Tag Archives: THQ

Ebert, here’s a fork and knife. Napkins are in the kitchen. Take as many as you’d like.

Now then, eat your words.

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Jumping up and down and waving your arms about like a lunatic/horrifyingly happy family is hard.

Developing a game where you do that, however, is not.

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Microsoft and Sony have all but faked their own deaths on the spot in order to avoid talking about the next-next-gen of gaming consoles.

Valhalla Entertainment founder Tomonobu Itagaki, however, isn’t waiting around for silly little things like details and tangible hardware.

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Ever sat around waiting for someone to build a house of cards so you can leap out, do your best impression of Godzilla, and send it crashing to the ground – cards quickly sponging up your friend’s salty rush of tears as their defeated pitter-patter gives your life meaning? Well, this is kind of like that, except THQ’s taking a little longer on that whole building part.

Wait, you haven’t done that? Oh. Well, um, neither have we.

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THQ’s to start fighting used games sales by introducing one-time use codes with its new releases, and UFC Undisputed 2010 is just the first out of the gate.

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THQ’s Q1 financial results are in, and while the UFC Undisputed publisher’s far from eating canvas, we have to imagine it’ll have quite the shiner when it wakes up tomorrow morning.

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At the end of Red Faction: Guerrilla, things were pretty sweet. But now there’s been some kind of apocalypse. How on Mars did this happen? A brand new trailer – along with a few new screenshots – has some answers.

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Some videogames pontificate on the deeper themes of love, loss, and control – ultimately causing players to see the world in a new light once they’ve dabbed the tears from their eyes. Other videogames grab a giant hammer – that, in some cases, is an ostrich that somehow migrated to Mars – and gleefully lay waste to everything in sight.

Red Faction: Guerrilla was most certainly the latter.

A surprise hit, Guerrilla sneaked under gamers’ radars and smacked them with all the subtlety of the animal it’s not named after. Thanks to Volition’s Geo-Mod destruction engine, sending buildings tumbling down had never been more satisfying. Sure, the game didn’t reinvent any wheels, but it definitely made them explode real nice.

This, however, raises a question: if your game isn’t broken (well, minus the billions of space dollars in property damages), how do you fix it? Our magic videogame eight ball tells us “Make it bigger! Duh.” But that’s not quite the approach Volition’s taking. Instead, Armageddon’s ditching its colossal open-world for a more constrained underground setting. So long, freedom. Hello, linearity. How are the kids?

Frightened? Curious? We sure were. So we quizzed lead designer David Abzug on everything from the whys and hows of Armageddon’s switch to a more linear format, to new additions to the Geo-Mod engine, to potential Kinect/Move support in a Red Faction game.

Read all about it after the break.

Interview by Nathan Grayson.

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We’re glad we threw away our coffee before walking into Nintendo’s E3 conference, because if we hadn’t, we would’ve spit it out the second we spotted the Saint’s Row logo among the parade of games announced for Nintendo’s latest handheld.

Turns out, though, that THQ didn’t just figure, “Hey, you know what’d not be the worst business decision of all time? A game full of thugs and prostitutes for Nintendo’s primarily child and grandmother-based audience!” In actuality, it all began with an Xbox Live downloadable title. Take it away, core games VP Danny Bilson.

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We’ve seen Armageddon and lived to tell the tale. Or, we’ve seen a trailer of it, anyway. It’s the subtitle for the new Red Faction game, you see, and from the looks of things, it’s quite apt. Don’t believe us? Take a peek at Mars’ mined-out innards – and their prickly, none-too-friendly inhabitants – after the break, courtesy of GameTrailers.

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Gaming industry, we’d like you to meet our friend Project Ten Dollar.

He’s here to stay.

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Did you care about Red Faction’s plot or characters? No? Neither did we.

But evidently, someone did. And that one person just happened to be a Syfy network TV executive.

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De Blob’s back! And the Syfy network is… still here. Yeah! So, logically, it only makes sense that the two would team up, right?

No. It really doesn’t. But they’re doing it anyway.

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After an inhumanly long period of butting heads with partner Jakks Pacific, THQ has finally prevailed, according to Gamasutra.

