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Majesco’s CEO Quits, Stock Dives

Time for more potentially-horrible news: Majesco, publisher of a lot of stuff, including the wonderful wonderful amazing game-of-the-year candidate Psychonauts, seems to be going down the tubes. A few months ago they published some slightly-bizarre press releases about how "Wow guys, we're TOTALLY doing great! We're a great solid company, have we mentioned we're great? We're definitely not going to publish information regarding huge losses soon, our sales are great! Everything is fine!" and of course, here we are today with news that they were just completely lying.

Quoth GameSpot:

"Majesco's had previously projected annual net revenue of between $175-$185 million, and operating income, or profit, of $16-$18 million. Revised expectations now peg net revenue for its 2005 fiscal year to be between $120 million and $125 million, with an operating loss of $16-$19 million. Majesco's 2005 fiscal year ends on October 31."

That's a lot of numbers. And it sucks for them, but they're just a publisher. It's the devs we care about, right guys? Right?

Well, that's where the next problem comes in. Publishers front money to developers and pay paychecks while games are in development. One of the main devs Majesco swooped down and saved was Double Fine, developers of Psychonauts, headed up by Tim Schafer, one of the few game designer names you should know and care about. And why is Majesco dying?

"The company cited several causes for the lowered guidance. It said the primary reason for losses were weak summer sales--Psychonauts and Advent Rising have recently been singled out as being the highest-profile retail disappointments."

If Majesco goes under and Psychonauts doesn't turn a profit [has it yet? I haven't seen numbers since May], Double Fine could have some problems ahead of them. Specifically, if Majesco completely folds, this could jeopardize the forthcoming multi-language European release of Psychonauts. Plus, Tim has gone on record before saying that if Psychonauts doesn't do well, he may just pack up his game-development toys and go home.

I'd rather not think about a world without new games from Tim Schafer. I don't mean to sound all gushy or anything, but really. I've fired off an e-mail to the all-seeing all-knowing Info Cow, and will report back with details.

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