Since they were shipped in Q1 on the European continent, then they are revenue that counts for Q1.
I`ll tell you a secret, i won`t be upset if you don`t believe me, but here goes anyway:
Interplay received small change from those games in Europe. They were going to receive more either next month or a couple of months from now, that i`m not sure. They tried to receive an advancement based on the European sales figures and the first quarter and projected sales figures from Vivendi and Avalon, for the american market VU was on the line, for Europe both companies were. But Avalon didn`t have enough sales to give them the advancement, so Herve cooked up a deal, where Avalon gave Iplay a relatively small amount of money, that was used throughout the first quarter, god knows where, in exchange for "future sales" of backcatalogue Interplay console games (Run Like Hell i think, but i`m not sure).
For the rest the creditors of Avalon stoped any advancement, every cash Avalon gets goes to their pockets, that has been happening since the 2nd/3rd quarters of last year, at least.
So he tries VU. The advancement was refused, giving the number of BGDA1 copies Vivendi had given royalties to Interplay but weren`t actually sold, and particularly because of the Lionheart debacle. While BGDA did make some money, even if it needed six months for that, Lionheart was a complete bomb. Also others will explain better the VU/Interplay bad blood, with VU hating Herve and telling everyone that on every single ocasion.
So Vivendi saw that Atari had placed Interplay against the wall, because Herve didn`t payed the fees he was obligated to pay, wich made him loose the D&D backcatalogue, and pending any court decision on the contrary, all the rights to BGDA2; so what do VU decides to do? Sit on the BGDA2 money, not giving either an advancement nor ANY sort of post january BGDA2 money to Interplay. So no cash gets in, except for the OEM deal with Avalon.
This way Atari and Vivendi have Herve`s balls on a stick, with him cornered. He tried three things:
-make a fiction tale to present on the Conference you saw, trying to generate hype to find new (suckers) investors through SGCapital;
-when that didn`t "quite" worked, tried to talk to a new VU management into a deal, wich he failed since his dossier is well known at VU;
- in despair got a few developers to talk, just so he could announce something spectacular to try one last time to find some (suckers) investors. This is what the FOOL idea is, but Herve forgot that even Microsoft cancelled already two projects in the last month, and WarHammer Online was put off too, with VU selling it`s stake of Midle Earth MMORPG to Turbine, because of the risk involved these days on the saturated market.
You want to know the reason he still did it anyway? Because he DOESN`T PLAY VIDEOGAMES, nor tries to catch up on things on the main mags and sites, he has others to do that for him, and that didn`t work, he just didn`t knew MMORPGs aren`t the investors honey that once were, and that the FO fans would tear any FO MMORPG in pieces like they did with FOBOS. It would be funny if it wasn`t so pathetic.
Bottom line is: every piece of money he could expect from Vivendi is locked on VUs safes, he doesn`t have real offices (although i heard they have a couple of rooms somewhere for faxes and urgent phone calls), he can`t pay his employees, nor his taxes, nor what he owes to Bioware, Monte Cristo, the untold Atari problem, and many many more creditors.
So he decides to say "everything will be fine and we`re making FOOL, yeah, just believe me" to try one last chance to be bailed out, since France isn`t a possibilityanymore (that`s another story, for another day).
Now instead of saying "that`s bullshit" like the last time, do take some time reading this site, winterwind and RPGCodex, talk to the employees, talk to the gaming press and to people on the industry. I`m sure you`ll find stories like the one i told you, or better, but again if you don`t believe me no hard feelings.
Pun intended?
