About this time last year, Electronic Arts' (ultimately unsuccessful) bid for Take-Two was splashed all over our news headlines, and we here at SVGL had fun imagining a melodramatic soap opera conflict going on behind the scenes -- even though EA boss Riccitiello told me that the entire head-to-head was less dramatic than most people think.
Still, drama is fun. And this year, one of the current major news items is the tangled, ugly fall of oldschool scion Midway, whose goose is all but cooked these days.
You guys know Gamasutra has former Edge writer Kris Graft on staff now, right? That means that we get cool stuff like this -- Graft's in-depth analysis of the company's complicated course toward millions of dollars in the red. If you're bored reading things about delistings, bondholders, buybacks and burdens, I highly recommend you check out his work here. This is a real soap opera, no imagination required!
3 comments:
As I got towards the bottom...nothing is more "here-is-some-realization-for-you" than:
"Management hopes to sell its assets, including its crown jewel Mortal Kombat, for a total of at least $30 million."
Fatality...=/
~sLs~
Midway does not ensure quality somehow, when it does it fails to market it-Case Point Wheelman- good concepts, weak exections, Psi Ops/Suffering-Good Games weaking marketing...
You know, I read things like this - how companies lose millions, and generally execs jump out with their golden parachutes, etc, and my eye actually begins to twitch as, while I'm reading that, I'm waiting for the unemployment website to load up. Much anger at corporate America, which in turn leads to less likely hood of them hiring me back into it :p
But, yes, Midway had some good ideas and more or less shat on them. The ones that turned out well were, as Neelesh says, undermarketed, yet the ones that turned out poorly were overhyped.
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