Take-Two Boss Predicts the End of THQ

[Zer_]

I agree, stop fucking around with licenses, drop WWE and UFC, and focus on some good in house high profit properties!

Do they even think about how many people are begging for a homeworld 3, or new Company of Heroes?!

I've been disappointed with the lack of a Homeworld game. It's long overdue. This whole THQ debacle is bad for Relic. Best case scenario is that other publishers buy out Relic along with their IPs. Right now Relic's umbilical cord is connected to a dying company, and the longer this drags on, the worse things can get.

 

[80Maxwell08]

I agree, stop fucking around with licenses, drop WWE and UFC, and focus on some good in house high profit properties!

Do they even think about how many people are begging for a homeworld 3, or new Company of Heroes?!

I've been disappointed with the lack of a Homeworld game. It's long overdue. This whole THQ debacle is bad for Relic. Best case scenario is that other publishers buy out Relic along with their IPs. Right now Relic's umbilical cord is connected to a dying company, and the longer this drags on, the worse things can get.

You do realize that odds are the publisher owns the IP not the developer? Like nearly every game released today? So if there's going to be another homeworld game it's going to have to go through Activision.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

I agree, stop fucking around with licenses, drop WWE and UFC, and focus on some good in house high profit properties!

Do they even think about how many people are begging for a homeworld 3, or new Company of Heroes?!

Sierra had the rights to Homeworld, and whoever they are with now owns them. Relic won't get the rights back without some serious wiggling.

 

[Threeseventyfive]

After Red Faction: Armageddon and Homefront I couldn't care less about the fate of THQ

 

[DJDarque]

As long as it doesn't affect the release of Darksiders II and Metro: Last Light I won't really care. I would like to see what Vigil Games and 4A Games could bring to the table after the release of their flagship titles, so I hope they can stay mostly unharmed and picked up by another company.

A lot of hate for Saints Row: The Third going on in here, too. I don't get why. Saints Row: The Third was the most fun I've had playing a game in a long time and in my opinion is much better than Saints Row 2.

 

[Ticonderoga117]

Just as long as Relic and Vigil don't go down too because I want my Warhammer 40K fix I don't care too much. Though I have to say I hate to see a publisher that has done fine by me go down like this while the other money-grubbing ones stay afloat. *rage*

 

[fozzy360]

A lot of hate for Saints Row: The Third going on in here, too. I don't get why. Saints Row: The Third was the most fun I've had playing a game in a long time and in my opinion is much better than Saints Row 2.

I'm glad you liked it, but the unfortunate thing is that it left a sour taste in mouths over some really baffling decisions, gameplay and story wise. I wish I could share the same enthusiasm with you over it. I mean, I'm easy, and yet, SR3 just couldn't amount to what the previous two games already accomplished.

Honestly, I hope the development studios under THQ come out OK, because there's a lot of franchises there with tons of potential that could become really great under some proper guidance. In the end, this is all THQ's doing, and now they're paying for it. Too bad the various developers in the middle have to suffer as well.

 

[DJDarque]

A lot of hate for Saints Row: The Third going on in here, too. I don't get why. Saints Row: The Third was the most fun I've had playing a game in a long time and in my opinion is much better than Saints Row 2.

I'm glad you liked it, but the unfortunate thing is that it left a sour taste in mouths over some really baffling decisions, gameplay and story wise. I wish I could share the same enthusiasm with you over it. I mean, I'm easy, and yet, SR3 just couldn't amount to what the previous two games already accomplished.

Perhaps I'm a little bit biased towards three. I never played one and I only played two to get a feeling of what the franchise was for when three came out. Don't get me wrong, I finished it and really liked it, but I just didn't really like how the activites and upgrades were structured. Three just sat with me better and it's the first game in which I've obtained all the achievements.

 

[fozzy360]

A lot of hate for Saints Row: The Third going on in here, too. I don't get why. Saints Row: The Third was the most fun I've had playing a game in a long time and in my opinion is much better than Saints Row 2.

I'm glad you liked it, but the unfortunate thing is that it left a sour taste in mouths over some really baffling decisions, gameplay and story wise. I wish I could share the same enthusiasm with you over it. I mean, I'm easy, and yet, SR3 just couldn't amount to what the previous two games already accomplished.

Perhaps I'm a little bit biased towards three. I never played one and I only played two to get a feeling of what the franchise was for when three came out. Don't get me wrong, I finished it and really liked it, but I just didn't really like how the activites and upgrades were structured. Three just sat with me better and it's the first game in which I've obtained all the achievements.

In that respect, perhaps I'm biased towards SR2, but I felt that SR2 was much better done and much more fulfilling than anything done in SR3. Now, I liked SR3, but I adore SR2. Despite being riddled with bugs and glitches, SR2 just felt like pure fun. Everything worked towards giving the player as much to do with constantly feeling overwhelmed to the point of exhaustion.

SR3 felt more like a try-to-hard-to-be-SR2 game than anything. Not to disparage your opinion of it, but I just felt like SR3 was SR2-lite. Though, I've yet tom play either Ganastas in Space or The Trouble with Clones.

 

[DJDarque]

A lot of hate for Saints Row: The Third going on in here, too. I don't get why. Saints Row: The Third was the most fun I've had playing a game in a long time and in my opinion is much better than Saints Row 2.

I'm glad you liked it, but the unfortunate thing is that it left a sour taste in mouths over some really baffling decisions, gameplay and story wise. I wish I could share the same enthusiasm with you over it. I mean, I'm easy, and yet, SR3 just couldn't amount to what the previous two games already accomplished.

