larry-Probst EA...

One thing though, I did enjoy the hell outta that Wolverine game.

I don't care about sales figures, I care about game quality and I support Activision because they make great games. Well GH is a great series but I don't understand how in the **** people would buy it over RB, which is way more fun. Although, as a natural lyricist, I look forward to the day when I can use my XBOX720 or 3602 or whatever, make some beats, burn a CD and sell it. Spiderman is a great series and TH's ok. I've never been one for COD and I think WoW is a waste of time, considering I don't want to play a game endlessly that causes me to miss out on all the other great games because I'm playing one-game. To be honest, I think Activision is a company that is very over-rated and I prefer Capcom anyday of the week. As for the issue, of making more money, it's great that they made another billion dollars, let's all celebrate with a big middle finger to Activision because they are the exact reason companies I grew up with like WD are out of business. Maybe, between them and Nintendo, they can bring about another video game crash. Makes me wonder, what game companies will go next......

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haha, nice man... find NyGin07 post and read for lols

Nice job Activision Blizzard.

thats great considering other companies have been losing money.

It's amazing how they can haul in billion(s), yet they fall short of expectations. That's what happens when you overpay your help, and spend way over your budget for promotion. If they thought more about their game(s) [like Halo, Mass Effect...etc.] you might get a movie out of it too!

Merl57, yeah that guy rocks doesnt he

40 million professional song downloads? Is that supposed to mean paid downloads?

Activision fell short of a billion? Phttt, wusses.

@uberjannie: I've never put much faith in any numbers a company might release for their costs. Could be under or over estimating them to make themselves look better...never know. Interesting thing about the article is that it doesn't say if that's an annual, monthly or all time cost. I highly doubt it's for all time nor could I see it being annual as that would make Blizzard a very rich company. I would tend to agree though that if that 200mil number is accurate that it's just upkeep. Hardware, and the kind of hardware they need to run is extremely pricey. A good designer can make 6 figures a year and even CSRs are pretty high up on the yearly salary. I imagine that if you guestimated the salaries of all the design, tech, monitoring, CSR, GMs etc etc for one year that it would make that 200mil number seem like pocket change. Considering Blizzard isn't just WoW you also have to figure in the various departments for their three top games (WoW, Diablo and SC) that all have their own staff for every aspect involved. These numbers here aren't just for WoW and the article you linked was about WoW only. Who knows though. We can only guess but my guess is that they do make a ton of cash but are forking it over big time as well.

2 Billion from GH? That's a third of what the Wii's made...

@uberjannie: Hmmm now that is interesting. If those numbers cover their total overhead (R&D, electricity, etc) that's amazing, and yeah, wow they're raking it in. Between you and Tyraan, this is getting interesting! :)

@Tyraan : I remember reading somwhere before the burning crusade that the total cost of WoW (including salery of staff and servers) went to a total of 200 000 000 USD. That was right before WotLK. Thus, the expenses arent as bad as you say they are. Remember, thats since 2004 , you can imagine the pile of money Vivendi has earned from this. http://kotaku.com/5050300/how-much-has-wow-cost-blizzard-since-2004

Vivendi makes a lot of money on World of Warcraft.

the only games to actually come out of activision are COD series and WOW but GH hype i dont get and dont really want 2 becuase it just feels like a cash leech

Is the Guitar Hero $ amounts including bundles or do they count the difference (as in the actual price of the game, not the whole bundle)? If they are then that's not very accurate. I had to buy a bundle for the PS2 when 1 came out, then another bundle for 3 when that came out for 360. That's about $160 for two games. Seeing as how GHWT was $90-100 for all platforms in bundles (Band kit not included) that gives it a $30-40 advantage over all other third party games.

This games business is one hell of a big one, look at these numbers !

Waow! 981 millions! in ***** Q1! You may not like wow fans or what so ever, but they sure know how to make money!

At the start of this generation I was naive enough to believe that Nintendo's and companies like Activsions dominance of the industry, could be a good thing. OK it's all totally aimed at the casual market, but money made from that market could be plowed into development of new techs and deeper new franchises. Todays announcements from Activision and Ninty confirm that the casual marker is paying huge dividends. But it leaves me cold that they sem to have abandoned gamers. Activision have even stated that fact and Nints silence and lack of real games speaks volumes. My olny hope is that a good size percentage of the newer casual market will get a taste for 'real' gaming and these giant companies gat back to what they are good and capable at.The casual gamers are getting bored (check out the Japanese games charts, compared to 2 yrs ago)

how much do they spend on making these games?? not alot i guess but the money they are making is unbelievable its a joke that it beat COD sales but there are more people that wanna sing in a band than blow someones head off haha

@nappan: Thanks. I would think though that most people can relate to labor costs in this economy. IE a $20 car part costing $300 to put in because of extremely high and inflated labor costs. The same applies to a software company like Blizzard. A simple 3 min game video like the one for Lich King has hours upon hours of labor involved with little to no actual materiel required for it's creation. The big bucks they earn go towards paying for those peoples education, skills, talents, time etc. The better you are at what you do, the more money you can "charge" for your services. I imagine GS puts out this kind of information (as they often do) to try to show how well or poor a company is doing. I suppose since every article is written in the same context that we at least get some kind of comparison for comparisons sake.

