It appears that the end of Midway's presence in the arcade market is near. Midway announced on Tuesday that it has let go 60 employees within the coin-op division (
Press Release). We later learned that these employees were specific to coin-op hardware and sales. Furthermore, reports on
highwaygames, an amusement-industry specific website, confirm that Midway is indeed ceasing all arcade development, with exception to touchscreen games (
Story). It appears that all projects that are adaptable to the console market have been moved to the home division. Mortal Kombat 5 is definitely a project that falls into this catagory. The MK team has been accumulating members recently and have quite a substantial size compared to past development projects. Questions are still in the air whether MK5 will still make it to arcades, but with an outsourced manufacturer; however, given the details of the size that the MK team has grown, it appears that focus has indeed shifted towards next-generation consoles. Special thanks to
Jason Sizemore and
Daniel Fisher for the heads up. We will have further reports as details emerge.