With Inspector Tequila set loose, Midway Games is enjoying stronger than expected sales thanks to Stranglehold which sky-rocketed to the UK's top-ten selling Microsoft Xbox 360 titles since launch. The game's Sony PlayStation 3 version is yet to see a European release, but the 360 and PC iterations seem to be enough to net Midway 35% of market share around those parts.

"Our goal was to get to 35 per cent in 2008. We've gotten there this year," said Midway CEO David Zucker after crediting Stranglehold as one of the major factors. He also said that John Woo's video game is also successful in France, Germany, Italy, and other territories.

Zucker also placed his bets on Midway's standardized next-gen technology built around the Unreal Engine 3 that took US$ 100 million to develop, believing they'll be "able to spend more time doing the things that matter to sales - which is improving the quality of the game, gameplay, level design - and less time on reinventing technology as we go forward."

The Midway CEO gave Stranglehold as an example, which was a title developed by various studios. Flagship Chicago studio made the game work, but audio was done at the Austin, Texas studio while special effects were done by the Seattle, Washington studio.

Buy: [ Stranglehold (Xbox 360) ]
Buy: [ Stranglehold (PS3) ]
Buy: [ Stranglehold (Windows XP) ]