Kotaku
Despite reporting modest revenue growth for its 13th consecutive year, THQ reported a net loss of $35.3 million for the fiscal year ending March 2008. The company's sales totaled $1030.5 million, relatively little change from last year's $1,026.9 sales.
THQ president and CEO Brian Farrell said that most of its struggles were due to a crowded and competitive market for kids' games, as well as key franchises — Juiced, Stuntman and Conan that ultimately "were simply not competitive."
"Insufficient game quality led to inadequate sellthrough, resulting in markdowns at retail," Farrell said.
Farrell said the company spent heavily to promote Juiced and Stuntman, and had to take a loss when those titles fail to perform. What growth THQ did see, Farrell credited to Frontlines: Fuel of War, MX vs. ATV Untamed and WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008, all of which exceeded expectations.
Farrell also said the kids' market, in which THQ has several franchises, was the most competitive in years, and that the company's currently struggling to compete with music games and Nintendo first-party titles.
Nonetheless, THQ appears to have placed its faith in the Wii, concentrating much of its upcoming original IP there. Although Saints Row 2 and Red Faction Guerrilla are still the "anchors" of its lineup, Darksiders, De Blob, Deadly Creatures, Big Beach Sports and All Star Cheer look likely to be slated for Wii along with other unannounced projects, though the company did not announce specific platforms.
New installments in existing franchises for fiscal 2009 include WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2009, Disney/Pixar's Wall-E film tie-in, and its previously-revealed Nickelodeon portfolio. The company will publish a game based on DreamWorks' Animation's unannounced 2010 fall film, and has slated WWE: Legends of Wrestlemania for 2009.
Notably, the company seems to have an eye on the free-to-play, microtransactions-driven online gaming market in Asia, highlighting the co-publishing agreement it's signed with Shanda Interactive to bring Company of Heroes Online to China in 2009.
THQ is more confident about the year to come, with three new initiatives in place: "We are rolling out a stronger slate of products. We have put in place and are executing against initiatives to improve our product quality and competitiveness. We are also realigning our cost structure to generate significant operating leverage in fiscal 2009. We believe these initiatives will restore profitable growth and improve value for shareholders," said Farrell.
"We faced a number of challenges, but I believe we have the right strategy to overcome these challenges and achieve significant growth."
Comments
what? nothing to say about the potential of Dawn of War 2? Meh.
I'm excited for the ne RF, and I hope it'll help them out of this funk. Although using Gary Busey to counter the biggest media release ever isn't helping things out too much
I used to think of THQ as the bargain binners extraordinaires.
In recent years they've really improved the quality of their products. I own a bunch of their games now (and Stuntman was excellent).
You'll get better THQ! no biggies!
Here's a handy translation guide:
Quote:
"Juiced, Stuntman and Conan that ultimately 'were simply not competitive.'"
Translation:
"Compared to Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4, our games sucked."
Quote:
"Insufficient game quality led to inadequate sellthrough, resulting in markdowns at retail,"
Translation:
"Nobody bought our shitty games, so retailers booted them to the bargain bin, where they STILL didn't sell"
Hope this helps everyone.
When I was 17,
I drank some very good beer.
I drank some very good beer
I purchased with a fake ID
My name was Brian McGee
I stayed up listening to Queen
When I was 17.
... and they need to make a WH40k mmo. I'd buy that.
they should churn out more Saint's Row games immediately after the GTAIV craze dies down a bit
They are making a Warhammer 40,000 MMO, out of Vigil.
@PissedPS3Fan: Lay off, eh? They had the balls to blame "Insufficient game quality" instead of fairies and goblins. It's commendable.
THQ needs to revive the WCW/NWO type games. It was 4 player mayhem of pure delight!
More Translation:
"struggles were due to a crowded and competitive market for kids' games"
Our Wii shovelware couldn't compete with Cooking Mama.
Well, now you know DoW mmo is definitely coming.
Why wouldn't they try the dive?, they got enough fanboys.
Even more translations:
"We faced a number of challenges, but I believe we have the right strategy to overcome these challenges and achieve significant growth."
You're born, you take shit. You get out in the world, you take more shit. You climb a little higher, you take less shit. Till one day you're up in the rarefied atmosphere and you've forgotten what shit even looks like. Welcome to the layer cake son.
Ill buy Deadly Creatures. And they should make more wrestling games for the 64, I had like 4 of those when I was a kid.
At least they don't fake it to save the face, saying that their titles performed excellently and that they rule... only to declare bankrupt a few months later.
More Company of Heroes = more money. Do it.
@kspraydad4: I blame Nintendo XD, seriously who the hell would buy a...Hannah *shudders* mon...ta...na... game (that just send a nasty shiver down my spine)
@Moonshadow101: Yeah, I gotta admit, that was a little surprising to me. At least they're not blaming it on the economy, piracy, or GTA4.
Wait.. they made more than a billion dollars but still lost 35 million?! There are clearly some really awful financial decisions being made there if they burned through a billion dollars.. that's just ridiculous.
I loved Fontlines: Fuel of War. Too bad they hosed it with bad marketing. Should have called it something less lame. It's literally WW3 why not allude to that in the title?
I saw no mention of Supreme commander. That's one of my favorite strategy games!
I have confidence that Volition (the anchor with both of those titles) will come out swinging and do good for THQ.
Ouch. Well, Deadly Creatures looks good.
The part that we don't see is the part where they send out e-mails and hold company meetings to tell all their artists and software engineers that putting in 70 hour weeks just ain't enough and that if you want to be part of the "team" you'll have to suck it up and put in more effort.
aka: Get divorced, forget your children's names, and hunker down because you've got to feed the machine.
Sadly, only one side of the business is truly all fun and games.
Well lets see how many fun THQ games have I played this year.....oh that's right none! On top of that, they are totally screwing up Red Faction in my opinion. They should not fix something that isn't broken.
"Insufficient game quality" -
Hey THQ, how about finally patching that disgracefull MotoGP '07 bug on Xbox360, where your rider seed # is reset back to 100 every time you go into the settings menu. Yea, thanks for that.
They should just stop trying to make cheap bucks with liscensed shovelware.
Even there is competition, and the more people flood the same market (the Wii) with that crap, the harder it is to sell. No rocket science.
Nary a mention of STALKER, which THQ distributed in the US, and was their best title in FY08.
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