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Midway Outlines Asset Sale Plans

Tom Ivan's picture

By Tom Ivan

May 29, 2009

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Midway Games has established the timeline for the expected sale of its assets.

The company said it plans to sell off four development studios, its European and North American publishing arms, the Mortal Kombat franchise, its TNA wrestling license and more to the highest bidders on July 1.

Midway recently announced a “stalking horse” asset purchase agreement, which is expected to receive court approval in a hearing on June 2.

The company will subsequently accept binding offers to acquire some or all of its assets up to June 24. Five days later an auction will be held to determine the bid or combination of bids that achieves the highest value.

Warner Bros. Entertainment recently launched a $33 million bid for a number of Midway Games' US assets, although multiple parties are said to be interested in entering the bidding process.

John_Ryan's picture
On May 30th John_Ryan said:

I really want to see another company handle mortal kombat and turn into a good fighting game. The characters a cool and goofy, but i think the series could do with a re-boot by a good developer.

Indrema's picture
On May 29th Indrema said:

Midway's been console-exclusive for years, & now they're being auctioned off at a fraction of their worth. I bet you can power Dreamhunk Acres for weeks on this news.

I don't understand the UT3 connection. Do you mean UT 2003? Published by Atari - not doing well, or Epic Megagames - doing very well. It seems to support opposing conclusions.

dreamhunk's picture
On May 29th dreamhunk said:

Hey mid way pc gaming made 68 billion in a ression so how them consoles doing in a ression. How is your company doing in a ression. Them high productions costs really nailed you good! How is UT3 these days with epic games.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6210424.html

hey midway check this out, the decline in consoles sales even wiki agrees

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/American_console_sales_continue_to_decline_t...

one more thing there is a good reason japan game devs are not rich as western pc game devs.

mentor07825's picture
On May 29th mentor07825 said:

After I figured out what you were saying, I have answers to your questions.

The company is basically tanking after the previous owner that had the majority of the shares sold his shares, worth a million, to some nobody for about $100,000, possibly less. Many of the creditor's contracts were made with that man, and basically it said that they couldn't request their money back after awhile. After the original major holder left the clause was nulled, thus allowing the creditors to ask for their money back, more money then Midway had in assets, and that's including selling property and equipment.

Not only that, they were relying on their latest Mortal Kombat game to carry them through. Needless to say, it didn't. Midway has publishing contracts with Epic, yes, but so does Steam. By now Impulse has also joined the band-wagon in publishing UT3. This no doubt hurt Midway in a way, minor though. The money used from the game could've easily funded their next project, and it was the time when the original major shareholder was still in office, people thought they were grand at the time.

Wikipedia is an alright source, but it is more usefull for finding out useless or curious information. Anybody from the internet can easily modify the pages without explaining what they are doing. I refer to an example that EA modified wikipedia's page on how workers were being treated several years ago, deleting a whole column about it. There was also the incident where somebody wrote down in wiki that a wrestler died before anyone even found out he was dead. The site is interesting, but you cannot take it face value as facts.

The recession played only a part of Midway's downfall. It ultimately started when the orginal major shareholder sold his shares for less their value. High production values or not, that has nothing to do with their situation.

Console sales wouldn't really affect this either. The game has been out for, what, nearly a year now? I'd say if people wanted the game, they'd have gotten it by now. You most certainly would find it on the second-hand shelf, something which Midway gets no share of, but does contribute (har har).

I also find Gamespot a bastardised site after Jeff Gerstmann was fired.

ArronC07's picture
On May 30th ArronC07 said:

There was also an incident where The Mirror newspaper in the UK used a piece of false information that was on a Wikipedia article (I forget which) in a news story and this was in turn then used as the primary reference source for that false information thus passing Wikipedia's stringent community editorial policy!

dreamhunk's picture
On May 30th dreamhunk said:

nice try the down fall of Midway is because of "epic games". The ression didn't have anything to with it, oh I also hear Billy cliff was to be blamed too.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/55983

there is other links I can also prove how well pc gaming is doing. In fact it's very hot in this ression. Alot more companies are going to go bankuprt because of consoles too, this is just the begining of this down turn.

Indrema's picture
On May 30th Indrema said:

The article says that Midway licensed the technology, & the programmers couldn't figure out how to make a fighter out of an FPS. Seeing as how it costs $$$/€€€ to license the engine, " Brass" forced them to continue on with it.

I don't see how budget mis-management has anything to do with consoles. This sounds like an upper management problem. Does it not to you? If I were to choose an engine for a "fighter,". I don't think I'd choose Unreal 3. There are plenty of PC companies that over-extend/mis-manage themselves into oblivion. Sierra Online comes to mind.

mentor07825's picture
On May 30th mentor07825 said:

A recession has everything to do with a company, direct or indirect. I read the link, that's the development studios's fault and no one else. If they cannot figure out how to use Unreal Engine 3 then that's their fault. The site (refering to the Unreal Engine 3 site) has many documents explaining on what to do with the engine and how to go about doing it, if your a license holder. I would also put that down as "development difficulties" rather then "explosive financial, in the shit, difficulties". A company survives on money. Money is what they want it is obviously what they need to survive. When people that legally ask for their money back, money that they owe, and obviously with their combined assets that they cannot pay, they LOSE EVERYTHING! Every single thing. Gone. Nothing to be sold because there is nothing to be sold. Midway cannot pay the creditors for all they have. That ruined Midway, not being able to pay debts when they were called, not development difficulties.

I know PC gaming is doing well. It's always done well and it will continue to do well. Companies can't go bankrupt on just consoles alone. It's just whether people buy their games or not. There is already a big base for the Xbox360, PS3 and even bigger for the Wii. If the people have the money and the game is good enough, they will buy.

dreamhunk's picture
On May 30th dreamhunk said:

the only company on console is doing well is nintendo. Even nintendo is feeling the down turn. Both micro soft and sony is in the red. it's only going to get worse as the ression progress. more ompanies will lose either money on consoles or go bankuprt.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/technology/view/sonys-hirai-vows-to-b...
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=213689

NickgamertagO1's picture
On May 30th NickgamertagO1 said:

Dream, you gotta be doing that on purpose. You have to know by now after the amount of time I've spent trying to hone your English that you'd at least call MS Microsoft instead of micro soft. I don't care if you capitalize it, just at least stop splitting the word into two. And it's REcession, not just ression. What is a ression dream? I don't know what ompanies are (kudos for putting the ie at the end instead of just a Y (ompanys for example). And bankuprt? uprt really? It’s obvious you’re just typing too fast because you're not taking the time to look over what you're typing. Take some time with you posts, it'll do you some good.

Like I said before, if it was one mistake here or there (as we all do) I wouldn't say anything, but every post, every time is riddled with mistakes.

Indrema's picture
On May 30th Indrema said:

Bankrupt?

I don't understand. Last year, Sony lost ¥98 billion; which leaves their total income at a measley $500 Billion!

Microsoft's fate is a little less dire. Last year, the company posted a $23 Billion GAIN. Which leaves Microsoft's revenue at a paultry $60 billion.

When, exactly, are these companies supposed to go under?

mentor07825's picture
On May 30th mentor07825 said:

/facepalm

You have to understand, these values are:

-measley

and

-paultry

I mean....Oh dear god...I just...I just don't know what to say, honestly. I mean...I just....I cannot even fathom anything that could possibly clear this up without sounding uber smart or rude when really it's simple.....I just...I'm taking five.