Vivendi Discusses "World of Warcraft" (V, NCTY)

From Vivendi's (ticker: V) Q4 2005 earnings conference call:

Jean-Bernard Levy, Chairman, CEO, Member of Executive Committee

VU Games is a great revival story....

The growth of VU Game in 2005 was spectacular, 35%, essentially derived from the development of the pool of World of Warcraft gamers which is now in excess of 6 million worldwide, more than half of whom are in Asia.....

But not only can we leverage in the games area our breadth of talent, some of it coming from our music business, we can also continue to grow World of Warcraft, which is a really completely new era in online games. I’m happy to tell you that we are now at 6.25 million users all throughout the world, and we have been successful everywhere we launched the game, be it in Korea and China, be it in the United States, or in Europe.

We have, with World of Warcraft, which represents almost 50% of our revenues, a very successful subscription based model, with good visibility. We are focused on sustaining the longest life of the game through investment in new versions and enhancements. At the same time with the studios we acquired, four studios acquired last year, we are going to capitalize on our franchises in order to be a stronger player in the console game, a game which 50 Cent game is already a good example.

Comment: World of Warcraft is licensed by The9 (ticker: NCTY) in China. Full Vivendi conference call transcript here.