True THQties hit the subscribe button. Be a THQtie. Here's another docu-vid about weird hardware peripherals in the early 2010s: th-cam.com/video/022dYJ4cWpc/w-d-xo.html
is THQ Nordic dead? After buying THQ they had very good years but then after 2018 very little then nothing after 2020 , But their net income is up , from what i can see they want to only work on remakes for now?
I worked for THQ back in 2011-2012. The downfall was the CEOs decision to have the uDraw created for Xbox and Playstation when it was a Wii only device. Jason Rubin came into the studios and gave a speech on how he can fix and save the company b/c of his time at Naught Dog. We all knew he was full of sh**.
Not in the game industry, but having suits not listen to anyone actually making things and on top of it put all their chips on a personal whim hits way too close to home. Naturally they're not the ones really impacted by their own decisions.
the humble bundles were part of them trying to recoup money for the bankruptcy, it was already dead when they came out. i bought one for everyone i know, and had a few extras lol gave codes to my wife when we met a few years later.
So, I worked as QA on Homefront. I was part of the 3rd party multiplayer testing group, and worked directly with the devs and embeaded QA. We were working hard on the net code and balancing all the way up to a week of release. I was so excited to play the game with the general public, as there were several newer things that are now more common in the FPS space. Day of release, boot up the game... and the day one update game was from 4 months before, with all the major issues we had resolved. Not only did this kill KAOS but it was also one of the death nails for the QA firm I worked for. When we were working on Homefront, the feeling was even at the time was Homefront was make or break for THQ. It was one of the reasons that the marketing push at E3 that year was so over the top.
I remember playing Homefront at release, It really was fun, but not standout in any way, I could never shake the feeling it was too short tho, the entire game felt about 3 hours long, that was the biggest letdown
@jonnathonclayton5005 I was on the multiplayer side, but from what I remember, they ended up cutting about 2 hours of the game out towards the end of development. Right before the helicopter part, if I remember correctly, but its was years ago, so I could be remembering that wrong.
@@CatHerderCam Dude, multiplayer for the original Homefront and Frontlines was great. That fun Battlefield 2/ 2142/ Enemy Territory feel. Not a surprise, knowing the history of the developers. The campaigns though were kind of doo-doo, just like Bad Company 2. Shame that the guys at Kaos couldn't just put all their effort into making the pvp.
I know a friend of mine who has the uDraw on the Xbox and absolutely loved it as a kid and says it was the thing that got him into drawing and learning more about art. He is now a furry artist who makes upwards of $80 per commission so make of that what you will.
The whole situation with the Embracer family is so weird. So many layers of companies puppeteering other companies, some wearing the skin of dead companies. They're to the point they buy entire studios of people just to imediately fire every single person there due to deciding they don't want to bother managing another branch.
THQ Nordic is not THQ....THQ Nordic was originally Nordic Games...they took the name THQ Nordic, to better reflect the Library they bought from the liquidation of THQ....and to be honest I kinda hoped Nordic would have gotten Relic or at least the 40k license as DoW3 may have been a better game under their stewardship than it did under SEGA's......
as an australian who is passionate about video game development, i think it's awesome they had a studio here, even if it didn't last. video game development in this country still isn't big really, the only really well known titles made here were skyward sword hd and hollow knight. not much else.
amen, i'm always hoping more australian studios make it big with their own new titles. with so many indie titles becoming more popular, i'm surprised there aren't many aussie developers out there
What about Ty the Tasmanian Tiger? Ty games are being remastered for Switch now and also that commercial where Ty puts Dragon, Plumber and Bandicoot in hospital is well known isn't it.
@@Yzozer I was also about to comment this. Ty was one of the games I played endlessly on the GameCube. I sometimes like to look at the original trailers for the first and second games, as their is much cut content in them that was never implemented
I literally just got a THQ ad for SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake when the Battle For Bikini Bottom Commercial played! I loved a bunch of THQ games when I was little and the logo is super nostalgic to me!
Always found it crazy that the Drawn to Life game on the Wii didn't support the UDraw, as I found that attempting to draw anything on the Wiimote in that game was clunky at best. I had a UDraw, and is wasn't terrible for what it was sold as. Probably could be a decent Osu tablet now if you can get third-party drivers for it.
