Topic: THQ Lays Off 200 Employees

[NWR_pap64]

Focus shall be placed on original titles rather than licensed games.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/27397

THQ announced that they have laid off over 200 employees. This was done in order to move focus away from licensed and children's games.

The company closed down two development houses in Australia as well as their development teams based in Phoenix. The rest of their development teams have remained intact, focusing on the development of original titles such as the Saint Row games, Darksiders 2 and inSANE.

No word as to how this will affect the development of titles for the Wii-exclusive uDraw game tablet, released last year.

[Flipster]

I actually applaud THQ for this (even companies like the once great Rare use to do a lot of licensed crap before they relied on their own IPs), though I do wonder if they've dissolved any recently renewed partnerships they've had with their various licensees (http://www.joystiq.com/2010/10/18/thq-soaks-up-multi-year-spongebob-rights-includes-3ds-game/).

I actually really liked a couple of THQ's licensed games, but with different developers taking over the licensed franchises all the time, their licensed games' quality varied greatly and wasn't consistent. I haven't seen a good licensed game come from THQ in some time.


I guess all of the licenses THQ had the rights to will all have to find different publishers and developers, so if anyone is actually interested in the various licenses THQ had the rights to and what happens to them then this news could be interesting.