THQ Sales Are "Even Worse Than Feared"

[Jubbert]

"We believe sales were lower-than expected for many titles in addition to uDraw, due in large part to a pattern of mediocre reviews"

What the fuck? Mediocre reviews are an indirect cause of low-selling games. Mediocre GAMES are what causes mediocre reviews, which cause losses.

How about keeping your popular RTS series in RTS format instead of slapping the IP onto a bland shooter?

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Dear THQ

If your noticing a decline in sales for your properties on the PC in the UK, that's because your idiots and you don't release your games on Steam. There have been a few of your properties I was going to but this year but decided not too because you didn't put them on Steam with the preorder the bonuses that you did with the rest of the world. Once you do I MAY reconsider.

Yours

a former Customer.

Is it just the UK Steam that doesn't get Steam games? It has to be because I know for a fact that a good portion of what they've released that isn't WWE Wrestling or UFC is on Steam in North America

No I just had a look they released most of their recent non-console exclusive games to steam. I see Saints Row 3 and Space Marine.

Umm... what about all of Red Faction, Dawn of War, Merto 2033, Darksiders???? There's a decent amount of THQ games on Steam so either you didn't look at all or the UK Steam just doesn't have the THQ games that North America has.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Oh well, back to the drawing board I guess.

HA! Very good.

---

They never should have canned Saint's Row: Drive By. Hey, they did the Destroy All Human games too? Looks like they did a few MLP games a few years back...Punisher but, it looks like their bread-n-butter is all of the WWE games they've done. Sorry, I was just on wiki...anyway, THQ seem to be able to pull themselves back up if they really want to. I'll take this uDraw thing as a tantrum and leave them alone. Hopefully they'll make up with Teddy Red-Faction

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

uDraw Table

It might not account for the whole shortfall, but let's be honest here, who the fuck would buy that POS?

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Crazy thought, why would you make a tablet soley for a console when if you made it for PC so kids could create art and save it and learn to use a PC. Something that could help them in a job market or to learn more than just gaming.

As someone who does use a tablet I can say early experience really helps with picking it up quicker and becoming better at digital art.

Yeah but then they'd have to competitively price it against real entry level graphics tablets.

 

[Callate]

This is really, really not surprising. So not-surprising that it's surprising that THQ, who presumably employs people with degrees whose job largely rests in the field of "assessing whether this would work in the real-world marketplace" didn't have anyone in that area explain that this wouldn't work (which is almost enough to make on wonder if there's a group of yes-men sitting around a table in a meeting room at THQ HQ.)

It sold on Wii? Also not surprising. Wii has a strong market for party games and children's entertainment, and Nintendo has a subset of DS fans prepped for the idea of stylus-based gaming. The rest of the world has already gone through a depression of expensive peripherals that now sit sullen and unused next to their televisions because no one makes software for them any more.

If you want to make art, or play a Pictionary clone, or something like Crayon Physics, you probably do it on a PC or Macintosh. If you want to use something like this for party games or coloring books, you might do it on a Wii; my strong suspicion is that the XBox 360 and PS3 crowd don't want to make crude scrawls on their HDTVs so that some online user can mock them.

Back another Saint's Row game, guys; that, we actually might buy.

 

[Snotnarok]

Crazy thought, why would you make a tablet soley for a console when if you made it for PC so kids could create art and save it and learn to use a PC. Something that could help them in a job market or to learn more than just gaming.

As someone who does use a tablet I can say early experience really helps with picking it up quicker and becoming better at digital art.

Yeah but then they'd have to competitively price it against real entry level graphics tablets.

That's not terribly hard if you simply include some fun things for kids to do, activities, games, something that gets the eye-hand coordination down a bit ya know?

 

[Ironman126]

Oh well, back to the drawing board I guess.

I see what you did there.

 

[Darth_Dude]

Jesus THQ.

Make and release Company of Heroes 2 already, that'll save you..

 

[samsonguy920]

Besides the part I never heard of this thing, and neither has a bunch of other people explaining one reason why sales sucked for it, I am confused at the part where THQ is suddenly in selling hardware.
What's next, is Intel going to be introducing their own OS? (Actually I wouldn't be surprised if they had one, just one that is very specialized for PC developers like Dell and Gateway)

 

[Jabbawocky]

Dear THQ

If your noticing a decline in sales for your properties on the PC in the UK, that's because your idiots and you don't release your games on Steam. There have been a few of your properties I was going to but this year but decided not too because you didn't put them on Steam with the preorder the bonuses that you did with the rest of the world. Once you do I MAY reconsider.

