Rock Band hits 18 million downloads and other interesting financial stats

Today brought earnings from Viacom (owner of MTV, owner of Harmonix), Electronic Arts,  Sony, and United Business Media (owner of the Game Developers Conference). If you're interested in all the fun details, just click on those names and you can read Variety's entire story (except for UBM, which we don't cover).

But I thought it would be worthwhile to note a few interesting little details from those earnings for Cut Scene readers:

-Viacom says "Rock Band" has now sold 18 million track downloads. That's up from 15 million as of June 30, which means it has sold 3 million in the past month alone.

-Sony's videogame unit is finally in the black with PS3 sales and PSP sales growing and costs for PS3 production falling. Most impressive, however, was PS3 software sales. During the quarter Sony sold 22.3 million game copies, up from just 4.2 million in the same quarter last year.

-There was no mention of "Boom Blox" sales in Electronic Arts' earnings announcement. Though it touted 1.6 million units of "Battlefield: Bad Company" sold and said "UEFA Euro 2008" had a strong launch, EA didn't say anything about "Boom Blox" sales or even tout its good reviews. In a recent interview with John Riccitiello, he said that the game performed as expected and should sell solidly well into the holidays, but it doesn't seem like a strong vote of confidence to not even mention the game when touting achievements during the quarter. (See update below for more info)

-United Business Media, the conglomerate that owns and operates the Game Developers Conference, said GDC revenue was up 16% this year, which certainly fits with the packed feeling at the show and the general sense I and others have that that it's on the rise while E3 is on the decline.

Update: According to GameDaily, I missed in EA's conference call where they said "Boom Blox" has sold 450,000 units so far, which is a perfectly respectable first couple of months for a Wii-exclusive original game. So ignore my somewhat dire analysis above.