Future of THQ is in question...

If it goes badly I hope somebody saves Relic. I want Company of Heroes 2 so bad.

I want Dawn of War 3 so bad!

Metro: Last Light MUST ship! If my wasteland-stalking quota isn't met, I can't be held accountable for my actions!

CoH2, Metro: Last Light, Saints Row (f*cking) 4, ... these games must come out. They must!

2K or EA should buy them out. They're worth 10M now!

interstate78 wrote:

2K or EA should buy them out. They're worth 10M now!

Considering the current state of affairs, I'd be happier with 2K I think. EA is...a little iffy with some of their business decisions.

I really like the IP and ideas that have been coming out of THQ. There's been an honest attempt to be a publisher that takes risks on interesting ideas. It would be terrible if the year ended not only with the 38 Studios falling apart, but THQ and all their studios as well.

ccesarano wrote:
interstate78 wrote:

2K or EA should buy them out. They're worth 10M now!

Considering the current state of affairs, I'd be happier with 2K I think. EA is...a little iffy with some of their business decisions.

I really like the IP and ideas that have been coming out of THQ. There's been an honest attempt to be a publisher that takes risks on interesting ideas. It would be terrible if the year ended not only with the 38 Studios falling apart, but THQ and all their studios as well.

I agree. I don't want to have to use origin to play CoH2.

Aw, man, I really want that South Park RPG.

Saints Row is my big worry, but really THQ have been coming it with a lot of quality stuff recently. I hope they don't go under.

ccesarano wrote:
interstate78 wrote:

2K or EA should buy them out. They're worth 10M now!

Considering the current state of affairs, I'd be happier with 2K I think.

A thousand times, yes. Keep EA the f*ck away from Saints Row 4.

I'd like to see Square-Enix take advantage of this and acquire Relic and Volition. They want in on the American market and are very hands-off.

Just give me my Saints Row before you go under, THQ.

Oh man. Imagine if THQ goes under and sells studios/assets, and 2K and/or Rockstar acquire the Saint's Row developers.

Talk about monopolizing a market.

MeatMan wrote:
ccesarano wrote:
interstate78 wrote:

2K or EA should buy them out. They're worth 10M now!

Considering the current state of affairs, I'd be happier with 2K I think.

A thousand times, yes. Keep EA the f*ck away from EVERYTHING!.

FTFY.

What's really frustrating about the whole thing is that they're blowing up because of a very, very bad bet on hardware, rather than their games explicitly sucking. Most of their games have been really good, but then they burned all the profits up, and now don't have any strength to survive delays in making more good games.

Assuming that they survive long enough to ship some titles, we might want to make extra effort to get the word out, because they may have trouble coming up with proper marketing spends. I didn't even know they'd shipped Darksiders 2 until just now. I'm not real interested in it, but I probably should have known that it was coming.

TheGameguru wrote:

THQ bet big on the Wii and it cost them dearly...

Examples? Perusing this list, I don't see anything that I would call a big bet. As I remember, uDraw was a moderate hit for Wii, then the next year they ratcheted up for a big multiplatform release and nobody bought it. Other than that, I think they bet big on core gamers and we didn't hold up our end of the deal.

I also think a lot of their licensed games for consoles started to fail because the dumb kids that would get their parents to buy that stuff would get it for 99 cents or free on their iPod instead.

Blind_Evil wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

THQ bet big on the Wii and it cost them dearly...

Examples? Perusing this list, I don't see anything that I would call a big bet. As I remember, uDraw was a moderate hit for Wii, then the next year they ratcheted up for a big multiplatform release and nobody bought it. Other than that, I think they bet big on core gamers and we didn't hold up our end of the deal.

I also think a lot of their licensed games for consoles started to fail because the dumb kids that would get their parents to buy that stuff would get it for 99 cents or free on their iPod instead.

yeah sorry.. I brain farted.. it meant to say THQ bet big on the UDraw.. I was thinking of what its name was and typed Wii because I knew it had come out originally for the Wii

THQ bet big on the uDraw and it cost them dearly... Really hoping that Metro Last Light manages to make it to the market.

Blind_Evil wrote:

I think they bet big on core gamers and we didn't hold up our end of the deal.

Kind of off topic and I'm picking on the wording in one post by one guy, but I really dislike this way of thinking. It's not gamers' job to keep publishers in business, and as you say a few words earlier, it's their (THQ's) bet. Everything is a bet in business to some degree, and it seems they didn't hedge it.

On one side I'm hearing that they bet big on the Wii and the other, that they bet big on core gamers. Wii. Core gamers. Anyone else see the problem here?

