Activision rides 'Guitar Hero' gold to massive profits
Who'd have thought a guitar game could help one of the world's biggest video game companies double its earnings?
That's what happened though, as demonstrated by Activision's third-quarter earnings, which it reported Thursday afternoon.
According to the company, which was recently bought by communications giant Vivendi, Activision brought in third-quarter profits of $272.2 million, nearly twice its profits of $142.8 million from the same quarter a year ago.
Why?
Well, it's clear that a huge part of it is massive sales of the company's explosive hit, Guitar Hero III.
Other games, too, most notably, Call of Duty 4, played a role. But it's surely the millions of people out there "strumming" on plastic guitars that really put the oomph in Activision's bottom line during the third quarter.
Daniel Terdiman is a staff writer at CNET News covering games, Net culture, and everything in between. E-mail Daniel. 
