The fall of THQ

[Yantelope V2]

So this article came out today that had me scratching my head a bit.

 

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/40078/Just_how_badly_did_uDraw_hurt_THQ_anyway.php

 

How did they think they were going to sell so much of this?

 

Also, isn't THQ just in major trouble period because they don't have a single strong franchise? They managed to kill what potential was in Red Faction. UFC is not the NFL and Homefront is nowhere near being a competitor to either COD or Battlefield. Even Ubisoft has Assassin's Creed and Clancy to fall back on.

[Waldorf and Statler]

Darksiders has a strong potential to become a decently strong franchise. It sold about a million or more. But yeah THQ's down to fall is due more to the decisions made by the upper level people.

[deanb]

THQ also has the 40K license. Also they just knocked out Saints Row 3 not long ago. Alongside DarkSiders next year they've got the South Park RPG, which seems to have a fair amount of hype.

 

They put maybe a bit too much into the Wii, and they'll have fucked up share wise cos of Homefront being shit, then closing Kaos, then shelving Red Faction.

[Yantelope V2]

I don't know, I tend to think that it's the talent inside of your development studios that decides if you live or die. I mean, Square Enix has been floating aloft brand names recently but I don't think they'll continue to do it with the garbage they've been churning out. Then again, it aslo depends on how many times people will rebuy FFVI.

 

 

I don't know, I tend to think that it's the talent inside of your development studios that decides if you live or die. I mean, Square Enix has been floating aloft brand names recently but I don't think they'll continue to do it with the garbage they've been churning out. Then again, it aslo depends on how many times people will rebuy FFVI.

 

Due to content alone Darksiders and Saints Row will always be niche games I think. Maybe GTA broke through to mainstream success despite content but you also weren't beating people to death with giant dongs.

Edited February 3, 2012 by Yantelope V2

[Waldorf and Statler]

Breaking into the mainstream requires a lot of advertising. Considering that Darksiders did as well as it did by word of mouth, reviews, and fan hype alone I wouldn't be surprised if it gets snatched up by somebody else [if THQ inevitably fails]. I could see EA games with this.

[Yantelope V2]

Well, FWIW, metacritic shows THQ averages 2 points below average in their game releases.

 

http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/company/popular

 

EA is a 72

 

Bethesda is a 70

 

Activision is 67

 

Ubi is a 66

 

THQ is near the bottom with 64

[Waldorf and Statler]

To be fair, every one of those developers has their decent share of shittastic gimmicky games, really bad shooters, and licensed titles.

 

THQ just has less high rated titles because they focus a little bit TOO much of their resources on the above, and they unfortunately don't have the capital of the other major publishers to bring out AAA titles alongside these.

[WTF]

Actually Dean THQ hold the license to publish it, if THQ is going down I doubt gamesworkshop will let THQ keep the license.

 

Here's the stupidest thing that I personally believe THQ is doing and that's basically publishing digital games developed by people from Atari who worked on classics such as Centipede, Yars revenge etc. If you take a look at last year's Yar's Revenge you can see how bad that was. Atari right now is a crap developer to be honest and despite their pedigree most of the devs on board last made games before many of us were even born. It's like asking the buggles to come out with a new pop hit.

 

The issue with THQ is poor management, their CEO isn't terrible but when the CEO takes a 50% paycut it means some serious crap is going on. Lately they've made filings with the SEC and that usually happens when there's inside info that something good or terrible is going to happen and looking at the current state I think we know what's going to happen.

Their current market capital is under 38M and their shares are 53cents a pop. A NASDAQ delisting is highly likely just like what happened with Atari and they've already said that if they don't keep it above $1 for 4 weeks before September it will be delisted (they can appeal after that but unless there's a massive portfolio it's unlikely).

 

THQ's primary breadwinner wasn't any of the core games but rather the casual games they made for the Wii and DS. When Disney pulled their licenses they pretty much had the wind knocked out. They focussed on core because they felt that's where the money lies and it's not entirely wrong. However the market has serious issues right now.

 

People are competing to make the next MW, BF, Halo etc. Of course Nintendo ips such as Mario are stronger but the thing is selling a million is no longer enough for companies like them. When you put massive budgets to make the next big thing selling a million will not bring back the results. Instead if they focussed on making smaller niche games on a lower budget they would have been better served. Relic is doing ok with PC sales but it's not enough. Saints Row did 3.6 M till Dec and 200k this year (because there weren't many releases). Now that newer releases are coming up it's unlikely that it'll even do 100 per month and the sales have petered out. Saints Row is their biggest ip right now. Darksiders 2 will probably do another 2-3 Million if they release it in Summer (which they are now instead of Autumn) because of the draught of games in that period. They have to put more resources into it to release it as polished as possible but they won't delay it because it's a matter of life and death for the company now.

