Cooking Mama: 4 Million Units and Counting

Majesco’s Cooking Mama franchise has sold 4 million copies to date on various platforms, the company announced this morning. That 4 million units number is spread out across five titles including Cooking Mama for DS, Cooking Mama: Cook Off for Wii, Cooking Mama 2: Dinner with Friends for DS, Cooking Mama World Kitchen for Wii, and the newest game in these series Gardening Mama for DS.

The Wii games retail for $29.99, while the DS games retail for $19.99. Majesco did not break down the numbers by title, nor did it reveal how much the franchise has raked in to date. Still a pretty impressive number for a series of casual games about cooking.. and now gardening.

Majesco Posts Huge Jump in Profits

Okay Majesco. Apparently someone forgot to send you the memo, but the world economy has gone to pot and no one is supposed to be actually making any money. How could you buck the trend and not only turn a profit last quarter, but boast a 75.8 percent jump in revenue?

All kidding aside, it was a great day for Majesco investors yesterday. The same day the market saw Take-Two post $50 million in losses, Majesco filed its numbers for the first 2009 quarter, laying claim to a 75.8 percent increase in revenue over the same time last year,

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Majesco’s E3 Line-Up

While Majesco’s line-up for E3 next week is peppered with a lot of casual stuff that many of us will not be interested in, the company is highlighting three games that are worth paying some attention to: the new Cooking Mama game for the Wii, Major Minor’s Majestic March for Wii and AWAY Shuffle Dungeon for DS. Majesco’s line-up focuses on Nintendo’s platforms exclusively this year.

But first let’s get the potential throw-away stuff out of the way. The first is Our House, a Wii game that lets you build and remodel a home and interact with your neighbors in a number of ways. The game also promises a four-player “build off” mode, which sounds interesting.

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Mama’s Got a Brand New Bag

With more cooking puns than Emeril Live!, Majesco Entertainment announced details about Cooking Mama World Kitchen for Wii. Developed by Cooking Mama Limited, the latest installment in the light-hearted cooking mini-game mash-up is bringing new recipes, modes and mini-games to the Wiiin time for Christmas. See, I made it through the entire paragraph without using stupid cooking gag. This is serious business, my friends.

Besides getting a 3D facelift, Mama gets more refined Wii Remote support, with the motion sensing controller getting top billing as the player’s numero uno utensil.

Using the Wii Remote, players will have to waggle, chop, grate, slice, stir and roll their culinary creations from start to finish. Other elements, like being able to make a save or two using Mamma’s apron to catch food that might end up decorating the floor and new rhythm and music elements should make this new game a bit more refined than previous releases in the series.

One should expect to hear more about the game during the E3 Media and Business Summit next month in Los Angeles.

Mama Cooking With Gas

The Cooking Mama franchise (which includes the original Cooking Mama game for Nintendo DS; Cooking Mama: Cook Off for the Wii and Cooking Mama 2: Dinner with Friends for DS) has sold more than 1.6 million units domestically, according to a press release from Majesco today. Most of those sales were attributed to the first DS game, which has sold 1 million to date.

The cooking game franchise lets players prepare a meal under the watchful eye of Mama, who gives you a recipe for each challenge. Players slice, dice, mix and plate the meal through a series of short mini-games using the stylus on the DS and the Wii remote on the Wii. The game is developed by Office Create and published by Taito in Japan, 505 Gaming in Europe and Majesco in North America. The next game in the series, Cooking Mama 2 for the Wii, will be released sometime later this year.