Perhaps I'm a little bit biased towards three. I never played one and I only played two to get a feeling of what the franchise was for when three came out. Don't get me wrong, I finished it and really liked it, but I just didn't really like how the activites and upgrades were structured. Three just sat with me better and it's the first game in which I've obtained all the achievements.

In that respect, perhaps I'm biased towards SR2, but I felt that SR2 was much better done and much more fulfilling than anything done in SR3. Now, I liked SR3, but I adore SR2. Despite being riddled with bugs and glitches, SR2 just felt like pure fun. Everything worked towards giving the player as much to do with constantly feeling overwhelmed to the point of exhaustion.

SR3 felt more like a try-to-hard-to-be-SR2 game than anything. Not to disparage your opinion of it, but I just felt like SR3 was SR2-lite. Though, I've yet tom play either Ganastas in Space or The Trouble with Clones.

They're fun, but they don't really add more than a couple hours of gameplay apiece tops.

 

[fozzy360]

A lot of hate for Saints Row: The Third going on in here, too. I don't get why. Saints Row: The Third was the most fun I've had playing a game in a long time and in my opinion is much better than Saints Row 2.

I'm glad you liked it, but the unfortunate thing is that it left a sour taste in mouths over some really baffling decisions, gameplay and story wise. I wish I could share the same enthusiasm with you over it. I mean, I'm easy, and yet, SR3 just couldn't amount to what the previous two games already accomplished.

Perhaps I'm a little bit biased towards three. I never played one and I only played two to get a feeling of what the franchise was for when three came out. Don't get me wrong, I finished it and really liked it, but I just didn't really like how the activites and upgrades were structured. Three just sat with me better and it's the first game in which I've obtained all the achievements.

In that respect, perhaps I'm biased towards SR2, but I felt that SR2 was much better done and much more fulfilling than anything done in SR3. Now, I liked SR3, but I adore SR2. Despite being riddled with bugs and glitches, SR2 just felt like pure fun. Everything worked towards giving the player as much to do with constantly feeling overwhelmed to the point of exhaustion.

SR3 felt more like a try-to-hard-to-be-SR2 game than anything. Not to disparage your opinion of it, but I just felt like SR3 was SR2-lite. Though, I've yet tom play either Ganastas in Space or The Trouble with Clones.

They're fun, but they don't really add more than a couple hours of gameplay apiece tops.

Great. I've been talking to my brother about this, and honestly, for $20 for the Season pass, a couple of hours of gameplay just doesn't cut it. That Season Pass has been the biggest buyer's remorse for me since Hellboy: The Science of Evil.

 

[BaronUberstein]

As long as Relic survives I'm happy. <__<

 

[fozzy360]

i love saints row this is such a shame if it's true.i mean with a graph like that in the post it takes alot of innovation of a business model to pull it back. its harder than you think to just start creating original content

I have a feeling someone else will pick Volition, and thus Saint's Row, up.


will it remain the way it is? I'm not sure. If I'm honest toning the wackiness back might help a bit, but the wackiness is also what makes Saint's Row good.

It's about balancing the wacky. That's what SR2 did nicely, but SR3 went a bit too far with it. So, yeah, toning it bit back might be a good thing. It'll just be nice if whoever should pick up Volition if THQ goes under will shepard SR4 into something great again.

 

[fozzy360]

i love saints row this is such a shame if it's true.i mean with a graph like that in the post it takes alot of innovation of a business model to pull it back. its harder than you think to just start creating original content

I have a feeling someone else will pick Volition, and thus Saint's Row, up.


will it remain the way it is? I'm not sure. If I'm honest toning the wackiness back might help a bit, but the wackiness is also what makes Saint's Row good.

It's about balancing the wacky. That's what SR2 did nicely, but SR3 went a bit too far with it. So, yeah, toning it bit back might be a good thing. It'll just be nice if whoever should pick up Volition if THQ goes under will shepard SR4 into something great again.

Mhm. I've never played SR2 before, though. The notoriously awful PC port bit me in the ass, and it almost made me shrug off SR3 as well.

Ah. I've heard the PC port is pretty bad, but there are some mods out there that do a good job at fine tuning some of the more egregious things. Supposedly, an entirely different team was given the job of porting to PC, and they weren't given much help from THQ. I hear that SR3 on PC is much better, as Volition was in charge of that port. I played all the games on 360, so I can only offer hints for what the PC version might or might not be.

 

[grigjd3]

So long as I get my Metro:Last light I don't care.

If I recall correctly, THQ doesn't actually own 4a-games (who developed Metro: 2033). THQ just published it. That said, the Metro series hasn't gotten a huge following (though it's not done too bad) so other publishers might think twice before picking it up. Then again, having a developed IP with any fanbase at all is valuable and many companies might consider the possibilities of juicing it up. The worst result would be having either EA or Squeenix pick it up - effectively killing 4a games and ruining the series.

 

[Callate]

I hope he's wrong. This would be a very bad thing.

Whatever you may think of THQ, fewer major game developers leave us all that much more vulnerable to the trends and whims of those that remain. That much more susceptible to unending sequelitis, always-on DRM, draconian contracts that strip us of the ability to play the games we thought we "bought" at a moment's notice. Every major gaming company that closes their doors is one more echo in the booming voice that says: "Oh, you have a problem? Well, where else you going to go?"

Also, I enjoyed Saints Row the Third, and while trying to push UDraw elsewhere than the Wii was clearly a mistake, I don't think it was the kind of mistake that should be fatal. Other companies have made far worse, and gotten away with it not because they were necessarily better developers (at least, over any given period of time,) but because they had deeper pockets.

So... Here's hoping they can pull that stock up to the $1 mark...