 

Most of the other titles in their belt are new ips. UFC could've done ok but the last one flopped and that puts the new game in a precarious position as it has to regain the audience that it had with the first title. Every other game is either going to sell sub 1.5 M (if that) or do worse. At this point it's literally like watching the slowest car crash in the world and it's not great :/. Honestly they hope to cut down 160Million with all those admin and sales jobs cuts and closures. But even that who knows. It's most likely going to be bought out and the most likely candidate for a buyout right now is Warner Brothers. With stocks tanking like they are and market capital just falling someone with 60-90M could potentially buy them out and that's what shareholders would hope as if they go bankrupt everyone loses inc gamers.

[Connorrrr]

I'd like to think THQ still have some fight left in them. As pointed out, there're two big releases on their way, Darksiders 2 and Metro: Last Night, both of which should at least sell moderately well. They've also done very well with Saints Row: The Third. It's a shame though that no matter how well they do with Saints Row and the two upcoming games, it's all only gonna serve to heal the wounds caused by uDraw than anything else.

[deanb]

Actually Dean THQ hold the license to publish it, if THQ is going down I doubt gamesworkshop will let THQ keep the license.

 

Here's the stupidest thing that I personally believe THQ is doing and that's basically publishing digital games developed by people from Atari who worked on classics such as Centipede, Yars revenge etc. If you take a look at last year's Yar's Revenge you can see how bad that was. Atari right now is a crap developer to be honest and despite their pedigree most of the devs on board last made games before many of us were even born. It's like asking the buggles to come out with a new pop hit.

I know they don't own 40K, just a license, which is what I said

 

As for Atari, Atari now is just a name. Has been for a long time, the people at "Atari" now are not the people that made Pong and the 2600.

[Strangelove]

The only THQ games I used to buy were the WWF games back in the PS1 and PS2.

 

And Square Enix does a lot more than Final Fantasy. Despite what you may think of their "big" 360/PS3 games, their original PSP stuff often ends up being awesome. Not only that, but Nier was awesome, and they also published Deus Ex HR and the new Tomb Raider game.

[WTF]

@Dean. lol well didn't notice. The rest was in general though and not aimed at you .

 

As for Atari, yeah that's true but they did release TDU2 which is terrible and only remembered for that silly dance sequence of Oakenfeld's My girl and now have TD:Ferrari somehow.

 

@connorrr

Honestly from a financial standpoint, THQ don't really have a lot of fight left in them. They're quite desparate. They have about 46M in cash about barely, lets put this in perspective; even a smallish company like NIS has more cash than that and they only publish niche titles and that too primarily on Sony platforms and some on Nintendo. THQ has 2 major products going to be released on which they have to spend money for marketing. THQ has good distribution channels - in fact that's one of the reasons why they aren't a totally terrible buy. They do distribute Capcom games in Australia too (just a random fact showing how far it reaches technically).

Now Darksiders 2 has a sizeable budget, Metro is developed by an independant studio, 4AA and THQ are the publishers. THQ obviously has invested money in it but if things go sour for them, 4A can still release the game with a different publisher and THQ's remnants can get some fee from the publishing purchase.

Those games honestly do not have more than a 2-3M at max selling power right now. They also only count to the next FY which is a good thing as they can't get any lower. But there's a lot of money they have to get rid of. Speaking as a gamer I do not think they should sell any studios but speaking from a financial standpoint - it's best to sell a studio or two.

 

When it comes to costs, Volition must be a cheap operation since it's in Champaign and I hear that it's cheap to live there plus they have some of the best computer science graduates out there. That studio should be their last fortress (probably why they're focussing on inSane there) and of course Montreal with Desiliets. Considering CA subsidies and his vintage they could do something but no game's been announced as yet.

Relic while great under THQ is probably a good sell to be fair though they're a decent revenue earner. Thing is CoH has had a minor brand death thanks to the online game. Homeworld has been dormant for nearly 9 years now. It has a tiny audience and anyone can make their own new space game if they wanted. Homeworld as an ip is mostly dead unless it is brought back with a decent budget sort of like Syndicate is without a genre change hopefully.