Yeah there isn't a proper driver but there's an application which uses windows messaging to create mouse events. So it can have hit or miss compatibility particularly concerning software that runs in a different user context, privileged context, or games with cheat detection and raw input routines. I guess with a strong enough desire, someone could add uDraw support into OpenTabletDriver making it fully functional, and the existing bridge application is an enormous help, but i'm not going to put up the effort.
I'm so happy they went bankrupt because when i was a teen, i pirated SR4 n they wanted me to pay up for it. First they wanted 900€, then after not paying it they wanted 1500. That was exactly around the time they went bankrupt, so this just ended in nowhere. Don't care about the lost jobs there, only care about me🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼
I did QA for THQ back in 2008, and I can say for certain that it felt like the company was on rocky ground even for just the few months I was there. The game I worked on was Destroy All Humans 3, the developer of which was dissolved before the game was actually finished. I remember there were only a few devs still working on it by my final month on the project, at which point I was let go. It really didn't surprise me when I heard that they'd gone bankrupt.
I think this is the first time I've heard the games industry called "recession-proof". If anything, it's one of the more volatile part of the entertainment industry.
I'm sure somebody coined the idea before 2008, but it was a common enough phrase in articles and on TV during that recession that it imprinted on my early teenage brain. (Searching it nowadays brings back recollections of the 2008 GFC, when games were one of the few industries that saw their numbers hold steady or increase - only, it did so to fewer publishers, as others closed shop and things sadly consolidated. One of the first 2008 results, for historical reference: www.wired.com/2008/11/recession-proof ) I didn't see it in articles as much during early covid, but there was some commentary on it then as well when the Switch especially (and every console) had the unprecedented sales acceleration due to everybody being home more. Thankfully analysts are a bit more tuned in now, so any recent commentary I've seen has used the same caveat: We say that games are recession-proof, but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of crossfire that harms studios _during_ one.
@@TheGoldenBolt You weren't wrong though. It's a statistical fact and has been. The problem, as you touched on here, is more the crossfire and volatility. But the industry as a whole is massive and generally grows even if slower some years. Frankly it's kind of like the adult industry in that way. People continue to spend more time indoors than ever.
I guess yeah it's immune to recessions per se because it's an entertainment medium that can be enjoyed without going out anywhere and even on a budget, by comparison to movies or even streaming services. But overall I'd have said it's more volatile because it's a very "fast" industry; a studio could be doing very well one year and the next they're facing bankruptcy and being bought out by EA or Microsoft.
The industry and the money it brings in is recession proof to a degree. The issue is game companies are all boom bust type companies. This means a few companies can make so much money that the industry looks exceptionally well off despite most studios struggling. With that all said, with the current budget and time it takes to release new titles from start of development to finish has me feeling that we are in a videogame bubble that might pop soon on the larger big budget developers
The hubris of THQ reminds me of that of Atari in the early 80’s. I still remember metal garbage cans (new cans used as totes) full of heavily discounted Atari products AND NO ONE WANTED IT.
THQ gave us Smackdown so many amazing wrestling storylines and moments in their WWE games, like Teddy Long getting run by a mystery assailant to creating a better WCW invasion angle than the WWE did back in 2001.
Honestly I think the closest hardware flop since this was Starlink. I remember seeing TONS of those for PS4 and Xbox One in every discount venue imaginable. The Switch one only sold decent cuz of the Star Fox collab.
It still blows my mind they got the rights to publish Cruise N Blast. I finally played the original arcade version this year and yeah that game is fantastic!
Once you reach 10k items ordered for typical electronics manufacturing your scaling is already pretty good, you're not getting a very good nominal per item cost due to various up front costs at all, but you're also not losing much by cutting the order short at that point and ordering more later as-needed, just preserving the tooling for that follow up order; if you can push it to 50k initial order yeah that's better. But in what world does it make sense to order a million if all you might need is 50 or 100k? Oof.
The mobile market...it's a damn shame that it became practically synonymous with "shovelware" and "monetisation", instead of any actual "quality", like the console/PC market has (mostly) remained. If mobiles offered some actually-fun games of decent quality, that didn't try to force players to pay all the time, then it might've become a respectable branch of the industry - and companies pivoting to it wouldn't be seen as effectively selling their souls.
