Will THQ survive?

Considering the immense hatred of publishers in this day and time, it's interesting to see how the public has handled the missteps by THQ over the past 12 months.  For those who don't know, THQ has been under a lot of financial stress in 2012.  This can be attributed mostly to the poor business choice of pumping a lot of money into the production of the ill-fated uDraw gaming tablets.  Originally it was produced for the Nintendo Wii, but was later released for the X-Box 360 and Playstation 3 consoles.

While hindsight is 20/20, and it is quite easy for me to say, "Yeah, I knew that would suck."  The truth is that it is a very poor investment for one very important reason.  No matter how good of an artist you are, using a pencil and paper will  always be cheaper, and usually look better than the general person who just wants to draw or color a picture.  Doing it "old school" will cost pennies, while the uDraw tablet was far more expensive.

 THQ was in a lot of trouble earlier this year.  Many speculated that they were going to declare bankruptcy, which was probably pretty accurate.  This caused the publisher to put pressure on Vigil games to have Darksiders II ready far earlier than they original intended.  Luckily, the bullet was dodged, and Vigil was allowed to delay the game a few more months.  The digital sales of add ons to Saint's Row The Third were attributed to the good news.  In fact, I would venture to guess that Volition's announcement and subsequent cancellation of the Saint's Row:  Enter the Dominatrix should prove that THQ now has their head above water and will survive, at least now.



There is some cannon fodder here, though, and THQ did have a serious loss to their gaming portfolio.  Unfortunately for them, it was probably the most up and coming IP that they had in their portfolio.  It is, of course, the UFC.  Electronic Arts is now in control of the UFC gaming IP, and while I doubt the games will be as good as THQ's games were (these games were worked on by Yukes, who makes the WWE games), they will still sell a ton.  EA is a master of marketing, if nothing else, especially when it comes to their sports games.   This is huge blow to THQ, because it was the one IP that they had that probably hasn't reached it's high point yet.    

One the positive sign, THQ has resigned their contract with World Wrestling Entertainment, which is a seriously high spot for the company.  Before UFC, the WWE games were a massive part of THQ's profits. The UFC's growing popularity has eroded some of that fan base away, but WWE is by no means a slouch.  In fact, with current WWE Champion and internet darling C.M. Punk on the cover of WWE 13, this could see some nice returns for THQ.  

What I don't expect to see is THQ taking many more chances on unproven IPs.   We've seen them take a few risks outside of the ill fated uDraw tablets.  They also attempted to take Red Faction in a new direction after the success of Red Faction Guerrilla, and took a shot in the dark on a new IP called Homefront.  Both franchises could have done well, but fell short due in sales due to low review scores and pretty mundane gameplay.  Guerrilla, itself, was a new direction from the Playstation 2/X-Box Red Faction first person shooters, adopting a sandbox style game similar to a Grand Theft Auto.  The final product was surprisingly excellent, and had the sequel, Armageddon, played more like that, then I believe it would have been a much stronger title.  On the other hand, Homefront was really an interesting idea that had one of the most intriguing ideas for a story I've seen in games.  The story revolves around North Korea invading the United States.  Unfortunately, good ideas don't always equal stellar sales.  Homefront was just another first person shooter, and couldn't stack up to Call of Duty or Halo.

 


THQ is probably going to head in the Activision/Electronic Arts direction, at least for now.   This means they will probably focus more on their heavy hitters than they usually would.  They've already announced Saints Row 4 will be out in 2013, and with WWE sticking around, those will be available for years to come as well.  I am interested to see how Darksiders II does.  If it does well, THQ will have another feather in the cap with at least two more bullets to fire.  You play as the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse in these games; War was the first game, and Death will be in the second (Pestilence and Famine, you're on deck...).  

My advice is that if you're going to try and sell some sort of add on to a console and you're not responsible for producing said console...let the console provider make it.  We've had way too much plastic crap come out this last generation.