Vigil is the one that'll need help. Darksiders is a decent ip but the MMO isn't going to go far and Vigil's basically working on the two of them. Obviously we'll find dev switching from the MMO to Darksiders which would mean the MMO ends up dying a slow brutal death as there's no idea when it could even come out and they admitted they need help developing it.

 

Here's the thing - outside of Darksiders 2 - everything is either licensed or could be sold to other publishers. It all depends on what the market dictates. If they don't feel confident and the market value declines to a ridiculous degree (which it already has) then they could buy themselves out and hold it but it would make getting investments difficult and thus they'd have to sell publishing rights for a few games (one of the nightmare scenarios) or they'd file for bankruptcy after the release of the games set for FY2013.

 

Regardless THQ is mostly done for as a major publisher, they can refocus on digital distribution if they can cut the weight. They'll need to cut down all massive budget productions that are being preproduced right now. If there were new consoles it'll be good for them but seeing the tepid response to the WiiU they must be worried which is why they were hoping for new consoles from MS and Sony. It's going to be a lot more painful before it gets better.

p.s. I doubt we'll see another Darksiders from them after this at least not before 2015/16.

p.p.s. This generation will see the death of the mid-tier game because of inflated budgets. Selling 1M with those budgets isn't profitable, they need to look at niche publishers who've been forced to cut budgets. A good example again here is NIS who were in serious trouble before Disgaea 4 and a 40k sales on the vita for D3 portable was good enough. Atlus works similarly too.

[WTF]

And Square Enix does a lot more than Final Fantasy. Despite what you may think of their "big" 360/PS3 games, their original PSP stuff often ends up being awesome. Not only that, but Nier was awesome, and they also published Deus Ex HR and the new Tomb Raider game.

 

Agreed with what you say but disagree that it's actually what Squeenix had in mind.

SE does a lot of games from the old Taito releases such as Space Invaders which had infinity gene 2 years ago and they made a smart purchase of Eidos which has helped them a fair bit by being quite profitable with deus ex and now tomb raider, thief and the next 2 hitman games(whatever we think of it, it'll do about right for the budget). Their PSP stuff is usually good, they have a pretty strong mobile presence which moved from the mobage to the android and ios platforms.

Nier was a fluke for them because they worked with AQ Interactive's Cavia for a few games. The director of Nier has since left the company (Right after they were made defunct by absorption into AQ interactive who are right now in turn defunct by absorption into Marvelous Interactive). Square Enix had a deal with AQ on publishing and owning the ips of a few games made by them from Nier to Mindjack which worked out mixed for them.

 

As for what Yante expressed, even Square Enix realises that there's been considerable brand damage done to Final Fantasy with the botched FF14 (According to them) and some degree FF13 and they need to improve on it to regain consumer confidence. As a result they have begun to streamline operations and we can see that the gap between western and Japanese releases are down from a few years to between 3 and 6 months. Forgetting type 0 (Which they didn't release yet probably because they knew they wouldn't be able to release it before the vita release and thus are waiting for a later date plus international version release later in the year to release it - considering the title has been trademarked and some localisation efforts have been going on). We will increasingly see synergy between their developments. Square Enix is relying on the strengths of their western devs and in Japan all they need is to release Dragon Quest and that does insane numbers in a single market. They'll be fine financially.

 

THQ on the other hand seems to possess a body that's disjoint from its head and limbs.

[Strangelove]

The thing is, outside of the main series, FF games are still really good. Dissidia is fun, Crisis Core is one the funnest rpgs ive played in a long time, the Tactics games are also awesome. Birth By Sleep is the best KH game of them all and it came out last year.

I know a lot of PS1 FFT fans hated FFTA 1 and 2, but I loved those. The remakes they release are often NOT lazy cash-ins. FF4 was made from the ground up with new features galore on the DS and the FF4 on the PSP is a beautiful 2D gem.

 

I know the main FF series is something people find precious to them and SE have fucked them up, but its no reason to hate the entire company.

[Waldorf and Statler]

Meh. Squeenix used to be THE developer of RPG's. The problem is that they've been trying to cater to western audiences with a lot of their published games, when they don't realize that a majority of that western audience doesn't want that.

