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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
I want Psychonauts for the Wii... :( even though I don't even have a Wii yet... (c'mon! hurry up and make more!!!)
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.
Majesco is now realising where the real money is being made, portable gaming... yeah right (but the lower development costs does help a lot)
Budget games are fine, but not if they plan on mass producing garbage to get income... if they want income, make a good game, even if it's budget, make it interesting, fun, deep, and entertaining all in one.
Cooking Mama could be great on the Wii. But based on what I saw at some convention, it wasn't too deep.
Psychonauts failed to sell because of Majesco. With budget games, poor marketing is expected. If they stick with it, someday they will make it back to the big leagues and hopefully won't screw up again.
there horrible they need to be there because they can't handle the real comp from the big boys, they better stick to making kiddy games for the wii or something.
While Majesco isn't a power house developer, they do make fun quirky games that I do enjoy. Not every game has to be a huge title, and for my silly lil' cheap games I might buy Majesco games. I liked Cooking Mama but I thought it needed more, so I'm hoping the Wii version delivers. And once again for Nintendo, good news. Majesco may not sell systems, but they will give the Wii a better more diverse line-up.
That's good I guess the Wii needs more games. Hopefully "budget" doesn't mean they will be lacking in quality. Just because a game is a "budget" title doesn't mean it can be a amazing game.
I'm just happy Makesco is managing to make money. And Advent Rising is incredibly under-rated. I would love if they are using some of the money to finish the trilogy.
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. Wow that is a major turn... im not so sure if the wii needs that amount of casual games we also like premium games
A lot of Majesco's games have done well in the past, so fanboys need to stop the bashing. But I hope Majesco manage to get more of Sammy's Guilty Gear games published for the Wii.
Majesco brought Age Of Empires 2 to the DS and the game turned out great, so please stop bashing on low cost titles. It just proves that even with a tight budget you can do great things if you just use your head.
Cool that Nintendo is getting more Devs, but wow those games sound like a true gamer's nightmare!! Nancy Drew? Come on!! Crossword puzzles? If I wanted to do crossword puzzles I would look in the newspaper!!
crap crap and more crap. We want games to look forward to not games that will suck and be shunned before they even come out.
Another developer for Nintendo. Its great that the Wii and the DS are attracting more developers.
Tassadar49: Indeed. :P Truthfully, I had trouble thinking of a PS3 game (aside from MGS) that I could mention. I didn't just want to mention 360 games though, so I kind of guessed at the name of "Heavenly Sword." I was close though. haha Meimnobody: Oh please, don't blame Psychonauts. If anything, blame Advent Rising. They spent millions upon millions advertising Advent Rising as the first part of an epic trilogy, and it stunk. Freaking killed em. Poor sales of Psychonauts due to a non-existent advertising campaign (everything went to AR), wierd premise, and so on definitely stung as well... but that game's failure wasn't the predominant cause of Majesco's demise. Oh, and Advent Rising was also a pseudo-exclusive of the Xbox. The game only came out on the Xbox and the PC, while the lesser burn known as Psychonauts came out on the Xbox, PC, and PS2. The more dedicated title hurt them a much more than the multi-platform. By the way, I don't think all Xbox and Gamecube (and PS2) games look horrible. Red Steel was just nasty and unpleasant. It had no style. Fable, Jade Empire, God of War, Metroid Prime, Ratchet and Clank, and etc all look way better than Red Steel. Red Steel just didn't have a good gimmick. It went for a gritty, real look on a system that isn't really built to do that properly.
Cooking Mama: Cook Off, This sounds ausome. Then after I'm done playing it with someone we'll do a real cook off and destroy our kitchen.
Only Bust-A-Move looks interesting out of those. They were also involved with MechAssualt on DS. As the advanced graphics in such games show, DS has MUCH better 3D strength than most developers are willing to admit.
It appears that Majesco wants to play it on the safe side by focusing on the two systems with a lot of momentum right now. I'm ok with that. The DS and Wii are two good fits for what Majesco is trying to do, and they should be fine, as long as quality titles are being made. They don't have to be superb games to be successful, but just be appealing enough to make consumers look at them.
who's saying that Majesco is not making something radical and new for the Wii?just because they don't spend 9million or whatever bucks to make a game?, please some of you are a tad ignorant,give them a chance. some of you judge like you know everything in the industry of video games lol,lets wait and see what can Majesco do with their limited budget we might be in for a surprise
"providing horrible graphics (think Red Steel)" You must think every xbox and gamecube game has horrible graphics then. Multiplatform isn't something majesco wants that burned them as did so called realistic games. Pyschonauts burned them badly. Cake Mania looks like it will have a lot of sales on the DS getting that nongamer demographic cash. Also Majesco is porting a lot of the Japanese DS and Wii titles. So be thankfull for that.
Nancy Drew! OMG Wii is going to PWN next gen!. sony is doomed, riiiidge racerr massive damage
So I guess Majesco is'nt going to focus much on realistic games? Bad decision on their part,multiplatform is the way to make money these days.......
Lazyimperial is right... they are going to make bad playing wii games with bad gamecube graphics and not push the system at all.
Only focusing on the Nintendo consoles won't bring profits...multi-platform is the way to go :shock:
"...we remain optimistic about the successes of both the Nintendo DS and Wii systems as their installed bases continue to grow..."
lazyimperial, i was a little surprised that you were so quick to poke fun when you didnt even get the titles of games right in your comment. Then i noticed your name...
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