The selling off of the Mortal Kombat franchise to raise capital while ”tragic” says analyst Michael Pachter, it’s something they must do if necessary.
Midway’s Geoff Mogilner has said ”we’re not going out of our way to sell Mortal Kombat,” that management want to keep as much together as possible. MK vs. DC has sold 1.8m copies.
”I think it is tragic, and reminiscent of Atari’s sale of the Driver franchise. They are in a cash crunch, and have to do whatever necessary to survive,” says Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter to Edge Online. ”They are in a cash crunch, and have to do whatever necessary to survive.”
The publisher isn’t so quick to sell off assets though according to a senior executive. ”We’re not going out of our way to sell Mortal Kombat,” commented Geoff Mogilner from Midway, hinting they might try to hold onto the properties instead of let buyers pick over the remains piece by piece.
As of late January the latest instalment in the Mortal Kombat franchise has sold over 1.8 million copies proving there’s still a market. Recently it was found that Midway were hording cash previously promised to ex-staffers as vacation pay. ”…it’s not executives padding their wallets. It’s a standard employee incentive plan,” defended Mogilner.
”What it does is give incentives to key employees–not executives–across all disciplines, finance, legal, marketing, not just product development.”
”It’s designed to incentive-ize these employees whose workloads have greatly increased because of this bankruptcy,” explained the Midway executive.
”These guys are working their butts off, working nights, weekends, because of all the paperwork that goes into bankruptcy. A lot of these guys don’t benefit from game royalties.”
Do you hope Midway has a miracle up its sleeve, or is it time to let go?
