Take-Two is trash talking THQ, saying the competing game publisher won't be open for business in six months. Them's fightin' words!
During the MIT Business in Gaming conference, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick took a shot at THQ, saying the game publisher probably won't be around in six months.
The comment came up while he talked about the difference between his company's strategy on core game development, and that of rival publisher THQ. The latter Rayman company just recently revealed a $56 million loss for the fiscal quarter ending December 31, 2011 -- triple the loss seen in the same timeframe the year before.
Prior to the third quarter results, THQ actually thought earnings would be the largest in the company's history. But according to THQ CEO Brian Farrell, they were (obviously) way wrong. He explained that revenues were lower by about $100 million, and that 1.4 million uDraw units were still in inventory (although they're slated to be sold at some point). He estimated about $80 million of the lost revenue was from units the company didn't sell, and the other $20 million was from lowering the price of what they did sell.
"We would have doubled the profitability in the quarter were it not for uDraw," he said.
In speaking about THQ, the Take-Two CEO said that the rival company's strategy centers on licensed properties like UFC, WWE and intellectual properties (IPs) owned by Hollywood studios, and making games based on those licenses. The problem here is that -- even if a publisher does a great job with a property -- it will have to renegotiate the license in a few years. By then its margins will have decreased because the brand it built up in the gaming space will require a higher licensing fee.
Take-Two, on the other hand, deals with 100-percent owned IPs. He said eventually THQ shifted its strategy to partially using in-house IPs like uDraw, but that doesn't happen overnight. Take-Two also has higher quality products whereas THQ has had some good games.
"The most important difference is quality," he told the audience. "Take-Two has the highest quality ratings among third-party publishers, according to Metacritic and most people in the industry. Quality really, really, really matters. THQ has had some good games, but their quality levels aren't even remotely ... the quality hasn't measured up."
Zelnick then moved on to trash THQ's strategy. "Strategy didn't work and the execution was bad. To put it another way: the food was no good and the portions were small."
"THQ won't be around in six months," he concluded.
As for THQ, they're in serious trouble. I was going to buy stock when it was $5 back in mid-2011 because I thought THQ was too big to not get their shit together. Thank god I didn't, it's selling at 50 cents a share. Who knows, maybe now is actually the best time to buy. Hopefully South Park ends up being a good game. Metro 2033: Last Light is another one. Other than that, they really have no killer app. Well, I guess Metro is a killer app because it'll kill any system right now.
Still they have the SAME bugs for years, they advertise something and then it turns out totally different than they said it would be.
In short: Quality is not something that THQ is familiar with.
The main problem with THQ is that most of stuff they publish is second tier. Yet they try to sell them as AAA games.
Dawn of War was a good game but it did not have proper wide screen support until the Soul Storm title.
Dawn of War 2 was just plain bad. They removed everything that made the first game a real time strategy.
Home Front had the potential to be great game. They needed more than 4 maps, and the maps needed to be better balanced. For example on team starts on a mountain full of trees and shrubs to hide in and the other team has to cross a huge open field. The team in the grass would lose every time. The voice chat was messed up was locked at like 2% of system volume so you could not hear people. Text chat sucked because it was like 4pt baby blue font that was impossible to read.
Space Marine has a fun single player, multiplayer was always laggy due to a weak P2P system. And the game had very limited resolutions and graphics settings.
Metro33 is cool.
The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games were all cool.
THQ has not been the best PC game studio but I liked their games I hope they don’t crap out.
like most of their games...
sad that they are really kind of screwed.
I agree,
Take 2 have had a few lemons too ( Duke Nukem Reboot for one )
What a lot of people forget is that THQ and Take 2 are the publishers, they're mainly interested in getting their money back from the outlay of the team that produced the games.
What happens if the Star Players ( Rockstar and Bethesda ) decide to go elsewhere when their contracts are done ? THQ struggles ......
Activision and Electronic Arts used to also have good names for CREATING, now they're basicly pimps for everbody elses stuff ( Same as THQ and Take 2 )
So to cut a long story short ... Mr Zelnik is pretty much saying our Hookers are better than yours
The only reason anyone takes these people seriously is because there's so much money involved.
If THQ goes under, I definitely don't want to see Vigil or Relic belly up, hopefully they could either move to modern self publishing (yea right) or get bought by some publisher that is not EA / Activision / etc.