THQ's Quick Sale Denied, Individual Franchises Up for Offer
Unfortunately, THQ's plan to keep its assets isn't working out.
Despite it barely being the dawn of a new year, THQ's having as little luck in 2013 as it did in 2012. In the past year, amid bouts of layoffs, the struggling publisher's dealt with poor sales and tanking stock shares. Bringing in Jason Rubin to the helm of the company as president has done relatively little to turn the company's fortunes around.
Recently, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, allowing the company to continue its regular operations, and announced a quick fire sale to stalking horse bidder Clearlake Capital Group. If the bankruptcy and sale were to be approved in court, THQ would be able to retain its properties and remain intact.
THQ's plan to keep itself together has been foiled by Judge Mary F. Walrath, who denied the sale after THQ investors and creditors filed an objection. The judge ruled that the speed of the sale didn't allow for other prospective bidders time to get involved in the sale.
The judge has set an auction date of January 22nd for THQ's assets to be sold individually. Some of the bidders include Warner Bros. and EA, who purchased THQ's UFC license earlier in mid-2012.
THQ has plenty of valuable assets up for grabs, including the Company of Heroes franchise, the sandbox satire Saints Row, and the upcoming South Park: Stick of Truth title in development at Obsidian Entertainment. And here's to hoping for the best outcome for THQ subsidiaries Relic Entertainment, Vigil Games, Volition, and THQ Montreal.
sad day indeed.
Their auctioning off some IPs, all the games scheduled this year is still coming out. so cheer up.
sad day indeed.
I read an article on kotaku looking where they went bad, I know personally homefront was disaster. I liked Frontlines Fuel of war but no anti-cheat... anyways here's the link
http://kotaku.com/5881479/how-thq-went-from-bad-to-very-bad
also i should note, that THQ did came up with the whole "Online pass" that EA adopted.
decent games, some award winning and considered the best but terrible management who ran it to the ground.
I really hope the game companies like Relic and Volition stay alive...
What about Ubisoft, Nintendo, Microsoft, Sega, Warner Bros, Take-Two, Square Enix, Sony. Their all publishers too.
If anything, I hope only Valve buys them.....because last thing we want is EA, Ubisoft, Activision ruining the next great ( was suppose to be ) THQ game
I hope EA doesn't win any ip, but it's not like thq is/was perfect. I've rarely had worse experiences with customer support than with them. Save for kalypso ofcourse.
AAA budget but A preformance...
most games good at least, but costed way to much to make, and the few stand out hits were too little to late...
few days ago it was blamed on piracy, at least by someone in the forum... but my god, i forgot they made the udraw, wasn't that a 100 million to 1 billion $ eff up?
Just a lot of poor business decisions on THQ's end. I think part of the problem is that THQ has been experimenting with their business practices in an attempt to adapt to the changing market. Unfortunately, the risk that they took with things like the uDraw screwed them.
Their attempt at making a big shooter IP in the likes of Battlefield and Call of Duty was a huge gamble. Personally, I thought Homefront had an excellent premise. There were moments in the game that really could have made it shine. But ultimately, THQ made a bad call by getting the rather untested Kaos Studios to make the game. With the time crunch, Kaos Studios was unable to deliver, and as a result, Homefront was a subpar product. It didn't have the meat to back all the hype that THQ marketing was generating and so it failed. What I find really sad is that Crytek was in line to develop the next Homefront and make the game what it really should have been in the first place. We can only hope that that project will ever see the light of day. But who knows? Maybe EA will buy up the Homefront franchise and give it a chance. After all, Medal of Honor is probably not going to be seeing the light of day ever again after how poorly it did...
So really, THQ closing down is just a part of the growing pains of the industry. The industry's changed a lot in the past decade and THQ, unlike EA or Activision, weren't able to get their act together and find a business practice that worked for them. What's really sad is that part of the reason THQ failed was the fact that they published so many original IPs.
I agree with a lot of that article, except that Warhammer 40k part.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Would you care to inform us then?
Sadly, Red Faction: Armageddon didn't too well. I don't see anybody really bothering to pick up a third person shooter franchise, although it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility.
Since Volition is a subsidiary of THQ and therefore an asset, there's a possibility that someone might acquire the studio. Considering that it's the studio that worked on Saints Row, which is a property that everyone is going to be eyeing, they might get acquired. Otherwise, Volition lacks the funding to do anything on their own.
- Catherine Cai
growing pains... no, growing pains is when competition kills off a company,
this was management having no idea how to properly manage a company, or how to grow a company.
you dont take a gamble with the udraw unless you have a solid product, and from what i can tell from videos of it, its sub par at best as a tablet and cost what, 100$ new (ill be picking one up for 10$ because i love tablets)
you dont stick a dev like relic on a franchise that in all honesty, is well known, but not popular, when you could give them free range on their own projects that would have mass appeal
you dont go after the big boys in the fps genre unless you have room to fail a few times. home front, no matter how good it would have been, even it it was better than battlefield and cod combined, would not have sold as well because its new. 3 games in, yea, it may eat away at battlefield and cod enough to make it a viable solution, but not if you cant take 2 games, 150 million$ of probably never makeing even on a game
the fighting games, wwe... i had no idea how much that license cost... my god, if that number is anywhere near true they were retarded for even getting into that genre considering the popularity is dieing compared to what it use to be.
the ufc, now that one could have made money back, but not with ea also cannibalizing sales with its own fighting sorts games.
the moment that kids games went away from them is when they should have taken a step back and made a focus on "we will be the best at _______" and went for it. id say open world sand box games considering i believe all 3 saints row games are more fun that the gta games... at least on consoles, i just got 2 vice and san andreus on the pc, so i cant judge them yet.
red faction they royally screwed up... and i cant understand the logic in the way they screwed it up either.
but the worst one was the u draw, they took a massive gamble and it cost them so much they just couldnt recover.
heres hoping ea stays the hell away from them.
as saints row, is a very attractive franchise, and can easily compete with gta, i could see ea or activision going into a bidding war for it.
metro, activision and ea alreay have fps games, they will likely pass on it, at least ea will because they have crytech
god this really sucks.