Midway CEO Quits

Another high-level executive has jumped ship from struggling publisher Midway for the unnamed greener pastures of "anywhere else but here."

Thursday's resignation, announced indirectly via a Midway statement on the hiring of a new CEO, was offered by (now) former CEO David F. Zucker. There was no word from Midway on how the turnover might affect current projects, if at all.

Zucker joins VP, CFO, and Treasurer Thomas Powell, and Senior Marketing VP Steve Allison, who both resigned from the publisher back in January. The departures have left a vacuum at the top that board members scrambled to fill today. That filler? Seventeen-year Midway veteran Matt Booty, who will serve as interim CEO.

Midway has been an industry player since the early days of video games, with classic titles like Pong, Defender and Spy Hunter laying the foundation for more modern fare in Ready 2 Rumble Boxing, NFL Blitz and Mortal Kombat. In 2007, however, the publisher fell on tough financial times even as Zucker said he remained optimistic about 2008 thanks to titles like PS3 exclusive Unreal Tournament 3. And now he's gone.

Wait just a second -- wasn't it the PC publishers that were supposed to be struggling?