Tag Archives: brian farrell

THQ CEO Brian Farrell believes games need to be less expensive, otherwise, there’s a risk of losing new customers.

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CEO Brian Farrell said during THQ’s call to investors last night the firm expects its digital sales to double next year, and continue to grow from there.

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THQ President and CEO Brian Farrell has said the industry doesn’t need a new console generation at the moment, because Move and Kinect will help extend each respective console’s life cycle while expanding the gaming audience.

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THQ’s Brian Farrell has said the company plans to experiment with a hybrid model of monetization with its titles in the future.

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THQ CEO Brian Farrell is a proponent of Cloud gaming, and believes it has the potential to lower the “entry barrier” into gaming for consumers who don’t wish to spend the cash on a console.

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THQ CEO Brian Farrell dropped quite a few noteworthy bits of information during his much quoted interview with IGN this week.

While we have covered this extensively, there was one other thing we couldn’t resist pulling from it, and that was the news that THQ would be showing motion control titles at E3 this year.

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THQ CEO Brian Farrell has revealed that the company’s internal developments are something that the other publishers “would be envious of”.

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THQ CEO Brian Farrell has been chatting about the company’s games coming out, and he reiterated that attendees at E3 this year will get to have a look at both Red Faction 3 and Saint’s Row 3.

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During THQ’s Q310 financial call to investors yesterday evening, CEO Brian Farrell revealed that the long in the making Warhammer 40K MMO will be shown for the first time at E3 in June.

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THQ has released its financial 2010 results for its second quarter which ended September 30, 2009 and will conclude for the year in March 2010.

While reporting a loss, things are looking up for the company as it has reduced its operating loss and is closer to breaking even since financial problems that plagued it last year.

While the company had no major product releases in the fiscal 2010 second quarter, net sales were driven by previously released games.

The company reported net sales of $101.3 million, compared with $164.8 million in the same period last year. On a non-GAAP basis, for the three months ended September 30, 2009, the company reported net sales of $100.4 million, compared with $151.6 million a year ago.

From the release:

For the three months ended September 30, the company reported a net loss of $5.6 million, or $0.08 per share, compared with a net loss of $115.3 million, or $1.73 per share, in the prior-year period. On a non-GAAP basis, for the three months ended September 30 the company reported a net loss of $25.2 million, or $0.37 per share, compared with a net loss of $30.4 million, or $0.46 per share, in the same quarter a year ago.

The company expects to report fiscal 2010 second half net sales similar to last year’s second half, with fiscal 2010 third quarter net sales that are approximately 5-10% below the same period last year, and a stronger fiscal 2010 fourth quarter than the prior-year quarter.

THQ plans to improve revenues year-over-year once its starts operating at a profit, and is confident that will happen once a predicted decline during the Q3 fiscal quarter is over.

CEO Brian Farrell said during the call to investors earlier that “THQ is now operating as a more efficient company”, and UFC 2009 Undisputed, WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2010, and MX vs. ATV Reflex will continue bringing revenue during the coming months.

Full PR passed the break.

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THQ CEO Brian Farrell said in the company’s financial call to investors yesterday that if THQ were to be graded on Red Faction: Guerrilla’s release – it would have received a “B”.

“Frankly, I think on the next generation of Red Faction: Guerrilla we need to do a better job of creating day one demand,” he admitted. “That being said, we do like the sales curve that its been exhibiting which shows that quality and word of mouth and downloadable content matters.

“I’d give us a B on the launch of Red Faction Guerilla. I think we did a good job, but I think we can do a better job with the next generation creating day one demand. As you know we moved the title a couple of times. That’s doesn’t help. I’m very pleased with a lot of the strides we’ve made recently, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do some things better.

“The amount it’s been dropping off, week after week, has been something that would indicate good word of mouth on the game based on the high Metacritic ratings.

“We are pleased to have established Red Faction Guerilla as a franchise on current gen consoles. Red Action Gorilla achieved an average metacritic rating of 85 and we have shipped more than one million units of this title to date. The game was a top ten best seller in the U.S. and the U.K. in June.

“We plan to drive future sales of Red Faction with continued advertising support and new downloadable content. We plan to continue to build this franchise by leverage Red Faction Guerilla’s outstanding technology platform in the future.

“We look at it as a revenue opportunity, but more importantly what we’ve learned with DLC is customer retention and customer engagement, primarily to prevent trade in and used games and to keep that brand active with the consumer.

“So when we look at DLC, the revenue, it’s not that great. It’s good, but we also like the fact that it keeps the customers engaged with our games for a long period of time.

You read the full thing through here.

THQ president and CEO Brian Farrell confirmed today during a call to investors that future iterations of the UFC franchise would expand onto Wii and handhelds.

“Over time, we plan to build our UFC franchise by expanding international sales and by developing games on new platforms such as handhelds and Nintendo Wii,” he said.

No details were provided regarding the next entry into the market, but Farrell confirmed that the game would become an annual release.

Earlier today, THQ reported UFC Undisputed had shipped 2.9 million units.

