Viacom CEO: Beatles Rock Band Sold Out 25 Percent of Inventory in First Week

It's been a week since The Beatles: Rock Band launched amid a blitz of publicity on September 9. How has the game—which retails between $59 and $250, depending on the system you get—been doing as far as sales?

According to Viacom CEO Philipe Dauman, "The sales have exceeded our internal expectations. We sold about 25 percent of our inventory."

Dauman was speaking at Goldman Sachs' awkwardly named Communacopia XVIII Conference in Lower Manhattan. (How awkward is the name? The New York Post misspelled it in a write-up of its own president's announcement that News Corp. would be charging for content on mobile devices.) Echoing the Beatles: Rock Band's reviews (the New York Times' Seth Schiesel gushed, "In that sense, it may be the most important videogame yet made"), Dauman called it "a work of art."

On the business side, looking ahead to the holiday season, Dauman said, "We think it has legs."

"There's a lot of built-in promotion with the Beatles in addition to the marketing we're putting behind it," Dauman continued, referring to the remastered CDs of the band's back catalog. He also claimed that the limited-edition premium bundle of the game—featuring a Beatles-branded drum kit and mini Höfner bass—is selling out. (Don't worry, they're still selling briskly on eBay.)

The game's success has also helped Best Buy, which cited Rock Band (and its closest competitor, Activision's Guitar Hero) as being "well received" in stores in its somewhat drab earnings call yesterday. (It's not all rosy: according to Tiernan Ray of Barron's, "neither is selling out at locations such as GameStop. The two titles are down 66 percent and 37 percent this year.")

Dauman also took a moment to address this weekend's MTV VMAs. Only half seriously, he took credit for Jay Leno's 18-million-viewer premiere on NBC, which benefited from having the awards-show scene-stealer Kanye West as a guest.

"He hasn't sent me a thank-you note yet," joked Dauman.