It really is. From the infamous rainbow that gave titles on nes like, Roger rabbit and karate kid to a beloved 3 letter logo that brought classics like battle for bikini bottom and destroy all humans. Talk about redemption
Sadly, I was one of those kids who bought the PS3 version of the tablet for launch and then got pissed literally 3 months later when Walmart had them down to $10 to get them out. There was a class action and everything where you could get refunded that difference but my parents threw the damn box away which had the receipt in it so I never got reimbursed that difference either, despite saving them both for that exact reason. 13 year old me really could have used that $50 to buy a better game too. This and Shadow the Hedgehog taught me to never buy games day one.
halfbrick developed fruit ninja as a hail mary because they were one bad decision away from bankruptcy. it was fruit ninja and jetpack joyride that allowed them to work on other games. apparently every game company in australia was basically either in the process of closing or in the same boat.
This came with the name uDraw and following year, the Wii U came out. There’s a pattern when it comes it comes to U in the name of video game machines that causes companies to lose money
Funnily enough I believe the uDraw also contributed to the Wii U's failure? One of the reasons the Wii U sold so little was the fact that many people thought it was just a peripheral for the Wii, and the fact that there was a precedent with a tablet peripheral with "U" in the name probably made some people think that it was something similar to that
My experience with the old THQ was pretty much limited to wrestling games. I may have played some of their other games, but the only games I specifically associated with them (from my experience) were wrestling games.
I had just returned to wrestling games with SVR 2011, and again with the would have been perfect turned unpatched mess that was WWE '13 (which is when they went bankrupt). Haven't touched a wrestling game since.
With how much i grew up with THQ through the wrestling games and more, knowing how far they have fallen similar to EA, Konami, Capcom sometimes and Activision.
I wouldn't say Capcom has fallen the same way as any of those others, they're putting out pretty often fantastic games, just absurdly greedy and anticonsumer, with high unreasonable standards of profit. And THQ isn't at all the Demon companies like EA or espically Activision and Konami became They're an entirely different middle tier company wearing anothers skinsuit nowdays, and the OG's death was more comaparble to something like Telltale, overreliance in liscened brands combined with messy management and a decline.
I mean it's true, Gaming isn't getting any less popular from here on out. The layoffs weren't due to companies making no profit, but because companies wanted to increase their profit to an unreasonable degree.
@@Mediados recessions are not about popularity. In 2008 buying a house instead of renting wasn't any less popular, yet there was a global recession nonetheless. There has been massive malinvestment in the gaming industry, and the bill for their out of control spending is coming hard.
Wow this was great. I remember playing the Scooby Doo Night of 100 Frights game way back in the early 2000s. Sad to see such a force in the gaming world disappear over night. Also I had no idea the first Metro game was them. I wonder what an alternate timeline would look like if THQ were still around, fully focused on core gaming and new IPs.
I remember being 15 years old and starting to realize anything that they put out was not quality. I got sick of buying a game and immediately seeing THQ on the screen and always getting pissed. I started deliberately looking for them on the packaging and avoiding it.
THQ Nordic is not THQ of old. Nordic Games purchased THQ name, logo and a lot of there IP's such as; Darksiders, Red Faction, Company of Heroes, Blob, Destroy All Humans!, Drawn to Life, Homefront, Juiced etc. I never liked the last logo THQ had. There was nothing wrong with there prior logo they had had for years. To THQ's credit, they did produce some good licese based games, several of them was Disney & Disney Pixars IP's. There downfall was sadly similar to what Acclaim's downfall - wanting to grow too big and too fast (!) Not having the capacity and yet take the big gambles....
Their biggest issue was the infighting between the two divisions. How on earth there was that little oversight for the kids division and for that tablet absolutely baffles me.
Excellent (and heartbreaking) breakdown of this whole mess. Goddamn I wish they had pulled their heads out of their asses and seen what a bad idea the uDraw HD was. So many great original games/franchises that lost their development teams because the company crashed just before they could be released.
THQ was so big especially in the 00s. All those wrestling games they've made since the N64/PS1 days, Red Faction, Destroy all Humans, Saints Row, Juiced, the SpongeBob games and all the other licensed kids games, Darksiders, Metro 2033. Sad how they fell off the last few years, I think years of their BS practices started to catch up to them as well as gaming in general massively changing after 2012.
I used to work for their QA Department in Phoenix, AZ; The third floor of a small office building leased out by Camelback Road and (I think) 32nd Street.
I would assume the Nintendo game you mention coming out not long after that Dood's Big Adventure game was Kirby and The Rainbow Curse, except that Kirby Canvas Curse came out in 2005 and already had similar drawing mechanics.
