Selling off internal IP's (Good/Bad) move!

[Joelcool7]

Alright in a day and age when Game companies all over are taking huge blows I'm starting to look at how they are dealing with the immense pressure which things are they doing to keep their companies afloat and I realized something!

Numerous companies have begun resorting to selling off internal IP's and liscenses as a means of bringing in profits. Majesco and Atari are the two companies that come to mind who are adnd who were in a selling spree selling off internal IP and liscenses to turn a profit.

Majesco also sold off internal liscenses for  The Darkness and the game Ghost Rider!  Majesco's sale gave them about 8-million USD and they used the money to bring them out of the negative a little bit. Both games are based on liscenses one for the Movie GhostRider the other from the comic series the darkness and Majesco had planned on both being big budget titles.

Atari has begun selling out faster then you can say Uh-oh, not only the liscenses but internal studios too. The largest sale of late was the sale of the Driver series to UbiSoft. Ubisoft also aquired the Driver series internal studio Reflections. Atari then sold off its award winning Shiny Entertainment to Factor5 leaving the upcomming EarthWormJim game in limbo (Is it cancelled, is it not?). Atari still has more internal assets up for grabs.

Since Atari's sale of the Driver series UbiSoft has announced a port of Driverarrellel lines to the Nintendo Wii the port looks amazing and is bound to bring in tons of profits. So the Driver liscense could have brought alot of much needed profit into Atari, they really do need it. As for Majesco The loss of the Ghost Rider liscense doesn't seem to have been a bad thing , the game bombed but the Darkness liscense could end up having been a fairly bad move! Darkness looks amazing and I have no doubt that once released it should enjoy fairly good sales on both platforms PS3/360!


So is selling IP's and liscenses off ever a good thing? , is their a point where an IP is no longer worth keeping where would you draw the line as a publisher!