THQ cancels 2014 lineup+MMO, Looking for buyers (i.e. THQ is pretty much dead)

[sb666]

But what about Volition whats going to happen to them are they still making Insane and Saints Row 4.

 

[Soviet Steve]

It's unfortunate that they aren't getting just punishment for Homefront, I would gladly have seen valve go down in flames for that abomination, sad to see that they aren't being closed down but hopefully something bad will happen to the place despite their survival.

 

[Dandark]

??? They added a CTF mode, I need to go play that again, I never kept up on the news but that sounds great, hopefully they fixed the lag too then.

 

[Soviet Steve]

Oo

And yes, a company that made several good games deserves to be shut down because of one missstep. Based on that Nintendo should have died out several years ago.

Valve didn't make it but I'd be willing to see Valve die if they made a mistake like that, and yes.

 

[Westaway]

This is bad. Bad, bad, bad.

Soon enough, I get the feeling that the only publishers left will be EA, Bethesda, and Activision...

It's starting to get like the whole phone company situation here in America. >.<

EDIT: IF it's true, of course.

What in God's name are you talking about, Bethesda is a fantastic publisher. They give small dev teams a chance to make new, inovative games. Look at their forums, the only two franchises hat are guaranteed to make money are Fallout and Elder Scrolls. The others? Rage, Brink, Demons's Forge, Arx Fatalis, and more. They haven't whored any of their games out yet. EA and Activion, on the other hand...

 

[meowchef]

If this in any way affects the Company of Heroes series... I quit.

 

[pirateninj4]

I only ever bought the 40k games they made and all bar Space Marine were pretty bad-ass.

 

[Buizel91]

EA picking up Relic? HERESY!*BLAM

If this is true, the chance of Homeworld 3, Dawn of War 3 and Company of Heroes 2 has just gone lower. I do hope it's not true, THQ doesn't deserve this and neither does its devs.

And Impossible Creatures 2

Sad isn't the word

 

[Sylveria]

(and this is why I find mega-profitable game franchises like Call of Duty 4 to be ultimately dangerous to the gaming industry as a whole; they promote stagnation instead of competition and when their competitors' clones fail to stand up to the original, the competition just dies. Without competition, stagnation sets in even further, fueled by stronger and stronger monopolistic tendencies. This ultimately will cause a creative industry like gaming to collapse when everyone gets tired of the same old shit).

If anything this is an argument to stop trying to make cash-in FPSs/3rdps. The mass CoD and Gears audiences are not the type to just buy up bunches of half-baked clones. As stupid as the CoD Bros are, they've seen the clones enough times to know to avoid them now. Perhaps if the smaller companies actually tried to innovate instead of pumping out obvious shovelware thinking it will bank-roll them, when in actuality the games do rather poorly because of that, thus funds are wasted.

 

[Meight08]

Good riddance. They invented the concept of Project $10, and they deserve whatever loss of business it brought them. I just hope EA and any other companies that use it either go out of business themselves, or get hurt badly enough on the bottom line that they realize that they made a mistake before completely buying the farm. Although this being the videogame industry, they'll probably just claim people have been pirating the project $10 content instead of paying for it, and find an even /more/ blatant way to try to kill the used market.

ea invented project 10 dollar.
and thq allows you to play the multiplayer in all their shooters.
just up until lvl 5. until you put in the code.
but they give you free dlc.
and they publicly said their plan is to make high quality bang for your buck games. warhammer 40k space marine was a love letter to warhammer 40k fans. and they got crytek to make homefront 2.
and they publicly said that homefront was way too short and they would never release an fps game without a beta ever again.
and they lost money because.
1:homefront had a way too big marketing budget and koas made a shit single player.
2:warhammer 40k space marine came out at the same time as dead island and resistance 3.
3:red faction armageddon underperformed and only sold a quarter million and that really is not nearly enough to make up for losses.

not because of the online pass system.

so now you are happy that one of the only publishers left that thinks that if they make a few good high quality games each year.
they can live of off that.
and if they want a yearly release they often do a cheap 30 dollar expansion pack they could easily sell for 60 dollars.
while they work on the sequel which usually comes out a few years later.
seriously dude wtf?

