Midway’s been around the industry for years, has decided to lay off up to 90 people and cut the Criminal project from their lineup. This is a long term plan of cost reduction by the board of directors to get down costs and keep the company running smoothly.
Their plan seems to be to develop games intelligently, by costing out each project and building what’s needed to make the company profitable without excessive cost. A company always runs best when it’s doing it wisely and looking to reduce overhead, unfortunately a company in a bit of trouble has to let go of employees to get their.
While this was a very difficult decision, we feel it was the right thing to do for the future of Midway,” said Matt Booty, interim CEO and president of Midway Games Inc.. “We view every game as an investment that must meet certain standards for quality, scheduling, and profitability. Midway remains committed to producing the highest quality entertainment, as evidenced by our strong holiday line-up which includes TNA iMPACT!, Blitz: The League II, and Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe starring a team of MK characters and some of the most recognizable DC Comics personalities such as Batman, The Joker, and Superman.” (kotaku)
Hopefully this allows them some breathing room to get out of this sticky situation, we hate to see old names go down in history as failed.
Welcome back guys, another good show.
I’m sorry I can never manage to send hate mail for Paul cause I’m just too busy sending it to Jonah. Just kidding, this is more “nerd rage mail”, because of the topic of Final Fantasy from previous episode.
Saying your not into FF because you’ve only played 10 and up is like saying you don’t like Star Wars because you’ve only seen the pre-quels. I’m sorry but as far as I am concerned you’ve only played the BAD Final Fantasy games. The Golden era of FF was parts 4, 5, & 6; 6 being my personal favorite. It had the best story, art, music of the entire series.
The thing about Final Fantasy was the first one was supposed to be the last and only but it had done so well they decided to continue, so the only thing final about them was that you only saw one world per game, you never went back so there wasn’t truly a sequel in the sense of a continuing world.
That changed after FF10,now even FF4 and 7 have sequels. FF6 was the last to have that 2d style art that I still love, ff7 had a real mix bag of art from beautiful backgrounds to horrendous 3d models. FF8 just had a terribly convoluted story and it felt too modern, FF9 I think was the last one that I really enjoyed but still missed and preferred the 2D art style over the still awkward 3D models. FF10 had unrelatable characters, it looked pretty but felt so shallow.
FF11 was the first MMO which I never played, FF12 was too easy to cheese with grinding out the chessboard skills. Just about everything is wrong with FF13, I know the bird in the dudes hair was wierd, but they did it in Suikoden V as well, maybe it’s a cultural thing. I couldn’t stand the dude with the beanie who constantly had a lock of hair in his face.
What was really obnoxious was the star rating they would give after each battle, after the first few I realized they were going to be doing this the whole damn game, I couldn’t go on after that. The game just insulted my intelligence way too much. It was a great run but I think I’ve had my Final Fantasy with that series.
@Kickstarter: It is true you have to be careful with investing but I wouldn’t say 9/10 video game kick starters have failed. You guys keep seeming to forget to mention the ones that have succeded: FTL, Divinty Original Sin, Shadowgate, Shadowrun, Pillar’s of Eternity, Wasteland 2, etc
Here is a link with a long list of them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_crowdfunding_projects
I will concede one has to be careful in choosing products or at least keep in mind that the project may fail and you will get nothing. Kickstarter DOES have on it’s site that there are no guarantees of any products being completed. I like what Hilary said about trying to help these developers out and giving them a chance and I do think Paul is also right that there are those shady individuals that make crowd funding look bad.
@Greg Zeschuk: It’s a shame the title made me think he might work on Baldur’s Gate or something. The idea sounds well meaning but I agree with Jonah I remember just using my imagination to fight strange aliens or playing spys or whatever.