So over the last generation we have seen publisher after publisher bite the dust while others manage to hang in there and survive beyond all expectations. We have seen industry greats like Acclaim, Midway and older examples like Accolade all fail going down in flames, other publishers like Sega, Atari, Majesco and Interplay all were on the verge of bankruptcy and made miraculous recoveries or remain alive.

So the question is if you were CEO of a major game publisher that was going down fast what would you do? I am not asking you to base your moves on any existing publisher as nobody could focus on a single answer so I will propose a fake company and ask how you would proceed.

You are CEO of a games publisher. Your publisher has a total of 8 internal studios all with staffs of around 200. In the past your publisher was one of the biggest and best in the industry but over the last decade your publisher has been in swift decline. You currently produce up to ten games each year for a variety of platforms. You have some internal IP that are capable of selling up to 4-million copies per iteration but you only have about two of these IP. The rest of your releases sell between 500K and 1.5-mill each game and are based on licenses you have acquired or some of your past IP which have lost their ability to sell. You release two or so of your own internal IP each year but only one of the two successful IP. This means that your publisher is slowly and steadily losing money. Your publisher posted financial losses of over 100 mill this fiscal year and are in debt way more. The company has been losing money steadily for the last few years. The company has maybe one year to turn things around or at this rate it will go belly up, there are no prospective buyers.

What do you do with that publisher? Do you go bankrupt and cut your losses or do you try and save the company? If you choose bankruptcy why is that your choice? If you choose to try and save the company why do you think it is worth saving? How do you propose that you can save the company? What moves can you make as CEO to turn the company around?

**** Disclaimer please use the fake company I listed. This will allow all users to give answers about that specific situation rather then saying how they would save their favorite publisher

I'd sell the company and retire to a tropical retreat like a real bastard.

I'd trim the fat - fire the fat people.

Get one of the big three to buy you.  That is if you make good enough games to be in that position.  Some publisher deserve to go out of business and I see no problem with it.  If you can't compete then bye bye.  Just a shame that some very good small publishers have been bought out by EA and Activision and their ips turned to shit, for the worse, or completely forgotten (Magic Carpet....).

Fire all management that do nothing and eat up a good 100 million dollars a year.

Alright so let me get the ball rolling.

I would start by closing 3 of the eight studios, I would attempt to retain the stars so to speak and move them to one of my other studios. I would then cut staff in half at the fifth studio from 200 to 100. I would take my best studio that is capable of creating a AAA+ game and increase its staff by 200.I would create a subsidiary to license my IP for use in other entertainment mediums.  In the end the studios would look like this.

Mobile/Social Studio - 100 employees

This studio would be two teams making up a single studio. One team of fifty preparing a big Social game while the other creating the next mobile game. Both titles would be based on my strongest IP.

Handheld Studio - 200 employees

The handheld studio would be responsible for ensuring I have a handheld game based on my strongest IP to launch alongside the mobile/Social and home console versions.

Legends Studio - 200 employees

My Legends studio would be responsible for bringing my old library of high quality games to consoles. This would mean downloadable versions and remakes. 100 staff members would work on bringing HD remakes to the next generation of consoles while the remaining 100 just port the old games. Releasing the ports on Eshop and Live and PSN. Their key product would be a disk based collection of the former titles from the biggest IP I have which I am launching the new game for.

New Studio - 200 employees

This new studio will be focused entirely on bringing a new IP to consoles. Using the studios full amount of staff to produce a high end title which I hope will be transformed into my publishers next big franchise.

Ace Studio - 400 employees

My Ace studio would be hard at work on my biggest IP to ensure that it launched during the next holiday season on all three home consoles and PC/Mac. A small number of employees would be starting work on my second biggest IP to launch next year. Essentially my Ace Studio would be my Ubi Montreal or Nintendo EAD, they would be my finest studio and trusted with my biggest IP!

Franchise company - 25 employees

This subsidiary would be created specifically to find markets for my IP. That means trying to secure toy deals,book deals, movie deals and television show deals. The company would be extremely busy but very important to getting my products to market.

My strategy would be to release two or so IP each year for the near future. One of those IP being new and the other being a reliable IP. My biggest two IP would receive multiplatform releases across all video game platforms from home consoles to handheld to mobile to social, the game would see release on every platform to maximize its ability to reach the largest audience and grow.

With these changes I would expect to break even the next year. My two big IP both sell around 4-million copies regularly but with the expansion into mobile, Social and handheld I am hoping they could break ten million. by cutting 575 staff members I should be able to make the company either profitable the next year if my big IP and/or the new IP are successful or at least break even.

The next year I would repeat the process with my second largest IP. Producing versions for every platform and bringing in another fresh IP. In the second year I would begin looking to lisense out more of my older IP to studios, hopefully I could release about 4-6 different games that year.

You may see some similarities to THQ's current model, I am building on Sega's old model and Majesco's failed model. A hybrid of the three with some elements of UbiSoft's recent drive to produce licensed products to increase product awareness and market share.

If after two years the studio is still in trouble I would shed the least profitable studio (Either the handheld studio or the mobile/social) I would out source development of social/mobile and handheld games to other developers in an effort to cut costs. If in its fourth year the publisher is still tanking I would shed the legendary studio hoping that most of my back catalog has been released. Fifth year still going down I would begin shedding staff from my Ace studio while maintaining my New studio at its current level if possible. If I am still losing money going into the sixth year and am not bankrupt yet I would begin selling off my Intellectual Properties from least successful to most successful. Hanging on to the two most successful IP, if that wasn't enough to break even that year I would Axe the New Studio and put my efforts into out sourcing development of all my remaining titles. If the publisher is still struggling to survive I would drop all publishing responsabilities down sizing to a developer status hanging on to my Ace Studio.

Hopefully a few years of my Ace Studio bringing in profits and license fees from my remaining IP would enable me to pay off debts slowly. Once I have paid off enough I would re-enter the publishing industry going backwards step by step until the company was recovered. This would be like what Interplay has done they lost all their publishing capabilities so they downsized and worked with other publishers till they can regain their publishing capabilities and make a come back.

I would fight to the last man to keep my publisher out of bankruptcy.

P.S - Those who said sell I believe in the OP I stated selling was not an option. Midway and Acclaim and other publishers all desperately tried to find buyers. But the fact is it is cheaper for a publisher to build 8 studios from scratch then acquire your eight, they can also buy your best IP on the auction block once your publisher goes bankrupt!

Your option are declare bankrupcy or do something to save your publisher. If you go bankrupt you will not be living the high life on a beach somewhere!

Yah thats debatable. I don't think I would allow my company to slide that far either. But I have never been the CEO of a game publisher so I can't say for sure. Its hard to say you can do better when you haven't actually been put in the position! Also one year is enough to start shifting gears. In my plan to save the company I started shifting gears in year one but the plan went six years accounting for the worst case scenerio!

I'd probably fire the useless employees, sell the IP to pay off debts in the case they exist, and start doing low-risk titles and apps for the iPhone.

I'd shop it around and sell it for whatever I could get.