 

I'm not giving Squeenix credit for Eidos' line-up of great motherfucking titles that are coming out. I'll give them credit for their big games. FFXIII was a bad Final Fantasy game no matter how much people want to deny it, if a big portion of fans absolutely abbhored it, it was for a reason. A large part was due to how long the game was in development and how it didn't live up to expectations. I have a feeling Versus XIII will have a similar experience as in it has been overhyped way too long. It might be a badass game, but unfortunately the chances are it won't live up to the hype. To regain money for this game, they'll probably have to port it to the 360 as well.

 

And now Kingdom Hearts. Square Enix is doing its motherfucking hardest to squeeze in as many fucking Kingdom Heart interquels and prequels before they eventually start on the third one. That is bullshit. They aren't even done with Versus XIII. What the fuck is taking them so long?

[Connorrrr]

Meh. Squeenix used to be THE developer of RPG's. The problem is that they've been trying to cater to western audiences with a lot of their published games, when they don't realize that a majority of that western audience doesn't want that.

 

I'm not giving Squeenix credit for Eidos' line-up of great motherfucking titles that are coming out. I'll give them credit for their big games. FFXIII was a bad Final Fantasy game no matter how much people want to deny it, if a big portion of fans absolutely abbhored it, it was for a reason. A large part was due to how long the game was in development and how it didn't live up to expectations. I have a feeling Versus XIII will have a similar experience as in it has been overhyped way too long. It might be a badass game, but unfortunately the chances are it won't live up to the hype. To regain money for this game, they'll probably have to port it to the 360 as well.

 

And now Kingdom Hearts. Square Enix is doing its motherfucking hardest to squeeze in as many fucking Kingdom Heart interquels and prequels before they eventually start on the third one. That is bullshit. They aren't even done with Versus XIII. What the fuck is taking them so long?

 

The Kingdom Hearts issue in particular is one that strikes a nerve of mine. I was a big fan of Kingdom Hearts 1 and, to a lesser extent, 2, but all the games that have come out between it have been mediocre at their best (Birth by Sleep was okay) and awful (358/2 days was horrible).

 

Squeenix are a real disappointment to me these days, I've not really enjoyed one of their games in a long time and I won't give them credit for publishing better games than they can make (Deus Ex: HR was beyond awesome).

[Waldorf and Statler]

To be fair, they're sitting on a gold mine of a new ip with The World Ends With You.

 

Expand that into a Kingdom Hearts-like title, and you've got yourself another great IP.

[Connorrrr]

To be fair, they're sitting on a gold mine of a new ip with The World Ends With You.

 

Expand that into a Kingdom Hearts-like title, and you've got yourself another great IP.

 

Yes, a hundred times over. The World Ends With You is one of the first games I mention when people ask me for great games on the DS. I'd love to see them do something else with it, I don't see why they wouldn't make one at least on the 3DS, and maybe even on the Vita if it takes their fancy.

[excel_excel]

Man, its crazy how much money Udraw sucked out of THQ. in the US, WWE 12 did over 350,000 copies sold in its first week, which was a massive improvement over WWE Smackdown vs. RAW 2011 which did just over 220,000 in its first. I thought that Space Marine did really well as did Saints Row 3....man. Crazy.

[WTF]

I'm assuming you guys are up to speed on TWEWY and the fact that the brand continues to live on in Kingdom hearts and will do so for at least 2 games (the 3ds game and the sequel to BBS) and after that depends on reception.

 

The reception to the game was poor, it didn't sell a lot and thus it requires other franchises to boost it.

 

And you can say what you like about Eidos and try to differentiate it from Square Enix but the truth remains that if Square Enix did not inject money into them with their purchase and give them access to their animation studios (which can be seen in Deus Ex and in Thief) all those ips would be left to rot for a fair while and Eidos would be split between a few companies. SE may not be the best but they are definitely doing a good job of managing Eidos IPs and nurturing them with a little help from Canada. Also it is a good thing that they're taking the Hitman series away from IO interactive considering what they decided to do with the new game and letting their new studio opened in Montreal (being managed by the the team that did Deus Ex and now Thi4f) take over the franchise after the next release.

[Strangelove]

Nintendo gets the absolute worst KH games. I wonder if its done on purpose. Otherwise, I kind of hate the first KH game now. Its so bad when I went back to it. Small stages with shitty platforming isnt fun. Birth By Sleep is the definitive KH game to me followed by KH2.

[Waldorf and Statler]

Birth By Sleep was ok but I don't like replaying the game over and over again to see the whole story.