@Tyraan: You do realize that you just explained something complex, in a clear concise manner right? You also know, that 90% of the people here won't understand, or read it, and then flame you. For the record, good show on your post... I don't know why GS is doing that kind of explanation and analysis. What's the point in shoving raw sales figures down our throats without context?!

@ MushroomRevenge: Nobody but Blizzard really knows the costs involved in maintaining the number of servers they have. But I can tell you that they aren't a super rich company swimming in pools full of $1,000 bills. In terms of just WoW they aren't making a new game every other month to have that $60+ income to rely on like other game companies. They have one time sales that eventually drop to to the $20 mark like the first two expansions. After that they wouldn't have much of an income. New subscribers buying the game would not bring in enough profit for them to pay all their bills. Programmers, designers, graphics artists etc are some of the highest paying jobs and for good reason. Dozens of company owned/maintained servers running 24/7 with 24/7 human monitoring is a costly thing in itself. I'm sure they have plenty of money but I'm also sure that they have plenty of expenses.

I suppose that they use so much money to make good games.

Hum.. I wonder if its really true that there are only 2 more series that sold for $2 billion. After all pokemon sold a total of some 170 million games, a 12$ average would top 2 billion. And Im pretty sure most pokemon games where sold for much more then that for most of the time.

P0T... More like $165,000,000+ each month... 11,000,000 people paying $15 a month... Plus there is Guitar Hero... which is making them boatloads and costing them nothing... Every few months they just add a few new songs, slap the name of a band on the box and sell the same game again for the same price... so all the idiots of the world pay $60 over and over for the same game... plus another $100 or whatever for the Guitar that cost Activision $8.30 to make...

WoW is a game that deserves to take in that revenue. Though what is their sales contribution from this revenue? That is the main figure to look at. Guitar Hero is not a game which deserves to take in that revenue. The real Guitar Hero is Rock Band anyway since Harmonix created Guitar Hero and are the true innovative developers. Guitar Hero 5 or Rock Band 3? Make your choice! I don't care either way.

wow, so pretty much they are making a 100 million every month from WoW

there is a financial crisis. Just that some companies do better than the most, M$ is surviving because...it has a monopoly on computer operating systems. Actiblizzvision is surviving becuase it has a monopoly on good games...

@ NyGin07 hahahha wow that was fantastic good job :)

It almost what EA lost Blizzard got.

Cool now they'll get to be like EA

What about Activision Hero? Tap the colored buttons to crap out random Guitar Hero games!

Milkhero coming out in 2010.

Guitar hero is good but I do like rock band better

yeah, check the stock price when SC2 ships. The koreans still play SC like religious fanatics. With wow constantly printing money for blizzard, they'll recieve 2 more HUGE influxes of cash that will be SC2 and Diablo 3... damn I wish I worked for blizzard.

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Ugh, only one of the franchises that have passed the $2 billion mark is deserving of that amount of money, and that's Super Mario Bros. Mario has done more for gaming than either Guitar Hero or Madden will ever do.

@ Paul_GameFury The entertainment industry is often slow to get hit by economic strain, particularly video games. The reason being that people in financial crisis want more than ever to find moments of escape from reality.

Unsurprisingly, the moral of the story for EA is: buying up or paying to disrupt the competition is not a smart business move. Madden better make 20 quadrillion dollars by the time that contract with the NFL runs out.

goes to show that if ur a good developer u can expect great revenue even in the midst of an economic crysis. as for the guitar hero milking, it's only gonna get worse. They should just stop releasing new games and offer cheaper addon packs since the new games are almost nothing more than new songs and a few new gimmicks that dont change much anyway

The amount of profit is disgustingly obscene, that's almost 1 billion dollars in just Q1... I really do not want to see Act Blizz's annual numbers.

eh i buy the call of duties but when i get my fill of the single player i sell em'. the online really feels like, waste, to me.

breaking news: activision announces whistle hero lead devolpers had to say this about the situtaion: "its really awesome man. we really wanted to recreate the feeling of being on stage or at a county fair playing a whistle. were gonna have all the greatest whistle songs and only a few covers. the plastic whistle will be perfectly modeled after a plastic whistle and will cost 99 dollars." other instruments include a pair of limited edition plastic index and middle fingers which will cost 250 dollars. whistle hero is set for a dec. 09 release and bagpipe hero and whistle hero 2 will be released shortly after.

"Paul_GameFury Posted May 7, 2009 8:44 pm ET I've put hundreds of hours into WoW and pay $15 a month." Um... I'd say the problem there would be playing WoW for HUNDREDS of HOURs... not the fee. Remember, for 60 bucks, you get a totally new game that doesn't become a repetative drama factory. Oh, and before you tell me how exciting the raids are, etc... when you're doing that... look down at your keybaord. Realize that you're just tapping the same two or three buttons OVER and OVER, producing the same effect... for virtual loot. True, every game is like that to some degree, but MMOs sort of make it an art... a daaaarrrrkk aaaarrrtttt. ;)

P.T. Barnum was right.

Talk about milking the Guitar Hero franchise!