Majesco cancels Taxi Driver and Demonik @ Gaming Target

Written by John Scalzo on January 19, 2006

News: It's been a rough year for Majesco.

Majesco has gone through a lot this year. While they are still alive and kicking, no video game has endured as much hardship as Majesco did in 2005.

At E3 they revealed their intentions to move out of bargain development and into "premium game development". This was followed by the release of their two flagship titles: Advent Rising and Psychonauts. Advent Rising crashed and burned with critics and gamers alike and while Psychonauts has appeared near the top of every Best of 2005 list, it also sold poorly. This caused Majesco's stock price to begin circling the proverbial drain and led the company to sell off the rights to Ghost Rider and The Darkness.

This leads us to today, as Majesco announced during their financial conference call that they are cancelling the Xbox 360/PC game Demonik and Taxi Driver for the Xbox and PS2.

Taxi Driver (which never sounded like a good idea for a game) was being developed by Papaya Studios. Demonik, on the other hand, sounded like an incredible action/horror hybrid that was being penned by Clive Barker. It was being developed by Majesco regulars Terminal Velocity (BloodRayne, Aeon Flux).

It's unknown if either development team will try to pitch other publishers on these titles, but since Majesco already sold off two of it's major in-development projects I'd assume there were no takers for Taxi Driver or Demonik.

After all this, Majesco has announced that they are laying off 20% of their workforce and plan to focus solely on budget priced and handheld titles once again.

Majesco President Jesse Sutton said, "Publishing value priced software and games for handheld systems has historically been one of our strengths. We believe that this strategy is more prudent for Majesco at this time and offers us the most opportunity for success as it requires a relatively low investment in development and marketing."