Hudson layoffs?

[guyjin]

http://kotaku.com/gaming/hudson-entertainment/hudson-happy-holidays-youre-fired-328169.php

Sources close to Hudson Entertainment have contacted Next-Gen and Kotaku today, writing that the company "just laid off half its company staff." According to both sources, it's Hudson's mobile division that saw the most bloodletting, a division that has "just been having a lot of trouble getting their games onto big carriers like Verizon and Cingular."

ouch.

Part 2:
http://kotaku.com/gaming/business/hudson-on-mass-firing-328273.php

Hudson Entertainment today announced a reorganization of its mobile games division. While the mobile game business has continued to grow over the last 3 years, porting cost management continues to be a challenge. As a result, Hudson has reduced its Q&A and porting staff, and initiated a more cost effective outsourced solution. Hudson will continue to develop, publish and market mobile games, with eight game titles on the product roadmap for 2008, including Bomberman Land, Military Madness 2, R-Type, as well as three new IPs. Hudson's other business lines, including music, console games and digital downloads are unaffected.

"It is always a difficult decision to layoff staff members, but it was important that we realign our mobile games business to ensure that we can move forward." says John Greiner, President and CEO of Hudson. "We are excited about recent developments in the mobile industry and we strongly believe in the future of the mobile phone as a content distribution channel. We will continue to produce and distribute quality games and other content for mobile phones."

[Kitsunexus]

There are no heroes.   

[Keranu]

Aww, they didn't even fire Master John Lee! 

Though here's a tidbit of info from the Master that I hope someone can help clarify on:

"Hudson will continue to develop, publish and market mobile games, with eight game titles on the product roadmap for 2008, including Bomberman Land, Military Madness 2, R-Type, as well as three new IPs. "

I'm not aware of any Military Madness 2. I know of Neo Nectaris and some other Nectaris sequels, but I never heard any word about a Military Madness 2. Is there something that I, or we, don't know about?

[ParanoiaDragon]

I would assume, that Neo Nectaris is being renamed as Millitary Madness 2, since, the original Nectaris was simply Millitary Madness.

[Keranu]

That's what I'm thinking and hoping. It could also be a brand new game they're making for cell phones or something.

[nat]

My money is on the latter.

[Seldane]

Great. Hopefully now they won't be making more games like the Bomberman 360 game.

[ccovell]

Let's not speculate on new games here but rather weep for the lost jobs of dedicated people, and the [further?] shrinking of a once-great company, OK? 

[Hobo Xiphas]

Making games for phones is a retarded business plan in the first place

[Keranu]

Making games for phones is a retarded business plan in the first place

My thoughts exactly.