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?
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I wonder what will happen to Darksiders... that is the one I enjoyed the most.
Darksiders-will be sold at the THQ legacy auction
- All-new 2 hour single player campaign featuring Captain Price as Famine
- Thrilling online multiplayer featuring all-new "Horsemen perks" and Prestige systems
- Available once/year with slightly different title for $60
The Warhammer label being taken over by Creative Assembly (Total War) will be glorious.
When the new legacy IPs will be auctioned:
There will be a separate process to sell off the back catalog and IP. That process will take place in the coming weeks.
http://www.gameinformer.com...
If that will happen it will kick so much ass.
Jason Rubin is still a douchebag, right?
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?
We gamers need to buy the games we play...
Darksiders II - A solid game with about 1.25m in total sales across 4 platforms.
Saints Row 3 - A great open sandbox game. About 4.75m sales after two years across three platforms.
Homefront - A solid shooter. About 2.5m sales across four platforms after two plus years.
Assuming each game was $100,000,000 (Typical cost of a top game now-a-days) to build THQ probably just barely broke even on three games that gamers should have fully supported.
Each of these games should've sold 5m copies each in their first year given the number of platforms they shipped on. Anyone who thinks piracy and second hand sales don't hurt publishers should think about this.