Viacom Spins Up Beatles Rock Band Sales
Fewer instruments sold means bigger margins
How video game business works: The Beatles Rock Band with 1.7 million worldwide sales since September 9th 2009, has not set the world alight. However, Viacom is apparently making more margin on it than the better selling Rock Band 2.
This, according to the LA Times is how it works: first it quotes Scott Guthrie - the executive vice president of Viacom's MTV Games unit - who "was pleased with the holiday sales , though he noted that some European markets performed below the company's expectations."
Then it explains why Tom is happy, "He said that while overall sales were down, profit margins on the Beatles game could be higher than for Rock Band 2 because fewer people bought instrument controllers, on which Viacom was losing money, and more bought the game by itself. Guthrie also noted that players purchased more than 1 million Beatles song downloads to play in the game."
And that's how selling a huge-cost license to a video game franchise works.
This, according to the LA Times is how it works: first it quotes Scott Guthrie - the executive vice president of Viacom's MTV Games unit - who "was pleased with the holiday sales , though he noted that some European markets performed below the company's expectations."
Then it explains why Tom is happy, "He said that while overall sales were down, profit margins on the Beatles game could be higher than for Rock Band 2 because fewer people bought instrument controllers, on which Viacom was losing money, and more bought the game by itself. Guthrie also noted that players purchased more than 1 million Beatles song downloads to play in the game."
And that's how selling a huge-cost license to a video game franchise works.
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