Games - Midway Games

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Midway Games () is a video game publisher known for such game series as Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, and Spy Hunter. Midway traces its roots back to the Chicago electro-mechanical amusement scene. In a time when video game arcades didn't yet exist, the U.S coin-op business was dominated by electro-mechanical machines with the Chicago area being the stronghold of that industry. Back then, many new companies were emerging from the Windy City or its suburbs. Midway was one of these companies.

History

Midway began in 1958 as an independent manufacturer of amusement equipment which was purchased by Bally in 1969. After some years making coin-operated pinball tables and electro-mechanical arcade games such as puck bowling and simulated western shoot-out, Midway became in 1973 an early US maker of arcade video games. Throughout the 1970s, Midway was very close to Japanese video game developer Taito, with both companies regurarily licensing their games to each other for distribution in their respective country. Midway entered the consumer market in 1977 by releasing the Bally Home Library Computer; the only home system to ever be developed by Midway. However Midway's real breakthrough success came in 1978, with the licensing and distribution of the seminal arcade game Space Invaders in America; this was followed by a series of lucrative titles including the hugely successful Pac-Man (1980) and Ms Pac-Man (1981). In 1982, Bally merged its pinball division with Midway to form the Bally/Midway division. From the late 1970s through the late 1980s, Midway was the leading producer of arcade video games in the US.

The Bally/Midway division of Bally was purchased in 1988 by the arcade and pinball game company WMS Industries Inc., the parent company of Williams Electronics Games. The acquisition by WMS marked the end of the original Midway although WMS kept the majority of Midway's R&D employees. Midway moved its headquarters from Franklin Park, Illinois to Williams's headquarters in Chicago and WMS established in 1988 the new (and current) Midway company as a Delaware Corporation. WMS also obtained the right from Bally to use the "Bally" brand for its pinball games since Bally had completely left the arcade/pinball industry to concentrate on casinos and slot machines. Under WMS ownership, Midway initially continued to produce arcade games under the Bally/Midway label while producing pinball tables under the "Bally" brand but as of 1990 Midway started making arcade games under its own name. Much later, in 1996, WMS also purchased Time-Warner Interactive, which included Atari Games, part of the former giant Atari. 1996 is also when Midway changed its original corporate name "Midway Manufacturing Company" to "Midway Games Inc". In 1998, WMS sold Midway to its shareholders, making Midway an independent company for the first time in almost 30 years. Midway kept Atari Games as a wholly-owned subsdiairy as part of this spinoff. Despite the split off, Midway retained the WMS executive staff and used common facilities with WMS. In January 2000, Midway changed the name of its "Atari Games" subsdiary to "Midway Games West" in order to avoid confusion with the other Atari company owned by Hasbro Interactive.

Midway's legacy includes games that were landmarks of their time, such as Spy Hunter, Tron, Mortal Kombat, and NBA Jam.

More recently Midway has fallen on harder times; they were listed as the #20 video game publisher in September 2003 and #19 in September 2005 by the magazine Game Developer. On June 2001, Midway shut down its arcade division due to heavy losses. On February 2003, Midway closed its Midway Games West subsidiary, putting an end to what was left of the original Atari (the other part of the original Atari had dissolved in 1996 when Atari Corporation merged with hard-disk company JTS). In October 2003 Midway said it expected to see about $100 million in revenues for the 2003 year, and $100 million in losses despite this. Sumner Redstone, the head of Viacom/CBS Corporation, is a large investor in the company. He also plans to buy the company in the near future. Although Midway no longer belongs to WMS, Midway remains to this day very close to its former parent company.

In 2004 Midway began a purchasing spree of independent video game development studios which "strengthens our internal product development team and reinforces our ability to make high quality games" (From Midway's May 2005 Quarterly Report). In April of 2004 Midway acquired Surreal Software of Seattle, Washington. In October of 2004 they acquired Inevitable Entertainment of Austin, Texas (now known as Midway-Austin). In December of 2004 they acquired Paradox Development of Moorpark, California.

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