A Kickstarter project to buy a publisher. I'd contribute just for the lulz.
A Kickstarter project to buy a publisher. I'd contribute just for the lulz.
I can see the WH40K game being re-tooled into an expansive, urrm, expansion of SM. A multi-race deal. Of course, I think it's THQ who has the WH40K license and not Vigil/Relic, so who knows if they'd even be able to do anything once they inevitably sink?
(I too enjoyed SM. Under-rated MP and an utterly fantastic co-op mode.)
I keep visiting that stock page waiting for the 50% drop. It's quite fascinating.
Not to turn this into the "Space Marine is pretty alright really, isn't it?" thread, but it's pretty alright, really. The single player campaign is a bit repetitive, but doesn't last too long. The MP is good, although perhaps not "Best. MP. EVAR!" (even late joiners aren't at too much of a disadvantage over unlocks due to a core MP mechanic) but the co-op horde mode is utterly fantastic and possibly worth the price of admission alone if it was on sale low enough (incidentally, Relic did this with the horde mode in Dawn of War 2).
This is the identified problem with THQ. They do publish quite a few good games, but perhaps never amazing ones. As a result, they've got lost between the indie-budget and the AAAA market, as not much of anything in between survives.
Where's Althea? She loves Space Marine and hates THQ... Haven't seen her in months.
SM felt like a crossover between a poor man's hack and slash(three attack moves to last you through the entire game, yay) and a cover-based TPP shooter in which you can't actually take cover.
All that dipped in typically "dumbed down"(for lack of a better word) 40k.
Never tried the MP, but that option where you can spawn with loadout of whoever killed you was a pretty brilliant solution to the unlocks issue.
I was thinking the same earlier. Apart from wrestling games THQ don't really have any big yearly franchises, and I doubt that sells nearly as many copies as EA Sport games and Activisions CoD games. They don't have that big money earner that the other two big playing publishers have.
THQ's biggest problem is that they're desperate to become a big AAA publisher like Activision or EA, because they almost were once, but with all the cuts they've made over the past couple of years they just don't have the talent pool to do it.
If they concentrated themselves into more of a niche they could stabilize and be the US equivalent of CD Projekt or a bigger Stardock and re-build from there. Instead they keep blowing millions on gambles that fail to pay off (Homefront, Darksiders II), or utterly failing to understand what made some franchises popular (Red Faction: Armageddon), and manage to limp along on the sales of two guaranteed sellers (Saints Row, WWE). If they'd released Enter the Dominatrix instead of cancelling it and releasing Saints Row: The Full Package, they'd probably be in a better state right now. And they've been sinking money into THQ Montreal for three years now, and that studio has produced approximately fuck all.
As it is, the next gen consoles will kill them outright. If they even manage to make it to their release.
Guess which company keeps tanking on the stock market! Over 50% yesterday, 30% today. $7.5 million market cap.
Whatever happens, I just hope Metro Last Light comes out of it unscathed
Oh boy, can't wait for Activision to pick up the Last Light team, cancel Last Light, and make them work on Black Ops 2 DLC.
When THQ goes down, which is looking rather prompt (let alone their current shares worth, they're also $100m in debt), Last Light will unquestionably be snapped up by a publisher because it'll be so close to release, all they'll really need to budget for is advertising. I can see that studio afterwards trying to sell games on a per-publisher basis, but who knows.
Obsidian are Obsidian, as such they're not owned by THQ and do seem to have games published on a per-game basis. With Viacom's funding, it's merely a matter of who would pick up the slack with publishing, not least if.
Volition, Relic and Vigil are all owned by THQ. Volition and Relic would be good purchases, I'd argue; the former is known for making a good variety of games and any publisher that doesn't currently have an open-world sandboxy thing may be interested in their talents re. Saints Row. Relic are obviously kings of RTS, with their only title recently that has seen action on a console being the WH40K licensed Space Marine (the last one was 6 years ago). A digital focused publisher may be interested in them, considering the direction of the PC market towards DD. People have thrown around Valve and Sega; whilst I would never rule out the former, only DOTA2 would seem to be any indication of interest Valve has put out in any sort of strategy market. That said, having a team that could make really rather good RTS' I'm sure wouldn't harm their portfolio. Sega's latest interest in pushing DD is perhaps also of interest, but considering that turn was due to a real loss of money in the bank, it seems unlikely.
As for Vigil, their only games have been Darksiders and the development of the WH40K MMO. Considering DS is essentially done, with 'not met' sales for DS2 and one of its founders and a lead creative leaving, along with the massive change in direction of the 40K game which wasn't thought to be even released until 2014, I can see Vigil being ignored and eventually disbanding.
No idea on other THQ owned developers. That said, Relic and Volition are by far the biggest ones.
I claimed over a year ago that THQ would be starting on the path to dissolution before 2012 was over. Everyone else told me I was wrong.
I can't say I feel bad about this. THQ's dev teams will find other employers, and the buying public will no longer be exposed to the exploitative DLC scheme that helped slowly drown THQ in the bathtub. Good riddance to a shitty company that treated its developers like slaves.
You'll be missed, THQ, but not by me.
As far as I know Dark Millenium was being converted into a single player RPG