According to its latest announcement, Chicago developer and publisher Midway Games has posted better revenues in the last quarter of 2006 and the year as a whole compared to its 2005 performance. The company is famous for popular titles such as the Mortal Kombat series, Stranglehold, BlackSite: Area 51, The Wheelman, The Lord of the Rings Online, and Unreal Tournament III.

Midway president and CEO David Zucker describes 2006's last quarter as "a landmark quarter for Midway." Ge explains that it's "our largest revenue quarter in seven years that included our largest initial ship-in for a single title, Happy Feet; the culmination of our marquee franchise Mortal Kombat on current generation systems; and the kick-off of our next generation releases with Blitz: The League on Xbox 360 as well as our four Wii titles." 

The company's report says that fourth quarter sales are up at US$ 96.9 million compared to the US$ 69.8 million it made last year- a 38.8 percent increase. Losses are also down to US$ two million compared to last year's US$ 37.8 million. For the year's totality, sales are up by a significant ten percent from 2005's US$ 150.1 million to  US$ 165.6 million in 2006. Annual losses are down to $77.8 million from $112.8 million.

The company has also expressed intentions to capitalize on the Wii's good performance saying that they have been bullish initially about the platform but are now taking a "small shift to look more significantly at the Wii going forward."

Incidentally, the company revealed that the Mortal Kombat development team has been "hard at work on a next-gen version of the franchise, with an all new fighting system redesigned from the ground up leveraging our common technology base." Details are yet to be revealed in terms of release dates and as to which platforms the game will land on