With Konami’s recent acquisition of Hudson Soft, it seems the new owners have decided that Hudson no longer needs an American branch. Hudson Entertainment brand manager Morgan Haro revealed via blog post that the division has been shut down.
“Hudson Entertainment is shutting its doors,” he explained. “There apparently won’t be any need for the talents within the San Mateo offices of Hudson Entertainment. It was revealed today that all of Hudson’s previously planned projects have been canceled and that our office will be closing its doors at the end of February.”
Haro also goes over some of the mistakes that Hudson Entertainment may have made over the past couple of years, specifically with its Wii development.
“From the Wii generation on, we had success with the first Deca Sports due to its ability to fill a hole in the then hot ‘omg it’s like Wii Sports’ category, but we failed to innovate when it came to the sequel, and the sequel’s sequel. Meanwhile, there were countless missed collaboration opportunities between the U.S. and Japan,” wrote Haro. “By the time we had received the game design document for any given title, development was more than likely well underway, usually past the point of the dev team able to make any major changes. Usually, a green-lit concept would have some redeeming ideas, but from my perspective, there were countless opportunities our titles weren’t taking advantage of.”
