THQ Closes Homefront Studio

[Grabbin Keelz]

Shame to hear. Best of luck to the people let go.

When a studio can push over a million units less than two weeks after launch and end up shut down for its efforts, is it any wonder that most major-publisher releases these days are such derivative crapola?

Perhaps if you push 1 million units and still fail its a sign that your business practices are flawed in some way.

Games are costing more and more to make, but what is that money being put towards? Games seem to keep getting shorter, less complex, and less original. Yet the price to make them keeps rising.

What the fuck are they spending that money on?

They need to spend it on fully rendering your commanding officer's mustache so it looks nice and real when he's yelling at you.

 

[grigjd3]

There could be another side to this that THQ isn't bringing up. It's almost certainly cheaper to operate a studio in Montreal than to operate one in New York City.

 

[Still Life]

t laid a foundation, which THQ apparently felt was worth two things: one, a sequel, and two, absolutely no loyalty whatsoever to the people who put it down.

I remember THQ coming out in the press (damage control?) and claiming exactly this: claiming the game as a success; and claiming pride in the studio's work. For a new IP, in an over-saturated market, Homefront did OK and showed potential. Guess it wasn't enough.

Also, since when did an average score in the mid 70s indicate a poor game?

 

[Hybridwolf]

THQ, please just make saints row 3, then stop. Just take a breather and work out what you want your developers to do. Armageddon was good, saints row 3 will be brill, so use those success to stop ruining developers in vain attempts to make cod killers or even before they've made their first game. And above all else, make sure the next Dawn of War is either a completely new story or fecking gold dust, otherwise you might as well add that to the scrap heap.

 

[Sabinfrost]

The game was a commercial success, that alone should warrant the survival of the studio. If you shut down every studio after an average first release you would never see new development. Not to mention many of the great studios have learn't from their mistakes. Homefront was un-innovative yet hardly the worst game ever made. I'm convinced the successful sales should have warranted giving the studio a chance to improve.

 

[Corporal Yakob]

That Homefront picture is so delightfully appropriate >

Also: thats a shame, I enjoyed Homefront despite its flaws and would definitely have played a sequel if it'd been more polished.

 

[WanderingFool]

Shame to hear. Best of luck to the people let go.

When a studio can push over a million units less than two weeks after launch and end up shut down for its efforts, is it any wonder that most major-publisher releases these days are such derivative crapola?

Perhaps if you push 1 million units and still fail its a sign that your business practices are flawed in some way.

Games are costing more and more to make, but what is that money being put towards? Games seem to keep getting shorter, less complex, and less original. Yet the price to make them keeps rising.

What the fuck are they spending that money on?

Thats what im wondering...

Anyways, Im sort of torn, while I enjoyed Homefront MP, I did not feel it was a $60 game (thankfully, I got it for about half that off of Amazon). Maybe the sequal, made under a different studio, will fix alot of the problems of the first... Though I do think it might have gone better if they didnt set it up as a COD-killer... The only COD killer out there is Activision, as they will most likely drive it the way of GH.

 

[Mangue Surfer]

They needed to sell 2M to simple make it even. At least that's the chitchat in the industry.

Bilson said the game had crossed into profitability when THQ announced the one-million mark.

But that's what I said. That's industry chitchat. Came from someone from the Neo Play PR, brazilian publisher of the game. But the official version is that the game sold well, turned profitable, that everything goes fine and they're closing the developers to celebrate.

 

[Frotality]

THQ wanst to be EA so badly theyre even emulating EA's mistakes! i didnt really care for homefront, but shutting down the studio for not being as unreasonably successful as you wanted isnt really the best response.

 

[Hobonicus]

They had 2 big shots with making a great game and ended up making the same game twice, Frontlines and Homefront are very similar, Homefront is like a refined version of Frontlines.

I kind of lost hope that this studio would bring something new to the table and apparently so did THQ. I wouldnt close them but I would get rid of them.

Wow, even when losing jobs people still will bring their hate to the table. People losing their jobs is a bad thing no matter what your opinion is toward them.

I'm relly sad by this news, homefront may have not been a excellent game but at least they great ideas and original concepts. My feelings go out to the developers who lost their jobs.

This isn't about some average working man getting unfairly canned, they were highly paid video game developers for THQ. That's a very exclusive position. Yes there's a lot of subjectivity in all this, but Kaos was not a very good development team based on their two products. They could copy some common ideas, but every aspect of their games was generally below par.

Of course it's never fun to see people lose their jobs, but there is no way that I'd want Kaos holding an undeserved position in the game industry while there are so many better developers out there. I'd never want to jeopardize a game's potential just because I was sympathetic towards a team that clearly didn't belong.

Homefront sold well because of the money put into it, not because of it's quality. A huge advertising budget and AAA quality graphics will only get you so far and I think if another developer had been behind the product it may have even been a decent game.

Also, I'm curious about what original concepts you're referencing, I didn't notice any worth mentioning but I may have forgotten something.