If I had been in business with Brash, I wouldn't want to brag about it either. Nonetheless, it's amusing to see the company erased from corporate history.

Today Majesco announced its deal with Fox to publish the "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" video game, which I reported two weeks ago. Included in the press release was this quote:

Of course, Majesco isn't "creating" a "Night at the Museum" game at all. The game was created by Brash -- or, more properly, developers Pipeworks and Amaze under Brash's supervision. Majesco simply bought publishing rights to the completed game. It's the equivalent of complimenting Ubisoft for its great work creating "Wheelman."

Still, if you gave video game rights for one of your top films to a publisher that went bankrupt in little more than a year, you probably wouldn't bring it up either. Just remember, Majesco has always been making the "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" game. And Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

With only two months to go until the theatrical release, Brash's "Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian" game has been picked up by Majesco.

A source close to the game confirmed the deal, as did a search on the ESRB's ratings website.

Licensor Fox and Foundation 9, parent company of the game's developer Pipeworks, have been looking to find a new publisher for the game since Brash went out of business in November. But apparently it was a close call, with the deal only coming together in the past few weeks, and final details still being worked out now. (Don't confuse it with Majesco's own "Escape the Museum" that comes out Tuesday.)

I'm told that Ubisoft was very interested and almost picked it up, before ultimately deciding to pass. It was shopped to numerous other publishers, but many were concerned about the extremely short timeline. A source at one publisher said they were interested in the game when they say it last month, but simply didn't think they'd have enough time to put together a marketing plan building up to the film's Memorial Day weekend release.

For Ubisoft and most other publishers, "Night at the Museum 2" wouldn't be a big deal -- just a blip on their slate. But it is a big deal for Majesco. The relatively successful but still tiny publisher of "value" titles hasn't released any games based on movies since 2006's horrible "Jaws Unleashed." In addition, it will be only the second game ever released on the Xbox 360 by Majesco, which has been focused on Nintendo's Wii and DS for the past few years. Of course, given its kid appeal, "Night at the Museum 2" will also be released for Nintendo's two consoles.

"Night at the Museum 2" is the last Brash game set for release this year to get a new publisher (save for "Prison Break," which appears to be consigned to the video game dust heap). "Tale of Despereaux" was already released by Atari and "Six Flags Fun Park" by Ubisoft. "Saw" has been picked up by Konami, though the Japanese publisher has yet to announce the deal. It remains to be seen whether any publisher want to pick up Brash's games in the works for 2010, like "Clash of the Titan," "Superman," "The Flash," etc. and pay to finish production.

Reps for Majesco haven't yet responded to a request for comment.

Now that they're all in, it's instructive to compare earnings growth for the public American video game publishers during the holiday quarter. (I'm excluding Activision Blizzard since it wasn't the same company a year ago, so comparisons are impossible; and I'm using GAAP numbers to compare apples to apples)

Company            Revenue change    Net income change
Electronic Arts           10%                      -1842%
Majesco                     76%                         55%
Take Two                    7%                         -33%
THQ                          -30%                      -1337%

All pretty crappy. But wait a minute. What's that company in the middle? The one with substantial growth not only in revenue, but growth in net income at a time when everyone else's losses were ballooning?

Oh, it's just Majesco. They're not even a real company, right? They just publish crap for the DS and Wii. And it's true that Majesco's market cap is only $31.4 million, $5.7 billion for EA, $571 million for EA, and $184 million for THQ. And all of its growth comes from a very low base, as does its 65% jump in stock price since Jan. 1 (all the way to $1.03.)

Except... Executing on the Wii and DS is exactly what other publishers are trying to do better. Have you even heard of "Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2009?" Me neither, but it sold over 500,000 units on the Wii alone. At $40 a pop, and given the low cost of making that game, it's a serious hit. By comparison, EA's "Madden NFL '09," which has a better brand and cost more to make, sold just 116,000 units in its first month (and has surely not gotten close to 500,000 since then). Majesco also has its "Cooking Mama" franchise, soon to become "Gardening Mama" as well, which has had four games sell a total of 3.7 million unit in the U.S. That's two successful Nintendo brands right there, neither of which require substantial spending.

What's remarkable is that Majesco didn't get to its current state through foresight so much as well timed failure. Back in 2005, the then-small publisher decided to try and compete with the big boys, releasing expensive AAA flops like "Psychonauts," "Advent Rising," and "Aeon Flux." You know how EA got burned this fall by "Mirror's Edge" and "Dead Space?" That's what happened to Majesco in 2005.

The result was that Majesco was teetering on the edge of financial ruin. Its solution? In what seemed like a desperate ploy to conserve cash at the time, president (now CEO) Jesse Sutton said in early 2006 that the company would focus on "publishing value priced software and games for handheld systems."

That, of course, was an extremely prophetic decision, because it meant Majesco by necessity focused on Nintendo's Wii and DS at a time when many other publishers were betting big on the 360 and PS3. Flash forward three years and everybody else is trying to jump on the Nintendo bandwagon that Majesco's very successfully riding.

Of course, the industry biggies want to produce better games than Majesco has done so far. But the "Cooking Mama" publisher is starting to up its quality bar a bit by hiring the developers of "Parappa" (there's something core gamers have actually heard of) to make a new Wii music title.

Obviously, EA and Take-Two and THQ and Activision are not looking to become tiny "value" publishers like Majesco. They'd like to keep mega-franchises like "Madden" and "Saint's Row" and "Bioshock" humming on the PS3 and 360 and even find a few more like them. But while they continue, in the words of THQ CEO Brian Farrell, making "fewer, better bets" in that space, they're looking to make more, smaller bets and essentially use the Majesco model as the solid base of their business.

And if THQ's "fewer, better" bets don't work out, well, Farrell might soon find himself sounding a lot like Sutton three years ago.