Report: THQ shutting down Japanese office [Joystiq]

[DP ServBot]

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2012/01/thqlogo.png (http://www.joystiq.com/2012/02/15/report-thq-shutting-down-japanese-office/)GAME Watch (http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/20120216_512307.html) is reporting that THQ will shut down its Japanese publishing operation on February 29. The article notes that it is as yet undetermined who will provide ongoing support for existing THQ titles, and whether the company has found a new publishing partner for the region. This puts the status of upcoming games including Darksiders 2 (http://joystiq.com/game/darksiders-2) into question.

This is in line with a rumor (http://www.joystiq.com/2012/01/30/rumor-thq-reduces-au-staff-by-14-japan-office-set-to-close/) that popped up in late January -- one to which THQ responded by saying "'closing' is not accurate."http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.joystiq.com/media/feedlogo.gif (http://www.joystiq.com)Report: THQ shutting down Japanese office (http://www.joystiq.com/2012/02/15/report-thq-shutting-down-japanese-office/) originally appeared on Joystiq (http://www.joystiq.com) on Wed, 15 Feb 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds (http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/).

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[The 1 2 P]

Pretty soon THQ will be shutting down period. I give them another 2 years tops before they close shop and their titles hit the auction block.

[Clownzilla]

I think since they announced that they will stop making kid's games (especially the movie license games) and the U-Draw they are finally going to build themselves back up. Yeah, they got hammered with the complete U-Draw failure and their kids games didn't sell too well BUT their other licenses are prety solid. They even said themselves that now they can concentrate on their money making franchises and creating new IP's. You also have to remember that the Southpark RPG is a THQ game and from the previews it could be a huge hit.

[Trumpman]

It's too bad they decided to make the uDraw for 360 and PS3. Why did they think that would be successful? They're currently sitting on over a million of those in a warehouse somewhere. No joke. Without that they would be actually profitable right now.

It's a shame because Saints Row the Third was awesome, and I really enjoyed Darksiders and am looking forward to the second one. THQ actually seems to want to make good games these days. And Relic has continued to pump out quality RTS's. Apparently they're now working on a new Company of Heroes. If that game gets canned because of THQ's problems, that would be unforgivable as the original CoH is my favorite RTS of all time.

Hopefully THQ can pull through, but if not, hopefully those studios will be sold to someone who can fund those games.