I dunno, THQ has done a lot of right and built up a lot of good will with me, especially with their decision to scrap a good bit of dawn of war 2 and bring back base building!

Though THQ looses even more good will than they gain with me every year they dont green light Homeworld 2.

Seriously, they give a POS like Homefront a green light, but something fans have been begging for and wanting to throw money at for years they cant see the profit in?

The only up side I could see to THQ closing its doors would be that Relic could get a better publisher behind them that will let them make something other than a 40k game.

Relic were the ones who asked to be allowed to make dow 1.
you can feel the care and attention to detail in every relic 40k game.
from the vista's of space marine to the character arcs of dawn of war 2.
only if you truly cared about an ip could you make something that good.
and about homeworld 3 it might be possible but not yet thq is still in a bit of a financial pickle but they already got the ip so they might be working on it probably like relic did with space marine.
one team works on space marine.
and the rest works on dow 2 and its expansion.
till crunch time begins and everybody works on space marine.

 

[Meight08]

(and this is why I find mega-profitable game franchises like Call of Duty 4 to be ultimately dangerous to the gaming industry as a whole; they promote stagnation instead of competition and when their competitors' clones fail to stand up to the original, the competition just dies. Without competition, stagnation sets in even further, fueled by stronger and stronger monopolistic tendencies. This ultimately will cause a creative industry like gaming to collapse when everyone gets tired of the same old shit).

If anything this is an argument to stop trying to make cash-in FPSs/3rdps. The mass CoD and Gears audiences are not the type to just buy up bunches of half-baked clones. As stupid as the CoD Bros are, they've seen the clones enough times to know to avoid them now. Perhaps if the smaller companies actually tried to innovate instead of pumping out obvious shovelware thinking it will bank-roll them, when in actuality the games do rather poorly because of that, thus funds are wasted.

or even worse a game is wrongly accused of being a clone like warhammer 40k space marine.
its not a clone dammit!
and the press look at gears instead of the other game.

 

[DuX1112]

The rumors are not exactly unfounded, there's been much talk lately. I suggest you check this analysis out: http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?264767-Rumor-THQ-all-but-dead-cancels-2014-games-looking-for-a-buyer&p=1045332289&viewfull=1#post1045332289

Also: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/39031/Analyst_THQ_Could_Run_Out_Of_Cash_By_Q1_2013.php and the comment below....

I just worry about Relic making it safe and Homeworld not dying.

 

[MercurySteam]

As long as they can still publish Darksiders 2 and Dawn of War III then I'll be happy. THQ has been doing well up till now so I don't see why they can't continue.

 

[Atmos Duality]

If anything this is an argument to stop trying to make cash-in FPSs/3rdps. The mass CoD and Gears audiences are not the type to just buy up bunches of half-baked clones. As stupid as the CoD Bros are, they've seen the clones enough times to know to avoid them now. Perhaps if the smaller companies actually tried to innovate instead of pumping out obvious shovelware thinking it will bank-roll them, when in actuality the games do rather poorly because of that, thus funds are wasted.

There are many avenues for innovative concepts, but unless your project is both inherently low-risk AND appealing to the marketing figures it probably won't get funded in the first place.

So instead, many of these smaller studios only managed to get shitty shovelware titles green-lit, and that's all they're going to try to get green-lit because otherwise, they'll be out of a job.

What you describe smaller studios doing actually worked rather well after video gaming recovered from the first crash (thanks for the mountains of shovelware Atari!). Beloved Rare, who gave us so many great games in the 90s, were also the creators of a great deal of NES shovelware titles.

But that worked because there was strong, legitimate growth in gaming throughout that time.
Right now, gaming is expanding primarily for the holders of established mega-franchises, and we're seeing everyone else with either shaky profit margins, or they're sinking like the Titanic.

The smaller professional studios are shrinking in number; they don't have the flexibility and nasal-rate pricing of purely independent developers, and they don't have the ironclad security of a mega-franchise (which will never change until the sheep stop buying the same bloody game every year or two).

Unfortunately, that is also where we (used to) get some of our best games from.

