It's been a good year for the gaming industry and the holidays were particularly good for game publisher Activision, which just released some record-breaking financial results driven by strong sales of popular video games like Guitar Hero 3 and Call of Duty 4. Net revenues for the third quarter were a record $1.48 billion, an 80% increase, as compared to $824.3 million reported for the same quarter last fiscal year.
Not only fiscal 2008 has been its best year ever so far, but the Santa Monica-based game company managed to snag 17.7% of the US market for games played on consoles in 2007, besting EA's 15.2% share - though EA remained the largest game publisher in terms of worldwide sales.
The company also took the chance to confirm it will continue growing its Call of Duty and Guitar Hero franchises throughout fiscal 2009 and that it expects to complete its $18-billion marriage with Vivendi's game unit - Blizzard's parent company responsible for the massively popular World of Warcraft - by the end of June.