The death of THQ does not make a whole lot of sense to me, for a few reasons. It came kind of out of nowhere; THQ was at the height of their glory, and the plans they were making had gamers drooling in anticipation. Saints Row: The Third was a huge hit, they had several in-house IP and licensed games that were huge successes, and they had plans laid out for further games that many gamers were eager to play (such as the new South Park. Yet at the height of their success, they went bankrupt and shut down, selling off their divisions and development studios to others. What went wrong? Why did they die? What can future developers and producers learn from these losses? I don't know for sure, but I have some thoughts.
THQ has had a long list of great games, though I admit I'm am only familiar with some of them. I first discovered THQ with the game Red Faction; an amazing FPS with destructible terrain. It was new technology in the day and really pushed the boundaries of what was possible in a game. it blew my mind; not because I'd never thought such a thing were possible, but because someone finally did it fairly well. It was a huge step forward for 3D gaming, in many ways. Their various licenced franchises did very well, too, and they followed up Red Faction with a few sequels, as well as moved into other original IPs. Saint's Row is especially notable, specifically Saint's Row: The Third; this game in particular has captured my heart with it's powerful soundtrack, wacky gameplay, and vibrant characters. THQ's already announced plans for the future, including SOUTH PARK: THE STICK OF TRUTH (http://www.thq.com/us/south-park-the-game/pc) gave the impression to most gamers that all was well with the company and things hadn't looked better.
Then, suddenly, everything collapsed.
Although it turned out that the collapse wasn't really so sudden. It seems THQ's corporate management had been making some poor business decisions over the last few years; a Wii peripheral called the uDraw gaming tablet was heavily invested in by THQ, but ended up being a commercial flop. A few of THQ's games did not do as well as they'd hoped due to (in many player's opinions) rushed design decisions and overhyped advertising (such as Homefront). Even though some still did fairly well, they didn't do as well as THQ needed and the profits they were counting on getting were not met. The company has, apparently, been stretching itself thin, hemorrhaging money, and pushing out products too quickly, or interfered with the development in some of the games being made by the developers they owned, all which resulted in sub-par products and sub-par sales.
Basically, their failures outweighed their successes, and since success means sales, the outcome was inevitable. But what can we learn from it? That's a tough question to answer. I think that THQ's management jsut simply poorly utilized their assets, stretching themselves too thin and rushing out products more inferior than they could have. For one thing, I feel THQ (basically the guys with the money) took too much direct control of development of some of their games, when the developers should have been left free to make decisions more for themselves. THQ also pushed too far into the peripheral market too quickly with insufficient research on the customer base, resulting in money being wasted on products that did not sell well.
THQ will be remembered fondly in my memory. The death of this company saddens me; I will leave further introspection on the lessons we could learn from THQ's downfall to greater men than me (or at least men with more free time). I hope very much that we will see their IPs continue in new homes (such as Saint's Row, Homefront, and Red Faction), and I hope that other makers of awesome games will endeavor to not let THQ's fate become their own.
~Peter JT Langdon
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