Midway: The Future Looks Bleak

Midway have posted losses of $34m for the previous quarter despite surpassing sale projections.  Share prices continue to plummet, whilst Midway seem to be relying on continued sales of games which were, frankly, not that good, a few game ports such as Hour of Victory for the PC and a spattering of European launches.  With no releases of note in the works, the future is looking fairly bleak for this Chicago based game publisher.

View the full report here.

Microsoft Release Free, Easy PC Game Creation Software.

Do you want to make video games but you can’t program, code, design, conceptualize or even draw? Microsoft have released their Popfly beta just for you and your incompetent friends!

Using a basic toolkit powered by the Microsoft Silverlight development plugin, you can create basic games and then share them from your favorite social networking site. The service also allows you to create custom website mash-ups or the ability to just layout a website in a (fairly) easy to use graphical user interface. Don’t expect the next Halo, but the service is fun for a period and you can create some interesting takes on classic game formats.

The Summer Drought: Dry No More?

Okay, so now the ‘GTA-bomb’ has dropped, gamers worldwide may be bracing themselves for the annual summer game drought. It might be the heat, a lack of big spending holidays or just having the kids out of school, but Summer is traditionally associated with a lack of activity in the gaming world. Nevertheless, with the seemingly endless expansion of the game industry and the seemingly bottomless wallets of the worldwide gaming population, are companies really dumb enough to keep this tradition up? Are we really looking at yet another summer spent finishing off those games we never did, or grabbing missed titles from the local bargain bin?

A quick glimpse ahead to June’s releases reveals that the ‘Summer drought’ may officially be a thing of the past…