David-Zucker
Latest
Midway execs found not guilty in conspiracy suit
You know how this works: You're a shareholder in a major company -- let's say a major video game publisher like ... Midway Games -- and while the suits assure you that, despite lagging sales and a lousy portfolio, everything's going to be "OK!" Things started looking dodgy when CEO David Zucker abandoned ship in March of 2008. "Everything okay in there?" you ask. "Yup, everything's fine," Midway responded, while installing Matt Booty into the position. Then chairwoman Shari Redstone, daughter of owner Sumner Redstone, resigned in November 2008. "Alright, this sounds really bad!" you cried. "Seriously, don't worry. It's fine," Midway responded (they'd put Booty in that position in January of the following year). And then, in December, Sumner Redstone sold his shares in the now clearly troubled publisher for the bargain basement price of $100,000 to mysterious investor Mark Thomas ... and then, the layoffs began. So now you, and the rest of the shareholders in NYSE: MWY want to hold the executives who kept you in the dark accountable. According to Develop, after months of hearing allegations, District Court judge David H. Coar found five Midway executives – including former CEO David Zucker and CFO Thomas Powell – "innocent of conspiracy to deceive the public about the health of the fallen company." The reason? The shareholders had not "adequately alleged the direct liability" of the execs. Okay, so it wasn't a "conspiracy" (or whatever other fancy law school words the "law" requires) but we understand your pain. Now, have we told you about the opportunities at Joystiq Publishing ...
Midway owes millions to Epic, NBA, Warner Bros and many more
GamePolitics went digging through Midway's Chapter 11 bankruptcy records and found the company has $281 million in liabilities, with only $167 million in assets. The real eye opener, however, is the list of Midway's top 30 creditors. Just a small sampling: Wells Fargo Bank - $150,000,000 National Amusements, Inc. - $20,147,864 (Which most recently paid the manufacturing costs of Midway's holiday lineup.) NBA Properties, Inc. - $17,294,849 (Licensing and royalty fees) Warner Bros. Interactive - $6,654,203 Epic Games - $1,975,000 (Licensing and royalty fees -- perhaps for for Unreal Tournament?) The list goes on, check out the full roll at GamePolitics. Although there's a lot to snicker about in the full list, nothing really beats the $300,000 in severance pay to former CEO David Zucker -- the man who helped run the company into the ground. Then again, a lot of execs got rich at Midway while the company fell apart.
Midway's losses tallied up under Sumner Redstone's watch
Following yesterday's public resignation of Midway CEO David Zucker (no, not that David Zucker), Variety crunched the video game publisher's numbers after media titan Sumner Redstone's acquisition of the company in 2004. At that time, Redstone said, "Midway is clearly a second-tier producer, but it has the potential to be in the first tier, and that's what attracted me to the company. You're going to see an enormous infusion of talent in the very near future." Some of that talent included designer Harvey Smith who had some less than encouraging things to say about Midway before unsurprisingly leaving the company last fall.So how has good ol' Sumner's investment in Midway panned out? According to Variety, Midway's net losses since 2004 are "about $300 million"; its "revenue growth from 2004 through 2007" is a particularly unimpressive -3%; the change in "Midway stock value from the day Redstone took over through today" is a costly -79%; and the total loss in "equity value for Sumner Redstone" is in excess of $500 million, an estimate Variety calls "very conservative." With $8 billion in net worth, $500 million might not sound like much but, trust us, you don't get to be #86 on Forbes list of top billionaires by letting that kind of coin go. Let's see if Shari Redstone can clean things up.
UT3, Stranglehold sell more than a million worldwide
It's silver lining time. Midway Games, which misplaced nearly $100 million in 2007, has announced that despite leaking money like a rusty sieve, two of its most prominent releases last year, Unreal Tournament 3 and Stranglehold, each managed to sell through more than a million units globally. The announcement was made by company CEO David Zucker during a recent conference call, and while sales were not broken down across platform or region, the executive did note that "European PC sales of Unreal Tournament 3 are outpacing North America." Still, we'd encourage Midway not to call out the cheerleaders just yet. There is still that nagging issue of all that missing money.
Unreal Engine issues cause Midway's PS3 delays; prompt release dates for '08 promised
Underneath the depths of a crater-sized hole left from their earlier Unreal Tournament 3 PS3 delay, Midway CEO David Zucker also made a rather bold statement about Midway's future Unreal Engine-based PS3 releases. Citing "technical issues of the Unreal Engine 3.0" as the main culprit for the PS3 delays of Stranglehold, Area 51: Blacksite and of course, Unreal Tournament 3, the conference call also included the assurances these technical issues have since been worked out, barring PS3 delays for future multiplatform releases in 2008 and beyond. Hmmm ... color PS3 fans bemused and slightly suspicious. After all, we're still left with a lingering sting from the triple whammy PS3 backhand they've dished out. If anything is certain, it's that death, taxes and occasional game delays are all but inevitable but we just hope Midway can stick to their guns to make one of those things, a thing of the past. Imagine ... no taxes! [Insert lolz here.]
Midway goes all the way to lend a shoulder to Sony [Update]
Over at IGN, an interview was covered between GamesIndustry.biz and Midway CEO David Zucker. Zucker stood behind Sony's ever popular pricing decision with many points given similar to the breakdown of a bargain posted the other day. He mentioned the very inclusion of a Blu-Ray player and all features that come with that makes it worth the price. If the market for Blu-Ray takes off and it becomes the norm, it helps not only the PS3 all the more, but the Blu-Ray world as well.While PS3 does gather a lot of bad press, this is yet another very large, recognizable company name that does indeed lend support to Sony. Just a basic checklist of companies (well, person/persons in a company, but for generalization) that support Sony so far include, but aren't limited to: Square-Enix, Konami, EA, Midway and Activision. It may not seem like much, but it's better than being surrounded by flame.[Update: Fixed a typo.]
