THQ is, to be frank, in pretty serious financial trouble. Darksiders II didn’t sell two million copies, so it’s officially a “disappointment”, and the company is basically in a game of chicken: If Company of Heroes 2 and Metro: Last Light don’t get the cash flowing, that might be it for them.
So it’s probably a relief to them that their Humble Bundle, announced yesterday, has sold well enough to drive up their stock price.
After a day of release, the Humble THQ bundle stands at $2 million or so, with an average purchase price of six bucks on the back of 370,000 purchases. It’s actually a pretty good deal, if you play on PC: You get Steam keys for Metro 2033, Darksiders, Red Faction: Armageddon and pretty much the entire Company of Heroes franchise. Beat the average and you get Saints Row The Third as well.
In that respect, it’s really just a Steam sale where you set your own price instead of paying 75% off and getting a bunch of games from one publisher. And, of course, we have no idea how much of this is going to THQ, how much to charity, and how much to Humble Bundle, although you can personally decide where your cash goes, as usual.
Nonetheless, apparently that’s good enough for Wall Street: THQ’s stock is up 40%. OK, so that’s up from a dollar and pennies to a buck fifty, but it’s still good news for the company.
And good news for gamers as well. While some feel that this is going to ruin the Humble Bundle, kind of the same way that jerk grouses about how the band he loves “sold out” by having a radio hit, it does demonstrate to publishers that there are options to sell PC games beyond putting it out at $60 and hoping it doesn’t get pirated.
And hey, you can get caught up on upcoming franchises for dirt!
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THQ is such a weird situation because it’s very obvious what the issue is — for almost their entire existence they made most of their money on licensed stuff (which was generally, better than average quality for licensed stuff) then made a couple original big games per year. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was a business model.
Then a few years ago, they stopped doing most of their licensed stuff and started putting out half-a-dozen or more AAA games per year, and guess what, they stopped making money!
THQ isn’t rotten and dysfunctional to the core — it’s not Midway. They’re just stubbornly riding this one bad decision into the grave for some reason.
There are a lot of post-mortems about the company, but the basic problem can be summed up in one word: UDraw.
THQ put a lot of money into that thing, and it tanked. It tanked so badly you could pick one up as a Black Friday “deal” for $13 this past weekend. Worse, this happened right as the Wii, really their primary source of licensed software sales, dropped off a sales cliff. They lost a lot of licenses and had to sell most of the rest.
I think the company can salvage itself and even thrive: I can’t imagine WWE ’13 is tanking. But I think their business model blew up in their face.
The really sad thing is that they’re doing better than SONY.
Ah yes, UDraw — forgot about that.
Still, I bet if they announced “Hey, in 2013 we’re going to stop trying to be something we’re not. No expensive, risky shooters — we’re making 3 Spongebob games, 3 Disney Games, A WWE game, a UFC game and Saints Row 4″ they might pull through.
Not sure if you saw the Polygon story about the development of Homefront but it does showcase how dysfunctional the entire AAA process was at Kaos and THQ and probably every other gaming company.
Link got munched [www.polygon.com]
I did. To be honest, it’s a pretty common story. Part of the problem with AAA processes is that there aren’t any.
I’d already bought most of the games in that bundle during Steam sales, but I scooped it up for the cheap Saints Row, and it’ll be nice to get that annoying yellow entry for the Company of Heroes expansion I didn’t previously own off of my Library list.
Plus it’s giving a few extra bucks to THQ, whom I hope can avoid death.
Yeah, I paid six bucks basically for the Darksiders score and Metro 2033.