LobsterMobster wrote:

On one side I'm hearing that they bet big on the Wii and the other, that they bet big on core gamers. Wii. Core gamers. Anyone else see the problem here?

I think I need a venn diagram.

LobsterMobster wrote:

On one side I'm hearing that they bet big on the Wii and the other, that they bet big on core gamers. Wii. Core gamers. Anyone else see the problem here?

As terrible as this might sound, despite the quality of Darksiders 2, I don't think it should have been made. Not enough people are interested in that sort of game right now for it to stick. I'm pretty sure CoH2 will turn profits, falling on the DoW2 games being profitable and really giving Relic more of a name, but I can't say the same for the South Park game or Last Light. South Park, because it costs money to license that material, and Last Light because at the end of the day it was a mediocre game mechanically despite it having one of my favorite settings in a FPS ever.

Scratched wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

On one side I'm hearing that they bet big on the Wii and the other, that they bet big on core gamers. Wii. Core gamers. Anyone else see the problem here?

I think I need a venn diagram.

Imagine two big circles with about half the overlap you need to fund a game publisher.

SuperDave wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

On one side I'm hearing that they bet big on the Wii and the other, that they bet big on core gamers. Wii. Core gamers. Anyone else see the problem here?

As terrible as this might sound, despite the quality of Darksiders 2, I don't think it should have been made. Not enough people are interested in that sort of game right now for it to stick. I'm pretty sure CoH2 will turn profits, falling on the DoW2 games being profitable and really giving Relic more of a name, but I can't say the same for the South Park game or Last Light. South Park, because it costs money to license that material, and Last Light because at the end of the day it was a mediocre game mechanically despite it having one of my favorite settings in a FPS ever.

This post brings home a point to me, I don't doubt THQ are making pretty good quality games now (and they said last week they can't afford not to), but that might not be what they need right now which is profitable games, and those two things may not be related. Unfortunately as games production takes a good long time, and course changes is like turning a supertanker it could be too late for THQ as the financial situation seems to be moving on a different time scale. It would be annoying if the games queued up are decent successes financially and all they're doing is repaying debts and not working towards the future.

Define "profitable game" in the modern age. Is the knee-jerk reaction a CoD clone? Because we all know that doesn't work, and THQ especially considering Homefront was never a huge success (I cannot remember if it wound up making a profit though).

The thing is, who knew about Darksiders 2 coming out? That's the real question. They had a bunch of high quality CGI ads on YouTube, but I've already seen more presence for Dishonored and Halo 4 on television this holiday season. Dishonored is a brand new IP, yet that sold well. Is it only because it had a first-person perspective? I doubt it.

I know its unfair to compare a publisher in trouble with a big company like Microsoft or even Bethesda in terms of marketing budgets, but in that case you better make damn sure what little marketing budget you have is hitting the people that matter.

Oddly enough, it reminds me of the election we just got done. You don't want to hit the people already voting Red or Blue, you want to hit the people in between.

ccesarano wrote:

The thing is, who knew about Darksiders 2 coming out? That's the real question. They had a bunch of high quality CGI ads on YouTube, but I've already seen more presence for Dishonored and Halo 4 on television this holiday season. Dishonored is a brand new IP, yet that sold well. Is it only because it had a first-person perspective? I doubt it.

Considering it came out back in mid-august, I'm not surprised you're not seeing many ads for it right now. There was a bit of talk about it on GWJ at the time, but that was mostly our Darksiders meme, and less actual talk about the game.

Well of course you're not seeing commercials for it now. I more meant I didn't see any commercials for it at all on television, and that's where you're going to get a lot of folks that don't keep up with games regularly informed and interested.

LobsterMobster wrote:

On one side I'm hearing that they bet big on the Wii and the other, that they bet big on core gamers. Wii. Core gamers. Anyone else see the problem here?

They didn't bet big on either the Wii or core gamers. They bet big on the idea that the 360 and PS3 were good markets for family games (uDraw) that had already sold well on the Wii. The idea wasn't that core gamers would be buying uDraw tablets in droves but that there was interest in non-core games on those platforms. It wasn't a completely ridiculous idea, as the Kinect and Skylanders had demonstrated some degree of interest from non-core gamers in both hardware and software for the HD consoles, but unlike those products, the uDraw completely failed to find a market. If THQ had stuck with the Wii for their uDraw games rather than trying to expand that product line to the PS3 and 360, they likely wouldn't be in this mess.

Based on that Polygon article, it sounds like the money sink that was Homefront development around the same time as the uDraw debacle didn't help things either.

kuddles wrote:

Based on that Polygon article, it sounds like the money sink that was Homefront development around the same time as the uDraw debacle didn't help things either.

Yup, and Saint's Row The Third's success really kept them from going under that year.