Activision Blizzard has come under criticism WoTLK Gold in the last few months, mostly because of how it has handled Infinity Ward and the World of Warcraft franchise. But, critics haven't been able to challenge the financial performance of the publisher. In the last this week Activision Blizzard announced that it was able to surpass first-quarter expectations, increasing profits by a whopping $381 million while bringing in profits up 33 % up to $1.3 billion.

Modern Warfare 2 has been providing Activision more than simply an extra hand.

The company today Activision Blizzard parent company Vivendi SA announced its earnings for the January-March timeframe as well as the publisher of games was the fastest-growing sector of the French media conglomerate's operations. Net revenue across the entire company for the year was EUR6.924 billion ($8.8 billion) an increase of six percent increase over a previous year. Profits saw higher increases, climbing 14.1 percentage in the period to EUR1.6 billion ($2.04 billion).

The performance of the game publisher helped in slowing down the declines of the Vivendi's Universal Music Group. The group's revenue dropped 12.6 per cent up to EUR889 millions ($1.13 billion) over the course of the three-month period and profit dipped 38.2 per cent up to EUR68 millions ($86.6 millions). Vivendi blamed the drop on lower demand for physical music and smaller international and local releases.

While the current Infinity Ward debacle remains a dark cloud over World of Warcraft, the company's results for the first quarter offered no hint of any future uncertainties. After raising their earnings and revenues forecast during April Activision Blizzard today said that its results for the January-March buy WoTLK Classic Gold quarter beat even those forecasts that were revised.