A grand ‘vision

This year has been a record breaker in terms of revenues – what do you feel were the key drivers for this success?

Our performance was driven by strong market conditions as well as the continued success of our franchise portfolio.

You need great products to be successful and we have had two major hits with the Guitar Hero and Call Of Duty franchises. Guitar Hero has established a new gaming genre and has truly been embraced by mainstream audiences globally.

In Europe, this fiscal year we hope to build on the success of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock to make the Guitar Hero franchise the cultural phenomenon it has been in North America.

Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare performed incredibly well in Europe, receiving critical acclaim across the board and continues to sell well week on week.

In addition I’m also proud of our European operations, sales and marketing teams. We improved our retail execution considerably, implemented product lifecycle management campaigns to proactively manage products beyond launch, conducted research to better match consumer needs and drove demand through improved mass market trial, online and PR activities. We also improved our supply chain significantly to ensure cost savings and increased our localisation level in Europe.

Are you confident you can keep up this momentum, and how do you plan to build on this success?

We’re very confident we can build on this momentum. In fiscal 09, we will release the largest lineup in Activision’s history, which will be anchored by our strongest brands.

In Europe, we plan to significantly increase the Guitar Hero business verses last year with a combination of hardware innovation and exceptional marketing execution particularly for the Nintendo DS Guitar Hero: On Tour and multi-format Guitar Hero: Aerosmith launches. We have many more European song tracks planned, which will be much more relevant to our audience and help drive increased sales.

We also have a great movie licensed slate with Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar 2: The Crate Escape, Monsters vs. Aliens and our James Bond title, which we’re incredibly excited about.

All in all, with a strong game line-up, improved execution and a talented and highly motivated team in Europe, we are confident that we’ll be able to deliver the 17th consecutive year of growth at Activision.