I was speaking mostly hypothetically there, like it has the vibe of a first-party Nintendo IP, but you're definitely correct on the Kirby front now that you mention it!
I worked for a mobile company in the early 00s. We did a few THQ ports for BREW handsets. The quality of code we saw as mixed. Compared to Gameloft though these guys were rookies. Gameloft code was pleasure to work with and porting was a no brainer most of the time.
I personally believe the WWe games would be in a much better state if THQ never folded, especially with what 2K's been doing to the games now that Yukes cut ties with them.
They should have remarketed the uDraw tablets for PS3 and Xbox 360 as the definitive way to play real time strategy games on a console. The Company of Heroes IP would've been ideal to spearhead this. Might not have worked out in the end, but it would have re-oriented their business towards core games (what they wanted to do to begin with).
I happen to know somebody who worked for THQ until they shut down. I had the opportunity to look at some very unique production artifacts. Whatever you say about THQ is probably accurate, but a few forgotten people **really** cared. If you know where to look, and I'm not telling, the quality really shines through.
It strikes me as pretty hard to make an actually successful peripheral, and they managed to do one. The Wii U basically ripped them off, right down to the U Also, I actually liked Homefront, even though I played it on a subpar PC. The Team Fortress 2 bonus drew me to it
Like most game developers, THQ was a great team with bad leaders. I don't know how or why, but the shotcallers in the AAA video game industry make bad decisions absurdly often. They either have a lack of understanding of video games or lack of understanding of business, both of which lead to miscalculating what the audience actually wants.
It's unfortunately very common for companies to cling to an unprofitable core devision which strangles the new division they hope will save them. The obvious fix is to spin the new division off as a separate firm, but that requires giving up management control.
2:24 This feels like the Imperial Japanese Military and that is definitely not a good thing... For those who don't know one of the biggest enemies Japan had during WW2 _was their own military and its branches fighting each other constantly._
Even though I'm not able to financial support Yall I truely do absolutely love and appreciate all yall truely amazing high quality information filled entertaining Content and hope yall can keep up the amazing work
THQ made my very first N64 game (and one of my all-time favorites), Rugrats in Paris, so it will always have a special place in my heart. O how the mighty have fallen 😔
Wow, has it really been this long since THQ went under? I'm old! Haha. I remember being so dejected for darksiders, one of my favorite franchises. Luckily it made a comeback.
Ive been a big game since the early 90s so it's a pretty sad day to see THQ fall. I've played countless games done by them, they've always been a staple in the gaming community. We've had some real losses these past few years. It's sad, really loved them
I worked at GameStop and we got about 50 uDraw tablets and sold maybe one of them. We weren't really encouraged to sell it either. It seemed like GameStop was even like wtf do we do with this? By contrast, we got hundreds of Skylanders, but we sold hundreds of Skylanders and had a Skylander section from the get-go.
Manta sound is amazing! I'm a nightshift worker, and the sound was worth the 150 bucks canadian I spent! no more ear plugs and and shitty masks or hoods to sleep in the daytime. need music to help me sleep, and I could only use ear buds for a few hours before my ears would hurt
I never knew there was this shit happening behind the scenes there, I never thought of them past "they made 'x' game" also putting the udraw music as the background music at 0:05 brought back soooo many memories of drawing in the instant artist studio and playing pictionary with my family so thank you for putting that music there lol I love the wii edit wrong timestamp and wii dickriding
I didnt even know homefront was a game from thq. I distinctly remember it being interesting and well made but shockingly short. After brief disappointment i promptly forgot about the game entirely until now
I actually had the Wii one when I was younger. We had the actual drawing tool and then some sort of platformer game, which I forgot the name of. I didn’t play either for too long, what with all the other great Wii games available.
True THQties hit the subscribe button. Be a THQtie. Here's another docu-vid about weird hardware peripherals in the early 2010s: th-cam.com/video/022dYJ4cWpc/w-d-xo.html
Teeny hot cuties? ☠️
Took me a second to understand that you didn't mean to say THQ-ite, but THQti π instead
is THQ Nordic dead? After buying THQ they had very good years but then after 2018 very little then nothing after 2020 , But their net income is up , from what i can see they want to only work on remakes for now?
I was a THQtie.
