Midway Facing Stock Market Delisting

The New York Stock Exchange requires a stock to maintain a minimum average closing price of $1.00 per share for 30 consecutive days of trading. The Midway Games stock has fallen below that minimum and now faces delisting.

Midway’s press release states that they have been given the standard six months to ‘œcure the deficiency’. Maybe now Midway will start to listen to the fans it has left. Everyone who was hoping for Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe instead of Mortal Kombat 8 raise your hand. Exactly. Lets take a look at what Midway’s hopes are riding on.

Undoubtedly Midway has a great following in Mortal Kombat fans. After all the talk of Mortal Kombat 8 and how it would be a return to the series’ roots, its roots being large amounts of gore and fatalities, to be given Mortal Kombat VS DC Universe is a slap in the face. Is it better than the last few MK games? Sure, but what is that really saying? Getting rid of what defines the series in exchange for being allowed to toss in some superhero characters and add a B movie storyline is not how you keep fans.

Looking at Midway’s upcoming releases doesn’t instill much faith either. The Vin Diesel starring Wheelman is still scheduled for an early 2009 release. Wheelman is an MTV game based on an MTV film in association with Diesel’s Tigon Studios. MTV does have their name on Rock Band and Tigon Studios was responsible for the great The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay so there still may be hope for this game for some.

After Wheelman is released, Midway will follow it up with This is Vegas. This is Vegas looks to be a title that could go either way. The gameplay videos showing the main character spraying water at a row of women in thin white shirts will certainly sell a few games on its own but beyond barroom mini-games we still haven’t seen very much. Because it’s an open ended game it’s sure to be compared to GTA4 and Saints Row 2 though it looks to be a much lighter take on the open world genre.

Look, no one enjoys seeing a company struggle. As disappointed as I am with Midway concerning their Mortal Kombat decisions, I hope the company can pull it together and get their finances in order. When a company struggles, original titles suffer and people can potentially lose their jobs. Neither of those possibilities are good for the industry or for gamers. Though they may have had some missteps recently, Midway has brought out a lot of great games in their time and I’d like to see them return to their former glory with games like NBA Jam and the original NFL Blitz. Cancelling the PC port of Hour of Victory was a good move and hopefully Midway can get things in order without sacrificing any good games or people.