Once-Mighty Majesco Down To Five Employees
Majesco Entertainment announced today it had appointed a new CEO, and that its focus henceforth would entirely rest on digital games. This new boss will be overseeing a team of just five people, down from the thousands Majesco employed at its peak. Perhaps no other video game company exemplifies the humble beginnings, meteoric rise, and eventual collapse every company on Earth goes through, mostly because its successes and failures are so visible.
Majesco began in the late 90’s as a company that republished old games; their first big step into retail was a deal with Sega to manufacture a new Genesis model, the Genesis 3, which was reintroduced to stores in 1998. One year later, when the Game Boy had been revived by Pokemon, they republished the Game Gear in its original form…with no new games to capture attention (or monsters) with. Kids largely ignored it.
By 2003 Majesco had become what would today be considered a AAA studio, releasing mega-hits like the Bloodrayne games and critical darlings like Psychonauts. Psychonauts didn’t sell as well as they’d hoped, but that was only the beginning of their troubles.
Majesco sunk everything into a high-profile, ultra-ambitious, next-gen title called Advent Rising. They ended up releasing the game too early in the form of a bug-filled mess, and paid the price for it. Advent Rising was a major flop, enough to shutter Majesco’s console division for good. They vowed to focus on a more casual audience and produce only handheld and Wii games, which did keep them afloat for a while. Majesco invented the Cooking Mama series, and was also the publisher of Wayforward’s take on A Boy And His Blob.
Eventually even this strategy wasn’t enough and the company shrank down to the size it is today, mainly to remain in the black. Though Majesco will never be publishing a retail game again and seems doomed to remain small-time, they will still be producing download-only console games. Don’t expect AAA-tier graphics, but do expect another Boy and His Blob game — they announced its release for next year.