No
I worked for THQ back in 2011-2012. The downfall was the CEOs decision to have the uDraw created for Xbox and Playstation when it was a Wii only device. Jason Rubin came into the studios and gave a speech on how he can fix and save the company b/c of his time at Naught Dog. We all knew he was full of sh**.
What games did you work on ?
Not in the game industry, but having suits not listen to anyone actually making things and on top of it put all their chips on a personal whim hits way too close to home. Naturally they're not the ones really impacted by their own decisions.
@@marcing115 Darksiders II when I was at THQ
@@bloodCount8895 where are you now if you don’t mind me asking
@mauriluciano1780 I was at NetherRealm and then moved to Lost Boys Interactive.
I just can't get over the level of hubris it would take to not realize the UDraw tablet was intrinsically a Wii peripheral
bro stop trying so hard to sound intelligent
@@jacobkroehler9083 dont take pride in being a burnout
@@jacobkroehler9083 Read books.
I like the idea that Drawn to Life is the cause of death for THQ, since the uDraw wouldn't exist, and therefore HD uDraw wouldn't exist
When THQ did that pretty insane humble bundle you kinda knew the writing was on the wall.
the humble bundles were part of them trying to recoup money for the bankruptcy, it was already dead when they came out. i bought one for everyone i know, and had a few extras lol gave codes to my wife when we met a few years later.
So, I worked as QA on Homefront. I was part of the 3rd party multiplayer testing group, and worked directly with the devs and embeaded QA. We were working hard on the net code and balancing all the way up to a week of release. I was so excited to play the game with the general public, as there were several newer things that are now more common in the FPS space. Day of release, boot up the game... and the day one update game was from 4 months before, with all the major issues we had resolved. Not only did this kill KAOS but it was also one of the death nails for the QA firm I worked for. When we were working on Homefront, the feeling was even at the time was Homefront was make or break for THQ. It was one of the reasons that the marketing push at E3 that year was so over the top.
I remember playing Homefront at release, It really was fun, but not standout in any way, I could never shake the feeling it was too short tho, the entire game felt about 3 hours long, that was the biggest letdown
@jonnathonclayton5005 I was on the multiplayer side, but from what I remember, they ended up cutting about 2 hours of the game out towards the end of development. Right before the helicopter part, if I remember correctly, but its was years ago, so I could be remembering that wrong.
Dude homefront was super underrated - literally one of my favourite games the newer one was dogshit tho
Homefront 1s multiplayer had potential
@@CatHerderCam Dude, multiplayer for the original Homefront and Frontlines was great. That fun Battlefield 2/ 2142/ Enemy Territory feel. Not a surprise, knowing the history of the developers. The campaigns though were kind of doo-doo, just like Bad Company 2. Shame that the guys at Kaos couldn't just put all their effort into making the pvp.
The original uDraw was my first graphics tablet so I can't help but love it. It's a shame that the second version flopped so goddamn hard.
Yeah the first one was a little risky, but overall a smart investment. HD was plain stupid
I know a friend of mine who has the uDraw on the Xbox and absolutely loved it as a kid and says it was the thing that got him into drawing and learning more about art.
He is now a furry artist who makes upwards of $80 per commission so make of that what you will.
I’d be devastated if I were you.
@@cabriskus4700 While i do agree, for 80 bucks a drawing i'd gladly draw ANYTHING and EVERYTHING, no questions asked lol
@@anonymouseovermouse1960 That’s honestly a valid ass point
Lol
Thq have basically been my childhood company. SpongeBob Battle for bikini bottom, destroy all humans and red faction were my top favorites growing up
Same here, but for WWE games
It honestly weird to think the thq of today isn’t the same as thq of yesteryear.
The whole situation with the Embracer family is so weird.
So many layers of companies puppeteering other companies, some wearing the skin of dead companies.
They're to the point they buy entire studios of people just to imediately fire every single person there due to deciding they don't want to bother managing another branch.
THQ Nordic is not THQ....THQ Nordic was originally Nordic Games...they took the name THQ Nordic, to better reflect the Library they bought from the liquidation of THQ....and to be honest I kinda hoped Nordic would have gotten Relic or at least the 40k license as DoW3 may have been a better game under their stewardship than it did under SEGA's......
