Rock Band Sells Less, Viacom Revenue Down

Viacom is reporting that the first quarter of the financial year and the overall revenue for the Media Networks division, the parent of MTV Games and Harmonix, has fallen to 1.97 billion, which represents an 8% reduction over the same period of last year.

The company clearly pointed the finger to limited sales of Rock Band as one of the reasons, citing the “soft retail environment” as the main cause.  

In the period between February and June 2009, revenue from the franchise went down by about 67%, according to an analysis made by Gamasutra. The main reason is that the boxed sales, which include instruments and have a higher profit margin, declined, while the sales of downloadable song packs have not grown enough to supplement that loss. Apparently, more than 50 million songs for the various Rock Band products have been sold via digital distribution or as part of track disks.  

Sumner Redstone, who is the executive chairman of Viacom and at one point was the dominant shareholder at Midway, stated that “As the leading pure-play content company, Viacom has the right portfolio of assets and the right vision to manage through this challenging climate while we continue to position ourselves for future growth.”

Still, MTV Games and Harmonix are preparing to release The Beatles Rock Band, which is slated for September 9 and will likely attract a lot of gamers with its tracklist of songs from the biggest band on Earth. The profit margin on the game, which comes with instruments, will also be higher.  

Meanwhile, Activision is planning to counter the release of The Beatles: Rock Band by offering Guitar Hero 5 this fall and backing it up with spinoffs like DJ Hero and Band Hero on the Nintendo DS.