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Majesco to focus on Nintendo platforms

By Emma Boyes, GameSpot UKPosted Mar 20, 2007 6:08 am PT

Latest company financials show losses are down after a shift away from premium titles and towards budget games.

Publisher Majesco Entertainment's sales were down $7.1 million from the same period last year, at $14.5 million for the first quarter of 2007 compared to $21.6 million in Q1 2006.

However, the company's losses are also down significantly on last year, with the operating loss reduced to $182,000 for the first quarter of 2007, compared to a loss of $2.1 million in last year's first quarter.

Majesco had previously stated that it would be moving away from big-budget games and towards cheaper, more mass-market titles, and in a statement released today, it confirmed that it would be continuing with this focus.

In Q1 2007, 99 percent of revenue came from mass-market games, and 1 percent came from premium games, whereas in Q1 2006, mass-market games made up only 18 percent of sales, with premium games contributing the remaining 82 percent.

Majesco's interim chief executive officer, Jesse Sutton, commented that the company would from now on be working mainly on Nintendo's platforms. He said, "Looking forward, we remain optimistic about the successes of both the Nintendo DS and Wii systems as their installed bases continue to grow, and we will focus the majority of our game development efforts on these platforms."

Games on the company's slate for a 2007 release include Cooking Mama: Cook Off, Cake Mania, Toondoku, Bust-A-Move Bash!, The New York Times Crosswords, Nancy Drew: Deadly Secret of Olde World Park, and Holly Hobbie and Friends.

79 Comments

  • Hillsy_

    Posted Mar 23, 2007 8:09 am PT

    Agreed, Age of Empires 2 DS is a great game! I can't stop playing it at the moment, very addictive! I am glad they are focusing on the NintendoDS. I just hope they give us a sequel to Age of Empires. There proudest moment for me. On a more separate note, I don't really care for the titles above, Cooking Mama & Bust-a-Move might be interesting though.

  • TTDog

    Posted Mar 22, 2007 4:09 am PT

    I can't see any Sony or Microsoft fan giving a toss for any of these games, if they want to produce this sort of software then its probably better off being Nintendo only.

  • XAF1

    Posted Mar 22, 2007 12:21 am PT

    Okay, The only thing I can say is these titles have to be a joke. Does Majesco really expect to make much money off of titles like the above? Let's be honest, and I own a Wii. Zelda and Wii Sports are the only games I enjoy so far on my Nintendo Wii. I think the Wii has a great deal of potential but if Nintendo is the only one putting out quality software so far we will have a long wait. The Wii is selling well because it's cheap and fun in doses, but it has to have other really good games outside of Nintendo. I'm sure better games are coming but bargain games this early could be a bad thing. I keep hearing about all of these boring games that make me think of a certain period in the Gamecube's life. The Nintendo Wii is selling like crazy so hopefully Majesco as well as a number of other developers have some suprise announcements coming up soon.

  • bc1391

    Posted Mar 21, 2007 8:52 pm PT

    Give me a Phantom Dust 2 for Wii then!

  • UrbanMessiah

    Posted Mar 21, 2007 5:50 pm PT

    This is interesting news...Could possibly be awesome news for Wii owners if Majesco puts out certain games for it. The minute they announce Psychonauts 2 and Phantom Dust 2 for the Wii? I'm totally on board! -=x

  • theKSMM

    Posted Mar 21, 2007 5:32 pm PT

    I think this is one of the great things about the segmenting of the market. The previous gen had three consoles all competing at the same level. The incentive was to develop for the most popular of these (the PS2).

    Now we have a situation where a struggling developer doesn't just have to liquidate or go up for sale. Rather than pushing in all its chips trying to compete at the top tier (PS3 / 360 / PC), they can drop down on the development scale and work on consoles that are less costly to develop games for (Wii / PS2). Then they can try to work their way back up to making AAA titles.

    Given the huge installed base of PS2s and the rapidly growing Wii base, this strategy could just work. Previously, it was consoles down to mobile / GBA and then out the door.

  • monkkito

    Posted Mar 21, 2007 3:03 pm PT

    Does that mean we get Psychonauts II on the Wii?

  • R3DN1N3

    Posted Mar 21, 2007 8:45 am PT

    Looks like Kharma came back and paid back Sony 10-fold for having stolen Nintendo's 3rd party support back when they barely launched the original Playstation back in the mid 90's. Man it hasn't even been a year and I'm already astounded as to how much ground Nintendo took back from Sony after a 2 generation drought. Murder them Nintendo!

  • Rev06

    Posted Mar 21, 2007 5:51 am PT

    I just really want to see games that will take me a long time to play all the way through, like Jak II did, or even Kingdom Hearts for that matter.

  • double_decker

    Posted Mar 21, 2007 3:34 am PT

    Smart move, have to do what you can to keep the business going and make the most money. No sense sticking with something that isn't paying the overhead.

  • LeeTheAgent

    Posted Mar 21, 2007 12:52 am PT

    I want Psychonauts for the Wii... even though I don't even have a Wii yet... (c'mon! hurry up and make more!!!)

  • kavadias1981

    Posted Mar 21, 2007 12:41 am PT

    This is going to be the situation for many developers. The smaller companies cannot afford to move onto the next-gen so will have to stay with the PS2 and the Wii. It is a sensible move really as these 2 consoles are here to stay.

  • TryMe01

    Posted Mar 20, 2007 11:02 pm PT

    Majesco is now realising where the real money is being made, portable gaming... yeah right (but the lower development costs does help a lot)

  • robfield

    Posted Mar 20, 2007 8:03 pm PT

    What big budget games did majesco make anyways?

  • matrixman2k

    Posted Mar 20, 2007 7:44 pm PT

    ah... they seem to share nintendos vision at long last...

  • Denjin_hadouken

    Posted Mar 20, 2007 7:34 pm PT

    Sweet.

  • interpolred

    Posted Mar 20, 2007 4:44 pm PT

    I hope they produce a lot of good games. I want to see how Bust a Move turns out.

  • DS_fan_atic

    Posted Mar 20, 2007 4:41 pm PT

    well as long as their fun!

  • Kurtisadei

    Posted Mar 20, 2007 4:23 pm PT

    nintendo hogging up all the companies again >.>

  • lzorro

    Posted Mar 20, 2007 3:54 pm PT

    Did they make that unemployed Ninja game?

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