- More bad results from Sega Sammy. Q1 08 figures just released showed a nett loss of $105 million. They really are a prime, juicy, take over target for all that heritage IP they own.
- Midway have management cleanout. Chicago studio boss Mike Bilder, marketing vice president Mona Hamilton, and media relations VP Reilly Brennan are all gone. It is about time something was done to sort out the abysmal underperformance of this publisher.
- Yet another MMO fails. Auran will shut down its servers and website for MMO Fury within 48 hours due to the studio’s inability to “find a viable business model.” These things are licenses to print money when they work. But that is a lot more difficult to achieve than people think.
- Xbox 360 games with extra downloadable content have a 16 per cent increase in their life span. That is a lot of extra publisher revenue and begs the question: “What reason can there be for not doing DLC?”
- Konami profits up 165.6Â % year over year in its Q1 results. Precisely what you would expect of a well run publisher in the current boom. It is a pity that so many publishers are still not well run.
- Wii Fit continues to dominate UK charts. Yet there are still people in denial about the seismic shift in the game industry from niche to mass market.
- Microsoft to put more money into developer relations and content deals in Europe. This makes a lot of sense, Microsoft still underperform in Europe compared to the USA. So paying more concern for Eurocentric content is bound to help.
- Travellers Tales to diversify into TV shows. Excellent news. If you have creativity and IP, why not capitalise on it across all available media, even technically limited ones like television?