Viacom has announced that it plans to sell Harmonix, developer of the Rock Band series and Dance Central. The mega-corp has reclassified the Boston-based company as a "discontinued operation" in its third-quarter financial and has already changed all future earnings to reflect the sale. The company recorded a $299 million loss in discontinued operations to reflect the change.

We followed up with Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter to help explain the "discontinued operations" situation. The analyst told Joystiq, "I am sure that the purchase price of $175 million is in there -- it would have been carried on Viacom's balance sheet as goodwill. The rest could be other operations (non-gaming), some portion of the earn out that they paid a couple of years ago, which should have been expensed, but you never know, or some portion of the development costs for games not yet released."

[Thanks, Andrew B.]