Yours

a former Customer.

Is it just the UK Steam that doesn't get Steam games? It has to be because I know for a fact that a good portion of what they've released that isn't WWE Wrestling or UFC is on Steam in North America

No I just had a look they released most of their recent non-console exclusive games to steam. I see Saints Row 3 and Space Marine.

Umm... what about all of Red Faction, Dawn of War, Merto 2033, Darksiders???? There's a decent amount of THQ games on Steam so either you didn't look at all or the UK Steam just doesn't have the THQ games that North America has.

I thought the dude who was complaining originally (i.e. not me who disagrees with the fact THQ release nothing on Steam) wassaying THQ release nothing new on there.

There loads of THQ products on Steam, pretty much everything bar WWE games.

 

[godofallu]

Yeah, well, fuck THQ.

Assholes keep closing entire studios and laying off for no damn good reason. I fucking hope they make a loss. Maybe that will convince them not to go further down that road.

No good reason? You must have missed the part in the article where it says they have been losing money and making shitty games.

Maybe no good reason is an understatement.

Look at Iron Lore and Kaos. "Oh, you made a game and it sold well? Well, you are fired, and we are closing your studio. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL lets make Wii games."

Maybe I shouldnt attribute it to malice. Maybe the folks at THQ are just really fucking dumb.

No good reason implies there was no reason to close down the studios, whereas what I was implying was that they had a very good reason.

THQ has less money and can't afford to pay as many employees. Kaos for example is responsible for making the flop that was Homefront tanking THQ's stock. If you have to let people go, doesn't it make sense to get rid of the people that took the majority of THQ's working capital and essentially burned it? If Kaos had made a better game, or had used less money in development THQ wouldn't need to lay people off.

 

[godofallu]

Yeah, well, fuck THQ.

Assholes keep closing entire studios and laying off for no damn good reason. I fucking hope they make a loss. Maybe that will convince them not to go further down that road.

No good reason? You must have missed the part in the article where it says they have been losing money and making shitty games.

Maybe no good reason is an understatement.

Look at Iron Lore and Kaos. "Oh, you made a game and it sold well? Well, you are fired, and we are closing your studio. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL lets make Wii games."

Maybe I shouldnt attribute it to malice. Maybe the folks at THQ are just really fucking dumb.

No good reason implies there was no reason to close down the studios, whereas what I was implying was that they had a very good reason.

THQ has less money and can't afford to pay as many employees. Kaos for example is responsible for making the flop that was Homefront tanking THQ's stock. If you have to let people go, doesn't it make sense to get rid of the people that took the majority of THQ's working capital and essentially burned it? If Kaos had made a better game, or had used less money in development THQ wouldn't need to lay people off.

The flop? They shipped 2.6 million copies, for fucks sake. Thats a whole lot of money.

I think you need to go back and take a look at the sales, then come back. THQ has been axing studios that make mediocre to good games that sell well for ages now, while keeping the ones that make shit games that dont even sell past the 500.000 mark.

I'm not talking sales, i'm talking profit. Homefront needed to sell 2 million units to break even.

 

[Scrythe]

What I can't understand is why all Wii peripherals require the remote to be physically plugged into it. I don't see why the device can't just plug (wirelessly or otherwise) directly into the console.

Seriously, a tablet is the most minimal of all computer peripherals (next to the mouse), and yet the Wii version insists on adding 30% extra space just so slot in the remote. Not only is that bulky, but it's going to be off-weight if you try using that on your lap. This is just plain ridiculous.

 

[BoTTeNBReKeR]

The problem with THQ is:
1) The vast majority of their games all seem to be pretty mediocre.
2) They can't market anything for shit unless it's Saint's Row or a Warhammer 40K game. No, Homefront didn't count because GODDAMN THQ, why would you even market that game in the first place?

 

[Something Amyss]

Back another Saint's Row game, guys; that, we actually might buy.

If it's like the last one, there's a good chance I'll pass.

Which they'll probably blame on something else. Like ponies.

 

[DVS Storm]

I've never heard of this uDraw before. Concept looks kinda cool. Nice job from the marketing team!