It’s offical. THQ has gone bust and the games it was publishing have been sold off. These are tough economic times and it seems that one or two failed games can mean the demise for many publishers.
THQ has a special place in my heart, being one of those companies that wasn’t scared to take risks by trying new things but unfortunately that was the reasoning behind their demise. We as gamers only have ourselves to blame by not trying anything new as figures suggest that new IP’s do not sell as well as sequels, no matter how good they are. If this carries on the future of gaming looks very bleak indeed, with the only big console games being sequels. How does Call of Duty 27 and FIFA 2050 sound?
Alex & Mike talk Biomutant, a game from Experiment 101/THQ Nordiq you likely have not heard of. While the AAA side of the industry tends to homogenization and imitative, cinematic presentation, “AA” games remain creative and innovative in 2021. Drawing on inspirations as varied as Dark Souls, third person shooters & kung fu cinema, Biomutant is Ratchet & Clank on acid, developed by a team of 20 people.
Remember THQ? They published such games as Avatar: The Last Airbender, Darksiders I & II, the Destroy All Humans series, Homefront, the Red Faction series, and Saint's Row 1-3. Almost as famous as their games were the THQ marketing stunts, including a Golden Wii.
PlaySation gamers are in for a treat today! Not only did Sony roll out its “Double Discount” PlayStation Store sale, but there’s also a THQ Humbe Bundle PS4 discount happening too!
What about Company of Heroes 2?
I wonder what will happen to Darksiders... that is the one I enjoyed the most.
Tr10wn, Platinum Games expressed interest in getting Darksiders. It's just a matter of price.
Jason Rubin is still a douchebag, right?
I don't have much sympathy for a publisher that uses online passes. =/ Especially in the way that Saints Row 3 was setup.
More like crappy management. There's a great article about how piss poor THQ management was that came out a while back. If you can find it, it's worth the read. Very insightful.
It's one of those things. It seems some companies are too rigid and others are too loose.
There is a happy medium somewhere, that allows for creative paths to be taken, that don't aren't such huge risks, but THQ couldn't do it.
They made a bunch of idiotic mistakes, and towards the end (last few years) that that open environment went authoritarian crackdown.
In some ways they promised too much, and no one kept them on track, while for others they simply went down the wrong path. It really was a management issue.
How can someone sell you Homefront like they did, yet a year later almost have nothing to account for their money? Then they send a taskmaster to finish the game. Homefront was okay. The multiplayer was pretty fun. Not great, but fun.
Metro, while being very interesting, came out a few years too early. High development costs for making a game that most PC's can't run well except at the lowest settings. Even a GTX 670 struggles to play it well years later.
Red Faction Guerilla was a great game. Epic multiplayer. But they pissed off alot of fans by making two big mistakes with Red Faction Armageddon, ditching it's epic unique multiplayer entirely. Then turning an open world game into a linear one, with most of it underground on Mars...thus didn't take much advantage of it BEING on Mars. People were looking forward to an open world game that has epic multiplayer, and Armageddon had neither. Just a linear experience, that had co-op so someone could experience that linear game with someone.
Personally I wonder if when they say 'volition' was sold to Koch Media if that means it includes all IP's Volition was attached to? Perhaps someone will return the Red Faction series to it's original glory, and reintroduce it's epic multiplayer.
Saints Row franchise was a lot of fun. But most people saw it as a reduced quality GTA. In some ways it was, but it always had the fun aspect that GTA seems to have lost in GTA IV.
Recently got Darksiders I and II with steam sale, but have yet to play them yet (big game backlog).
Overall there were some quality experiences and IP's, it just wasn't focused enough from a management level to make it work. Someone has to pull together the ideas and get them working without being taskmaster or neutering the great ideas. They just couldn't make it work. It was either too ethereal of an idea or had a taskmaster focusing on completion plus a few bad design decisions along the way.
When Wall Street pulls it's funding, it's over. At least some of the IP's will get another chance. Hopefully more than what's reported. Personally Red Faction for me.
The sad thing is, seeing how most of the TBTF's are infinitely broker than THQ...how come THQ gets sold off at bankruptcy...yet the TBTF's get bailouts and continue to keep your deposits in hock that will soon require another multi tens of trillion bailout?