Majesco Sees Heavy Financial Losses

[*NormalGamer*]

360.advancedmn.com/article.php?artid=6663&pg=1&comments=full#comments

Majesco Sees Heavy Financial Losses

January 20, 2006

by: Eric Topf

And it cancels most of its titles in development, including Demonik and Taxi Driver.

Majesco Entertainment has had the unfortunate business to report that 2005 has probably been one of its worst years in its history. A year which saw the loss of their CEO and the unfortunately sluggish sales of Psychonauts and Advent Rising has dealt the company a blow with a $70.9 million dollar net loss, which has resulted in the cancellation of almost all of their games in development. The company was also forced to cut their staff by 20 percent to try and reduce spending.

Majesco late last year had already cancelled two PSP titles BloodRayne and Advent Shadow and has recently sold the rights to Ghost Rider and The Darkness to an unnamed publisher. This most recent news now has doomed two of their more high profile games. Taxi Driver, a game based on the classic Martin Scorsese movie, and Demonik a game inspired by the writings of Clive Barker. It is unlikely that either of these games will see the light of day, given that there was no mention of either IP being sold to another publisher.

James Sutton, the President of Majesco gave a sobering outlook for his company's future. "This has been a difficult year for Majesco. We entered the premium console market with high expectation for success, but as a result of a variety of factors we were not able to meet our expectations. Recently, we evaluated our product portfolio and have sold or cancelled most of our premium console titles that were scheduled for release in 2006 and beyond. The increased operating loss we reported today is largely a result of the non-cash charges that we recognized in the fourth quarter relating to these events."

Despite all of the bad news, Sutton remained hopeful that the company would get passed all of the current hardship and regain its status. "We have been in business for almost twenty years and have endured many cycles in this business. With a leaner organization, significantly reduced expenses and a new strategy of focusing on lower- investment, value and handheld products, we believe we have a plan that will enable us to enable us to operate our core business and give us greater flexibility to be opportunistic with regard to new products and technologies."

Advanced Media will continue to watch the Majesco situation and report on any new developments the moment the information becomes available.

source: Majesco Entertainment - Press Release
---------------
NG: Man, this is terrible. I really don't want to see another third-party developer go bankrupt. I really don't.

[Pilgrim John]

As long as it isn't a company I care about.
Acclaim went bankrupt, and the world is better off without them. The only real good that came out of Majesco is Psychonauts; everything else they've made is crap (Advent Rising, I'm looking at you). They even went so far as to pervert the revered classic Earthworm Jim by butchering it, putting it on GBA, and inserting a poop boss. If they go bankrupt, I wouldn't care.
Now if someone like Konami or Square Enix were going bankrupt, it's time to worry.

[Jason-RN]

Majesco was one of the few companies that was really pushing new IPs. Psychonauts is a perfect example of this. But it looks like Majesco was relying a little too much on their new franchises... At least the company isn't completely dead.

[*NormalGamer*]

zer0 said:

As long as it isn't a company I care about.
Acclaim went bankrupt, and the world is better off without them. The only real good that came out of Majesco is Psychonauts; everything else they've made is crap (Advent Rising, I'm looking at you). They even went so far as to pervert the revered classic Earthworm Jim by butchering it, putting it on GBA, and inserting a poop boss. If they go bankrupt, I wouldn't care.
Now if someone like Konami or Square Enix were going bankrupt, it's time to worry.

@ *referring to bold*

I would(even if they aren't perfect like Konami or Square-Enix). They just need to have the balance in developing their games(both traditionally and originally) rather than focusing on one way of developing their games all the time. I hope that Majesco carefully rethinks their plans for their future for next-gen. Otherwise, they'll meet the same fate as Acclaim.