yeah, there are serious problems with majesco. they don't own the IP to their cooking games--they license it from Taito in japan. so they pay a fee just to publish the game. if Taito decides to license to another company, or god forbid, make the north american release themselves, majesco loses their best seller.
ditto for their second best seller, puzzle bobble. another license. cake mania on the DS, another licensed product. age of empries DS, licensed from microsoft. see what i mean by they just can't seem to come up with good IPs? that psychonauts and advent rising they made were financial disasters.
this blast shooting game... got potential. that's one point for Majesco. still, looks like it obtained rights to an existing game, although that existing game seems like is made by an individual, so easier to obtain rights.
on quality of games: its Soduko games are horrible. last year x'mas time they managed to cash in somewhat on 2 brain training games. but quality wise, they suck. a lot. i looked through their entire game list and, yes, 90% of them suck.NY Times crossword is encouraging, that's the only one. its implementation seems okay, but could be better. there's another dinosaur game for kids that seemed okay. they had a hit with Jaws on the PS2, but that was 2, 3 years back.
they've got stuff like strawberry shortcake DS and a few other truly kids title, again licensed products, which is more okay since they're not licensed from a gaming company, but Majesco doesn't seem to have a coherent strategy with regards to making games as a collection. they don't have a brand power whatsoever, say it Atari or Midway, two other companies also struggling. i would be happier if they decide to collectively start putting those kids games under one game engine, to both save money and improve quality, but they seem to contract different developers to make those games. very shortsighted approach. with Disney and other companies starting to spend major money targeting kids in gaming, Majesco can't compete.
in short, the Majesco knows how to BRING games to the market, but they don't seem to have people who know how to CREATE them. they are literally nothing more than just a publisher of games.
Majesco may still rise with the Wii and DS platform starting to dominate, but it's hard to place your trust in such a crappy company.
also, Majesco has no assets valuable as a takeover target. if they die, they simply go away.
for me, i decided to sell all my position in Majesco when they announced they'll bring Kengo: Legend of the 9 to the 360, which is almost certain to be crap. spending resources on the 360 is completely against their strategy of low-budget casual titles, and that was the last straw for me.
so, i told myself, better to overpay for good game companies stock than pay fair price for crap game company stocks in the same thriving business. don't be greedy--this is not my kind of company to invest in. leave it to maybe hedge funds who routinely deal with this kind of situations.
the Wii is an epidemic.
