Disney: Club Penguin Growth Solid, Not Overwhelming

When Disney acquired Club Penguin for $350 million last summer, it stood out as one of the largest moves in virtual worlds. With another $350 million on the line, observers were interested in the growth potential. In an interview with PaidContent last week, though, Disney CFO Tom Staggs remarked that "Club Penguin actually is doing quite well for us," though for growth "we’re not overwhelmed but we’re pleased." 

Staggs did note postively that Club Penguin launched its first non-English-language version in Brazil recently, calling it a positive sign for the work that the company is doing in all its virtual worlds.

He also touched on the recently launched toy line to comment that "It’s not launched broadly yet, so this is anecdotal, but it’s really a fairly hot property right now where we’ve launched it so we’re looking to see if we can roll it out more broadly."

In Disney's Q4 earnings call, nothing was said in particular about its virtual worlds portfolio, but Staggs did discuss investment in R&D for video games overall: "We incurred roughly $170 million in videogame development costs in 2008 and we currently expect to increase our videogame investment by $75 million to $100 million in 2009."

Earlier this year, Disney announced that that it would invest up to $100 million in developing new virtual worlds over the course of several years, so this may be a part of the same plan.