The Chicago-based game company lost over 70 million dollars last quarter and now faces the risk of being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.
Long time video game publisher Midway Games is currently in a terrible financial situation. Since being bought out CBS and Viacom chairman, Summer Redstone, four years ago, Midway has fallen deeper and deeper into debt. With big releases being delayed, like 2007's Stranglehold (developed with John Woo), and others either rushed out the door (Blacksite: Area 51) or cancelled (Career Criminal), Midway's games have begun to cost more and more money. All of this has been accentuated by the fact that Midway has not been able to keep their stock above the New York Stock Exchange's minimum average closing price of $1 per share for over 30 straight trading days.
When Variety's The Cut Scene blog tackled the subject, they found out that, according to ex-employees, Midway's decision to license Epic's Unreal Engine was a huge part of delays and declining game quality. One ex-employee even said that "instead of just taking the base Unreal 3 engine that Gears of War was made on and building games off of that, we let our tech and product development guys try to really modify the engine to add all these [different] things.…It put all the games way behind schedule."
Most likely due to their focus on the Unreal Engine, Midway has barely been able to capitalize on the success of the Wii. Their only Wii-exclusive titles have been the moderately successful Game Party franchise. On the DS, their only releases this year have been Mechanic Master and TouchMaster 2. Currently, they have no future games planned for any Nintendo system.