THQ boss Brian Farrell just called Natal a “platform addition” and said the 360 motion-sensing unit will launch “late next year”.

The exec’s comments came as part of a broad answer in the firm’s Q1 earnings call regarding the general state of the industry and console price-cutting.

Microsoft has never officially dated Natal’s launch, although company boss Steve Ballmer did say in June after E3 that a “natural interface” 360 will be out next year.

Ballmer quickly apologised for the remarks. Guess Mr Farrell didn’t get the memo.

THQ boss Brian Farrell just confirmed that Red Faction: Guerrilla has now sold more than 1 million units.

The news came as part of the firm’s Q1 earnings conference call.

Farrell held the game up as an example of the company’s commitment to quality: the firm’s games are achieving an MC average rating of 84 percent this year, compared to a 80 percent last year.

THQ CEO Brian Farrell said in the firm’s full-year earnings call last night that core games can’t break even in the 700-800,000 unit range any more.

“On the core titles, yeah, 700,000, 800,000 units, those days unfortunately we think are over,” he said in answer to a question about break even levels.

“But within the kids segment, the break evens are very low – I mean, depending on the title, how many SKUs you do, per SKU your break-evens are, depending on the platform, could be somewhere between even 100 and 400,000 units.”

The target sales level was “fairly low in the kids and mass appeal as you might suspect but much higher on the core titles,” the exec added.

Get all the rest of the news from the call here.

THQ boss Brian Farrell said in THQ’s full-year earnings call last night that a “softness” is entering Wii’s market, comments that will no doubt fuel speculation of an upcoming price cut.

“The Wii has been going for an unprecedented amount of time without a price cut,” Farrell said, suggesting that a weakening in the Wii market may be due in part to the economy and in part to the fact that the Wii “already [has] a pretty substantial install base at the current price point.”

Farrell also said in the call that he expects a PS3 price cut later this year.

Thanks, Gama.

THQ’s Brian Farrell has just described PS3 as a “challenging” format, saying he doesn’t expect the machine’s retail cost to drop at E3 in june.

“We’re not expecting a [PS3] price cut at E3, but we do expect one later in the year,” said the CEO.

“That’s just our guess… [and] not based on any knowledge from Sony.”

Farrell was speaking in THQ’s Q4 and year-end earnings call, which is ongoing.

THQ announced losses of over $430 million for the year ending March today.

Red Faction: Guerrilla is to get a multiplayer demo later this month, THQ CEO Brian Farrell has confirmed.

A single-player demo for the title has already released.

The full game is to release for PC, 360 and PS3 in early June.

Farrell was speaking in THQ’s Q4 and year-end earnings call, which is ongoing.

THQ announced losses of over $430 million for the year ending March today.

Speaking at the Wedbush Morgan Securities’ annual conference yesterday, THQ boss Brian Farrell said that sales of the original Dawn of War had now hit 4 million units.

“Warhammer 40k is one brand we should start talking about more,” he said.

“It is a PC-only game — but from the original Dawn of War game that we built at Relic from the original launch, through expansion through gold edition… we’ve done about 4 million units life to date on Dawn of War 1.”

Dawn of War II recently released, and more content is expected for the game this year.

Farrell talked up THQ’s core audience aspirations in his speech.

“I’m not sure [Metacritic] is the only thing to look at,” said Farrell, “but you’ve got to have a game that resonates with the consumers and the press.

“We know how to do this,” he said, noting that Saints Row has done 2.6 million units life to date at full price.

More on Gama.

Ever wonder what game industry CEOs make in a year?  It’s loads more than any of us, we guarantee.

According to The Game Trade Journal, between bonuses, stock options and incentives, the following CEOs are paid the most according to proxy statements filed with the SEC.

• Activision – Bobby Kotick: $14.9 Million; Base pay is $899,560 plus $5 million in bonuses last year with $3 million in incentives with $5.9 million of that in exercised stock options. Before the Vivendi merger, his grand total for the year was $2.8 million. (Activision lost $107 million in 2008)

• Electronic Arts – John Riccitiello: $5 Million; Base is $750,000, $3.6 million in stock options, $625,350 in incentives. (EA posted a loss of $641 million in Q4)

• THQ – Brian Farrell: $2.7 million; Base pay was $600,000 lower than 2007 which last year amounted to $651,087 and $1.4 million in option awards (THQ posed a $192 million loss for Q3)

• GameStop – Dan DeMatteo: $4.9 million; Expected to get a $2.4 million bonus this year.

• Midway -Matt Booty: $387,584; That figure is since October 2008. The previous CEO, David Zucker took in $1.5 million.

• Majesco – Jesse Sutton: $943,847; Base pay of $356,073 and a bonus almost equal that amount (Majesco’s net was $3.4 million last year)

• Take Two – Ben Feder: $1; Take-Two paid him $1 last year excluding health benefits because his check comes from Take-Two Chairman Strauss Zelnick. (Take-Two reported a profit of $97 million last year)

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