Hudson Entertainment shutdown imminent.

Hudson Entertainment -western wing of Hudson Soft which was acquired by Konami in January – announced today that they will be closed by the end of the month.
The Japanese office will remain to focus on “social games”.

Hudson -who brought us Bomberman and Lode Runner (NES Version) – have canceled all current projects, presumably including “Bonk: Brink of Extinction”

Brand Manager Morgan Haro has a lot of interesting things to say on the matter via Develop-Online; praise for colleagues but also citing communication issues as a major problem.

” As the industry continues to march towards the drum of Western game development, Hudson became for me, a symbol of why Japan has fallen behind when it comes to bringing worldwide hits to gamers.”

Ouch

“The act of producing and developing a game in Japan, and then bringing that game over to the US to compete in an increasingly competitive market is more and more, and incredibly tough proposition.
A challenge in itself to be sure, but to compound the issue, minimal communication and stifled collaboration seems to be hampering the chances of success.
In previous generations, developers only had so many factors to worry about to produce a title that meets a general level of acceptance. But as we, as gamers, became more accustomed to games that demanded not only more from the player, and in turn, more from the developer, many companies seem to be having a hard time keeping up.
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 US and Japan.”

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I wonder what will become of Bomberman?
The series hardly changed since its inception but that didn’t stop me from buying it on every console it was released on.

Hopefully the laid-off can find new jobs and whoever is in control now can find a way to bring Bomberman to the 3DS,NGP and other future consoles.