Not a big FPS fan, but I'm not surprised.
The very concept of the game was kind of ridiculous, as a possible future scenario it's hard to take seriously. While a lot of people didn't like my points about the likely reception to a North Korean space program (along with the idea of most similar nations getting as involved in space like this concept requires) it remains true. Then there are of course questions as to how they would be able to just waltz accross the entire world that quickly and establish the supply lines needed to maintain conventional forces on US soil, and of course why even with an EMP device we wouldn't have been waiting for them as a lot of our military is already protected against exactly this kind of thing due to the long-standing possibility of a nuclear exchange. That's why there are all those jokes about the goverment hiding missles and hardware under cornfields and such, the idea was to protect them from a massive country wide bombardment and fulfill our end of MAD if we faced a sudden, overwhelming attack. Not to mention how things like NORAD aren't going to be penetrated by something like this, and all of the military forces we have that aren't in the US (we don't keep all our eggs in one basket). Our submarine fleet alone would ruin their day, stealth is one of their big things, and one of the reasons we have them all over the world is because of exactly this kind of potential situation (albiet with a much more likely source). The US gets flattened, we've still got a whole crapload of WMD and other weapons under the ocean, and almost impossible to detect if it wants to sail right up to someone's coast line (or the closest one) and cut loose. There have been "Techno Thrillers" written about the possibility of US Subs losing all contact with the US mainland due to an unlikely string of events, and then assuming it was destroyed and acting under orders for a "World War III" scenario.
The point isn't the specifics, but simply that a game like this relies on suspension of disbelief to work. With "Red Dawn" this was possible because the USSR was another super power and believed to be as powerful as the USA (our opposite number). Everyone knew The Cold War was a massive conflict we could potentially lose. North Korea isn't that kind of a super power, and likely would not become one in 20 years, and has been so off it's rocker-crazy that nobody is going to trust them to do anything on that level. I mean these guys periodically fire missles at Hawaii to try and prove they can reach it so they can freak
out the US, nobody is stupid enough to let them just develop and launch a "peaceful" satellite.
On top of all of this, it's really apparently a sub-par game. Like it or not the standards are set by the best games out there. This is why so many MMOs failed to compete with WoW, even if they launched with more than WoW had when it first appeared, they weren't competing with WoW then, but WoW now. Right now "Call Of Duty" and "Battlefield" are setting the standards for modern shooters. For more fantastic shooters you have things like "Killzone", "Halo", and numerous others. If you can't produce at that level you shouldn't be expecting to be massively successful.
Ridiculous premise that has little going for it other than being contreversial, attached to a game far short of the current standards overall. It's easy to see what happened.
Honestly THQ's big problem was trying to jump in for a piece of the FPS pie, as that is the usual "cash in" game genere for some quick bucks, but like MMOs that's kind of dried up due to a few franchises rising to finally dominate it. THQ probably should have taken the time to focus on their Warhammer liscences. "Retribution" is okay, but really they could do with another full out "conquer the system" game like "Dark Crusade" or "Soulstorm" to be honest. Not to mention that the liscence DOES have potential for things other than RTS games and MMOs. A single player RPG game in the spirit of say "Dragon Age" or "Mass Effect" is quite doable. There is even a crutch of sorts given that there is a PnP RPG that they can use for the stat portions nowadays.
A game where you say play a Rogue Trader who recruits a crew for his ship and head out looking for some legendary cache of Archaotech would work quite well. Loot in the form of Archaotech, Xeno-tech, and other things is obvious rewards along the way, things like Hive Cities and Space Hulks are pefect for dungeon crawls, you've got spire habitats for towns, and entire planets that can covered with ruins and monsters. Enemies can include the Inquisition (their relationship with treasure hunting Rogue Traders is... interesting), Orks, Aliens, Chaos, and whatever else, there is a huge possible bestiary.
They already have the 40k liscence and just need to work with the RPG guys to use the mechanics, and it's as ready made as D&D ever was.
I mean, with possibilities like that, and given how well they Warhammer 40k franchise seems to have done by them (even if Dawn Of War II is a bit lacking in some areas, I still maintain that Soulstorm is probably the high point of their development there), I'm surprised someone thought "Let's do a Red Dawn game, but with Koreans" was a good idea especially with the FPS genere so heavily camped out by titans right now. With companies like Bioware going increasingly casual for the moment (and we see how that's going with the sloppily made "Dragon Age II" and associated rage) there is a decent market of serious RPG gamers waiting to be exploited and while not as big a market as many other ones potentially are, it IS reliable and has been a backbone market for the industry virtually since there has been a PC gaming industry.