The in-fight was waged over a contract dispute, which has now, obviously, been ironed out. An arbitrator gave the nod to THQ, saying that Jakks is now entitled to six percent of sales from WWE wrasslin’ games — a significantly smaller chunk of change when compared to the ten percent it received before the dispute.

With that out of the way, it’s all peace, love, and dove between the corporate tag-team partners, right? Nuh-uh. Jakks and THQ are now trading lawsuits over WWE contract extensions.

And that, children, is where videogames come from.

More through the link.

For every cloud, a silver lining. Saints Row 2 has sold 2.6 million units since the game’s October release, Edge reports, bringing a touch of warmth to some otherwise awful THQ financial results yesterday.

Other glimmers from THQ’s 2008 included WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2009, which has shipped over 4 million units, Big Beach Sports at 1.2 million, and de Blob at 700,000.

According to CEO Brian Farrell: “Established franchises like Saints Row and WWE SmackDown vs. Raw, as well as new franchises such as de Blob and Big Beach Sports for the Nintendo Wii, give us confidence in our strategy going forward.”

Nice, but cold comfort considering financial losses will result in 600 employees being sacked.

For every silver lining, a cloud.

Bit late in the day, but whoever typed all this out deserves a gold star nonetheless. Find the full transcript of last night’s investor call with THQ – which fielded questions after releasing third quarter financials – here.

THQ has reported third quarter financials, recording revenues of $509.6 million for the three months ending December 31, up 7 percent on the same period in the previous year. Despite the rise, however, earnings took a 75 percent hit for the quarter compared to Q3 2006, dropping from $62 million to $15.5 million, a slide the company attributed to development cancellations.

WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008, Cars: Mater-National and MX vs. ATV Untamed were named as the main cash drivers for the 2007 holiday season.

“During the holiday quarter, we were pleased with the record performance of WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008 and the successful launch of our internally developed game MX vs. ATV Untamed,” said THQ boss Brian Farrell. “We continue to strengthen our product development capabilities to support our long-term strategy of creating new owned intellectual properties. We look forward to launching Frontlines: Fuel of War at the end of this month. In fiscal 2009, we are well positioned for increased sales and profitability with strong owned intellectual properties such as Red Faction and Saints Row and well-known licensed franchises including WWE, UFC, Disney/Pixar and Nickelodeon.”

The company issued dreary guidance for the full year, ending March 31, with expected revenues of $1.04 billion and a loss per share of 16 cents.

Full release here.

Good stuff, this. Developer Kaos Studio’s released details of promotions US gamers can get for buying shooter Frontlines: Fuel of War at various retailers, leading by example in the “offering value” stakes. The extra levels from Gamestop and Bestbuy are for the Xbox 360 version, according to this.

• Circuit City: Free soundtrack
• Best Buy: Free in-game level
• Gamestop: A different free in-game level
• Gamecrazy: Stray Dogs Patch (no idea)
• Amazon: Collector’s tin

Kaos’s Wiki says that “no specific release date has been announced yet” for the game’s worldwide February release, but Gamespress is listing it as February 29.

Koch is to publish S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, the company’s announced, which begs a rather large question about what happened to THQ’s involvement. Koch will handle the game worldwide.

“Publishing the game Heroes of Annihilated Empires worldwide together with Koch Media distribution, we were happy of the cooperation and are glad to continue it with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky project,” said Sergiy Grygorovych, CEO of developer GSC World Publishing.

Happy enough, obviously, to not work with THQ any more.

The game is a prequel to well-received PC survival FPS S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, set a year before the original’s events. Full press release after the link.

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Newly-struggling THQ, battered by the market after last week’s confirmation of a studio closure and loss of a couple of franchises, has come out fighting today with an announcement of a “multi-year Playboy agreement” to produce “multiple Playboy-branded, lifestyle themed, non-nude mobile games featuring bikini-clad Playmates to be released worldwide. The first title, Playboy Games: Pool Party, is scheduled to launch in summer 2008.”

It doesn’t get much better than this. More hot mobile gaming Playboy news as it breaks.