@@Hellfire918 I'm aware, that's why I'm saying it's weird to know that isn't the same thq
Corporate shell game
@@Hellfire918 Yeah, Sega hasn't been the best steward of RTS games since how they handled Universe At War: Earth Assault.
as an australian who is passionate about video game development, i think it's awesome they had a studio here, even if it didn't last. video game development in this country still isn't big really, the only really well known titles made here were skyward sword hd and hollow knight. not much else.
amen, i'm always hoping more australian studios make it big with their own new titles. with so many indie titles becoming more popular, i'm surprised there aren't many aussie developers out there
Honestly until literally right now fruit ninja was the only game I knew for sure was from Australia
LA Noire was also made by an aussie
What about Ty the Tasmanian Tiger? Ty games are being remastered for Switch now and also that commercial where Ty puts Dragon, Plumber and Bandicoot in hospital is well known isn't it.
@@Yzozer I was also about to comment this. Ty was one of the games I played endlessly on the GameCube. I sometimes like to look at the original trailers for the first and second games, as their is much cut content in them that was never implemented
I literally just got a THQ ad for SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake when the Battle For Bikini Bottom Commercial played! I loved a bunch of THQ games when I was little and the logo is super nostalgic to me!
Always found it crazy that the Drawn to Life game on the Wii didn't support the UDraw, as I found that attempting to draw anything on the Wiimote in that game was clunky at best. I had a UDraw, and is wasn't terrible for what it was sold as. Probably could be a decent Osu tablet now if you can get third-party drivers for it.
Yeah there isn't a proper driver but there's an application which uses windows messaging to create mouse events. So it can have hit or miss compatibility particularly concerning software that runs in a different user context, privileged context, or games with cheat detection and raw input routines.
I guess with a strong enough desire, someone could add uDraw support into OpenTabletDriver making it fully functional, and the existing bridge application is an enormous help, but i'm not going to put up the effort.
The Wii drawn to life game came out a year before Udraw and the end of the second DS kinda basically made any sequels impossible without heavy retcons
Such a shame too. Imagine how many great games could have been made with them at the helm. They were THE publishers for Nickelodeon games.
Esspecially the hot wheels games too
I'm so happy they went bankrupt because when i was a teen, i pirated SR4 n they wanted me to pay up for it. First they wanted 900€, then after not paying it they wanted 1500. That was exactly around the time they went bankrupt, so this just ended in nowhere. Don't care about the lost jobs there, only care about me🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼
@@daanyal6266 hahahaha I love this
I mostly remember them the GameCube Harry Potter games and the whisper “challenge everything”
@@daanyal6266 how did they even know you pirated it?
I did QA for THQ back in 2008, and I can say for certain that it felt like the company was on rocky ground even for just the few months I was there. The game I worked on was Destroy All Humans 3, the developer of which was dissolved before the game was actually finished. I remember there were only a few devs still working on it by my final month on the project, at which point I was let go. It really didn't surprise me when I heard that they'd gone bankrupt.
Intersting did you do QA at other companies
Damn that would’ve been nice. I just recently played DAH remastered on PC, love those games
That would have been path of the furon, right? Oof, yeah that game had issues. It being orphaned before release makes total sense.
I think this is the first time I've heard the games industry called "recession-proof".
If anything, it's one of the more volatile part of the entertainment industry.
I'm sure somebody coined the idea before 2008, but it was a common enough phrase in articles and on TV during that recession that it imprinted on my early teenage brain. (Searching it nowadays brings back recollections of the 2008 GFC, when games were one of the few industries that saw their numbers hold steady or increase - only, it did so to fewer publishers, as others closed shop and things sadly consolidated. One of the first 2008 results, for historical reference: www.wired.com/2008/11/recession-proof )
I didn't see it in articles as much during early covid, but there was some commentary on it then as well when the Switch especially (and every console) had the unprecedented sales acceleration due to everybody being home more. Thankfully analysts are a bit more tuned in now, so any recent commentary I've seen has used the same caveat: We say that games are recession-proof, but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of crossfire that harms studios _during_ one.
@@TheGoldenBolt You weren't wrong though. It's a statistical fact and has been. The problem, as you touched on here, is more the crossfire and volatility. But the industry as a whole is massive and generally grows even if slower some years. Frankly it's kind of like the adult industry in that way. People continue to spend more time indoors than ever.
I guess yeah it's immune to recessions per se because it's an entertainment medium that can be enjoyed without going out anywhere and even on a budget, by comparison to movies or even streaming services.
