Acclaim Closes Arcade Division

Acclaim Entertainment announced Friday that it is closing the doors on its Acclaim Coin-Operated Entertainment division, located in Mountain View, Calif. The company says that it is shifting the development resources to Acclaim Studios closer to the company's New York City headquarters. Key employees of the group will move to developing home entertainment products at Acclaim Studios.

Acclaim's coin-op games included Batman Forever, NBA Jam Extreme, and Magic: The Gathering Armageddon (which is under consideration for translation to the home market).

"Our decision to close Acclaim Coin-Op reinforces our ongoing plan to streamline our business and focus on our core competencies of developing, publishing, and marketing software for the home entertainment market," Gregory Fischbach, Acclaim's cochairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement. "Expanding our studios' head count without impacting our cost structure allows us to create additional development teams, which we expect will increase our output of product."