Bam reports losses

[Guest mach7]

Not sure if this has been posted to the board yet... but...

 

Developer and publisher Bam Entertainment announces a restructuring plan following disappointing results in the last quarter.

 

Bam Entertainment has announced that it will begin a comprehensive restructuring plan designed to refine its product strategy and make significant cost savings by January 2003. The announcement follows the release of financial reports for the fiscal quarter ending September 30, which saw the company's net losses increase from $4,000 in the equivalent quarter last year to some $8.2 million.

 

During the quarter in question, Bam released six games, including its first for the Xbox, Chase: Hollywood Stunt Driver. Bam will have a further 10 games in stores before the end of 2002, including PS2, Xbox, GameCube, and GBA versions of the movie-inspired Reign of Fire and PS2 and GBA games based on The Powerpuff Girls. At the same time, though, Bam also terminated the development of what it describes as several non-core projects and accelerated the development amortization on selected future projects--one-time costs that reportedly account for around $2.3 million of the software amortization costs expensed during the quarter.

 

"Recognizing the current heavy competition in the games market, we believe that our prior focus on market share growth is no longer appropriate," said Ray Musci, chief executive officer of Bam Entertainment. "Less than anticipated penetration of certain hardware systems, coupled with an excessive number of new titles, has significantly increased the costs of competing for the core gamer and decreased the financial attractiveness of releasing anything other than AAA titles targeted toward that core gamer market."

 

"Many of Bam's successes have come from its family entertainment properties, and we have strong intellectual properties and development partnerships in place to address that growing segment of the games market," Musci continued. "While we will continue to pursue products that appeal to the 'hard core' mass market, we will do so on a far more selective basis and will do so only if convinced the property has true superstar potential."

 

So, essentially, it looks like Bam Entertainment will be a lot more selective about which games it chooses to publish going forward--which should be good news for the company, shareholders, and gamers alike.

 

By Justin Calvert, GameSpot  [postED: 11/18/02 - 04:02 am pst]

 

 

 

 

Note the bold section in the middle - I hope this doesn't mean that we can kiss Fire Pro Wrestling for GameCube goodbye!

[Guest areacode212]

That would definitely suck if that were the case. How well have the American Fire Pro games for GBA sold here? I don't imagine they've been doing too well, since they don't have the WWE brand name attached to them. I suppose we'll have to stick to playing the next Fire Pro game via imports (like we did w/ Fire Pro D).

[Guest chirs3]

There's gonna be a PS2 Powerpuff Girls game?!

 

Whoohoo!

[Guest Flyboy]

This is from my WWFWrestlingGames Newsletter:

 

Hey gang, Mike here with the third update of a very busy news day. I

have alot of great stuff for you today. For example I have a brand

new review from Jeremy Peeples as well as the updated version of the

WWE Smackdown Shut Your Mouth Faq which was co-written by myself and

Jeremy. But before we get into all that, I have some bad news to US

Fire Pro Wrestling fans.

 

I just got off the phone with a PR rep from Bam! Entertainment. Bam!

is the US publisher who brought over Fire Pro Wrestling to the

Gameboy Advance. Earlier this year at the Electronic Entertainment

Expo in Los Angeles California I spoke with a representative from

Bam! and they revieled that they had plans on bringing over a Fire

Pro Wrestling title to the Gamecube in the US. They also announced

that they were working on the possible release of the Playstation 2

title King of Colosseum in the US. Well, that was some time ago and I

wanted to get more information on both titles so I went straight to

the source. The PR rep from Bam! informed me that currently there are

no future plans on bringing over either of those titles to the

US. "At one point, we were looking at the possibility but at this

moment there is nothing in the works."

 

So gang, it looks like that you are going to need to purchase a

import Playstation 2 or import Nintendo Gamecube in order to play

Spikes next wrestling game.