But overall I'd have said it's more volatile because it's a very "fast" industry; a studio could be doing very well one year and the next they're facing bankruptcy and being bought out by EA or Microsoft.
The industry and the money it brings in is recession proof to a degree. The issue is game companies are all boom bust type companies. This means a few companies can make so much money that the industry looks exceptionally well off despite most studios struggling. With that all said, with the current budget and time it takes to release new titles from start of development to finish has me feeling that we are in a videogame bubble that might pop soon on the larger big budget developers
The hubris of THQ reminds me of that of Atari in the early 80’s. I still remember metal garbage cans (new cans used as totes) full of heavily discounted Atari products AND NO ONE WANTED IT.
THQ gave us Smackdown so many amazing wrestling storylines and moments in their WWE games, like Teddy Long getting run by a mystery assailant to creating a better WCW invasion angle than the WWE did back in 2001.
Didnt THQ do twisted metal too
Yeah there wresting games are missed, they was way better than wah 2k be putting out now
Honestly I think the closest hardware flop since this was Starlink. I remember seeing TONS of those for PS4 and Xbox One in every discount venue imaginable. The Switch one only sold decent cuz of the Star Fox collab.
Starlink is a good shout, certainly not as catastrophic but man, the amount of those things on shelves for $15-20 near the final clearouts was insane.
Typing this while using starlink, got a bid of 70k USD for wifi for be ran to my house and starlink is my only option… so far its been a life saver
@@josephsmith794 Not that Starlink. Remember, we're talking about gaming peripherals.
@@josephsmith794 LOL. They mean Starlink: The Battle for Atlas, it's a game.
My very first THQ experience was with the Tak games, mostly staff of dreams and the great juju challenge.
20 years from now theres gonna be a video exactly like this for GameMill
Not my glorified shovelware dev!!!!
@@BBWahoo poor skull island rise of kong and Nickelodeon kartz 3
It still blows my mind they got the rights to publish Cruise N Blast. I finally played the original arcade version this year and yeah that game is fantastic!
GameMill is the modern day LJN
THQ at least had good games
@@BensyBens
You gotta admit, they live up to their name lol
Once you reach 10k items ordered for typical electronics manufacturing your scaling is already pretty good, you're not getting a very good nominal per item cost due to various up front costs at all, but you're also not losing much by cutting the order short at that point and ordering more later as-needed, just preserving the tooling for that follow up order; if you can push it to 50k initial order yeah that's better. But in what world does it make sense to order a million if all you might need is 50 or 100k? Oof.
right just makes no sense.
Speaking of a company known for SpongeBob games.
THQ: Wanna see me speedrun bankruptcy?
Embracer group/THQ Nordic: You wanna see me do it again?
I understood that reference.
@@Vandelorian It isn’t an obscure reference.
@@evilchild1851 You didn't understand that reference.
@@JohnSmith-xv1tp You mean that scene form the Avengers? Doesnt make the reply make more sense
The mobile market...it's a damn shame that it became practically synonymous with "shovelware" and "monetisation", instead of any actual "quality", like the console/PC market has (mostly) remained. If mobiles offered some actually-fun games of decent quality, that didn't try to force players to pay all the time, then it might've become a respectable branch of the industry - and companies pivoting to it wouldn't be seen as effectively selling their souls.
19:07
Neil Patrick Harris also voices the Amazing Spider-Man in "Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions"
Strange to think that THQ was originally founded by the same guy who founded LJN, Jack Friedman.
It really is. From the infamous rainbow that gave titles on nes like, Roger rabbit and karate kid to a beloved 3 letter logo that brought classics like battle for bikini bottom and destroy all humans. Talk about redemption
That... actually makes a lot of sense considering LJN dominated the licensed game market during the NES and SNES era.
”Banking on an art accessory for 3 systems when all you’re known for is WWE video games.” - Scott The Woz
Sadly, I was one of those kids who bought the PS3 version of the tablet for launch and then got pissed literally 3 months later when Walmart had them down to $10 to get them out. There was a class action and everything where you could get refunded that difference but my parents threw the damn box away which had the receipt in it so I never got reimbursed that difference either, despite saving them both for that exact reason. 13 year old me really could have used that $50 to buy a better game too. This and Shadow the Hedgehog taught me to never buy games day one.
