Hudson Announces Mobile Division Layoffs

Hudson Entertainment has announced a reorganization of its mobile games division, citing the challenges of porting cost management as the prevailing reason for an unspecified number of layoffs among its Q&A and porting staff. Additionally, the company says it has initiated "a more cost-effective outsourced solution." The company says it will continue to develop, publish and market mobile games, with eight game titles on its slate of anticipated releases for 2008, including Bomberman Land, Military Madness 2 and R-Type as well as three unannounced new IPs. Hudson also said that its other business lines, which cover the music industry, console games and digital downloads are not affected, highlighting that the cost management challenges are specific to the growing mobile arena over the past three years. Hudson president and CEO John Greiner said, "It is always a difficult decision to lay off staff members, but it was important that we realign our mobile games business to ensure that we can move forward. We are excited about recent developments in the mobile industry and we strongly believe in the future of the mobile phone as a content distribution channel. We will continue to produce and distribute quality games and other content for mobile phones."