Former Vivendi SA chief Jean-Marie Messier may have made a hash of the French entertainment giant in hoovering up every company in sight during his time at the company, but he did do one thing right: buy Blizzard Entertainment.
Qui est-ce, you say? Blizzard makes the enormously popular "World of Warcraft," the "massively multiplayer online" game that lets participants — OK, residents — of the virtual world take on a character, don an avatar and have at it. Vivendi, then known as Cie. Générale des Eaux, got Blizzard in acquiring French publisher Havas in 1998 for $6.5 billion. Since then, as the anchor to Vivendi's video game business, "Warcraft" has become a cash cow for the company. The unit last week reported second-quarter sales of nearly $287 million, up 29% from the same period last year, with the company attributing much of the growth to "continued momentum of 'World of Warcraft' in all markets."
As shrewd (or lucky) the Havas deal was, it looks that much smarter (or luckier) after Walt Disney Co. yesterday bought Club Penguin for up to $700 million. That deal underscores the soaring value of so-called virtual world companies, an emerging segment in online entertainment. By that measure, Vivendi has quite a lucrative asset on its hands in "Warcraft," by far the most popular MMO game with an estimated 8.5 million subscribers, according to GigaOm, compared with Club Penguin's 700,000 dues-paying kiddies. —Alain Sherter
See July 25 press release from Vivendi
See Aug. 1 story from TheDeal.com
See post from GigaOm
Tags: virtual+worlds, club+penguin, second+life, warcraft
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