That's why I call this an age of consolidation. Recognized IPs (even old ones), not quality production studios, are the hot properties for the publishers. When a publisher is looking at potential bankruptcy, their IPs are most likely going to be licensed, or auctioned off.

In summary: The bigger publishers will continue to grow, everyone else will fall.
And unfortunately, it's becoming more evident that the most ruthless and exploitative of the publishers will be the ones controlling the AAA business when the dust settles, which means bad news for customers down the line.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

If anything this is an argument to stop trying to make cash-in FPSs/3rdps. The mass CoD and Gears audiences are not the type to just buy up bunches of half-baked clones. As stupid as the CoD Bros are, they've seen the clones enough times to know to avoid them now. Perhaps if the smaller companies actually tried to innovate instead of pumping out obvious shovelware thinking it will bank-roll them, when in actuality the games do rather poorly because of that, thus funds are wasted.

There are many avenues for innovative concepts, but unless your project is both inherently low-risk AND appealing to the marketing figures it probably won't get funded in the first place.

So instead, many of these smaller studios only managed to get shitty shovelware titles green-lit, and that's all they're going to try to get green-lit because otherwise, they'll be out of a job.

What you describe smaller studios doing actually worked rather well after video gaming recovered from the first crash (thanks for the mountains of shovelware Atari!). Beloved Rare, who gave us so many great games in the 90s, were also the creators of a great deal of NES shovelware titles.

But that worked because there was strong, legitimate growth in gaming throughout that time.
Right now, gaming is expanding primarily for the holders of established mega-franchises, and we're seeing everyone else with either shaky profit margins, or they're sinking like the Titanic.

The smaller professional studios are shrinking in number; they don't have the flexibility and nasal-rate pricing of purely independent developers, and they don't have the ironclad security of a mega-franchise (which will never change until the sheep stop buying the same bloody game every year or two).

Unfortunately, that is also where we (used to) get some of our best games from.

That's why I call this an age of consolidation. Recognized IPs (even old ones), not quality production studios, are the hot properties for the publishers. When a publisher is looking at potential bankruptcy, their IPs are most likely going to be licensed, or auctioned off.

In summary: The bigger publishers will continue to grow, everyone else will fall.
And unfortunately, it's becoming more evident that the most ruthless and exploitative of the publishers will be the ones controlling the AAA business when the dust settles, which means bad news for customers down the line.

It helps that we're in the middle of a recession that's only being called that because nobody wants to be the first to say the "D" word. I think this is less what hollywood went through, and more what the entire economy goes through when there's a downturn: the ones with the most money profit off of it, and the rest of us suffer.

 

[latiasracer]

EA picking up Relic? HERESY!*BLAM

If this is true, the chance of Homeworld 3, Dawn of War 3 and Company of Heroes 2 has just gone lower. I do hope it's not true, THQ doesn't deserve this and neither does its devs.

MOTHER OF GOD D:


If Ea take on Homeworld (My favourite franchise of all time)i will have to go to their HQ, and take them down. One by one.

 

[Atmos Duality]

It helps that we're in the middle of a recession that's only being called that because nobody wants to be the first to say the "D" word. I think this is less what hollywood went through, and more what the entire economy goes through when there's a downturn: the ones with the most money profit off of it, and the rest of us suffer.

I believe that this "It's a recession, not a depression" nonsense has to stop.
It's a full-blown depression, no matter how one tries to dress it up.
Allegedly, we "turned the corner" back in 2009.

Gag me. There isn't shit out there for decent employment, and what is opening up is largely cheap labor and services; not domestic product, which you NEED in order to make money (barring tourism, and I don't think most of the USA qualifies there).

Either you know someone in a stable business to get your foot in the door, you try to spend what you have left starting your own business (legitimate or otherwise) or you run around the unemployment line.

But yeah, who profits the most during a depression? Those with entirely too much money already. When there's little money to go around the majority, it inflates the practical value for the minority.

(for the anally pedantic among who might be reading this, I provide a caveat: It has value so long as there is sufficient civil order. Money has no value in anarchy.)

 

[Treblaine]

Gen 6 claims another dev/pub.

Surely this is the 7th generation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_generation#Seventh_generation_consoles_.282004.E2.80.93present.29