I wasn't even aware there were PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the UDraw. If that doesn't say just how bad it flopped, I don't know what does.
i don’t think we measure success of a product based on if crab man has seen it before
halfbrick developed fruit ninja as a hail mary because they were one bad decision away from bankruptcy. it was fruit ninja and jetpack joyride that allowed them to work on other games.
apparently every game company in australia was basically either in the process of closing or in the same boat.
This came with the name uDraw and following year, the Wii U came out. There’s a pattern when it comes it comes to U in the name of video game machines that causes companies to lose money
O(u)ija
yeah, X or Z wouldve been much-cooler letters to assign instead...
@@adamofblastworks1517 oh my God another one in the list
Don't forget about the Gamec(u)be, Virt(u)al boy, and Jag(u)ar.
Funnily enough I believe the uDraw also contributed to the Wii U's failure? One of the reasons the Wii U sold so little was the fact that many people thought it was just a peripheral for the Wii, and the fact that there was a precedent with a tablet peripheral with "U" in the name probably made some people think that it was something similar to that
Fantastic video, man, THQ was very unique - sure most of their games where licensed, but I still remember enjoying many licensed THQ games as a kid.
My experience with the old THQ was pretty much limited to wrestling games. I may have played some of their other games, but the only games I specifically associated with them (from my experience) were wrestling games.
I remember playing wwe 2009 alot myself
I just came to learn with this video they made of all these kids games too
I had just returned to wrestling games with SVR 2011, and again with the would have been perfect turned unpatched mess that was WWE '13 (which is when they went bankrupt). Haven't touched a wrestling game since.
Sony, Thq learned this before even Nintendo, do not imitate the Wii U. It is a literal siren death sound. It even *sounds* like a siren.
The wii u ripped off thq clearly
@@belstar1128clearly wasn’t a good idea
With how much i grew up with THQ through the wrestling games and more, knowing how far they have fallen similar to EA, Konami, Capcom sometimes and Activision.
I wouldn't say Capcom has fallen the same way as any of those others, they're putting out pretty often fantastic games, just absurdly greedy and anticonsumer, with high unreasonable standards of profit.
And THQ isn't at all the Demon companies like EA or espically Activision and Konami became
They're an entirely different middle tier company wearing anothers skinsuit nowdays, and the OG's death was more comaparble to something like Telltale, overreliance in liscened brands combined with messy management and a decline.
@@_-Lx-_ I said sometimes, that's why I put it
Yeah I agree with that, now some of its stuff belongs to the embracer group
@@mandalorianhunter1 gotta be honest capcom nowadays is pretty good. monster hunter rise, the new resident evil games...
@@theozziepotato didn't I just say sometimes? 2017 and before they were falling off a lot with a few hits
@@mandalorianhunter1 this reads like you dont have a proper grasp on the english language
Hearing that games are considered recession-proof in 2023, with 6.000 highly skilled professionals being laid off globally, is funny, lol.
I mean it's true, Gaming isn't getting any less popular from here on out. The layoffs weren't due to companies making no profit, but because companies wanted to increase their profit to an unreasonable degree.
@@Mediados recessions are not about popularity. In 2008 buying a house instead of renting wasn't any less popular, yet there was a global recession nonetheless. There has been massive malinvestment in the gaming industry, and the bill for their out of control spending is coming hard.
6000 or 6,000. 6.000 in English is 6. English numbers don't work how German/French/Italian numbers do.
@@MuchWhittering I apologize for using the decimal separator that is used in every single language and culture except the Anglo-Saxon ones.
@@dallacosta2868 gay
Wow this was great. I remember playing the Scooby Doo Night of 100 Frights game way back in the early 2000s. Sad to see such a force in the gaming world disappear over night. Also I had no idea the first Metro game was them. I wonder what an alternate timeline would look like if THQ were still around, fully focused on core gaming and new IPs.
I remember being 15 years old and starting to realize anything that they put out was not quality. I got sick of buying a game and immediately seeing THQ on the screen and always getting pissed. I started deliberately looking for them on the packaging and avoiding it.
THQ Nordic is not THQ of old. Nordic Games purchased THQ name, logo and a lot of there IP's such as; Darksiders, Red Faction, Company of Heroes, Blob,
Destroy All Humans!, Drawn to Life, Homefront, Juiced etc. I never liked the last logo THQ had. There was nothing wrong with there prior logo they had had for years.
To THQ's credit, they did produce some good licese based games, several of them was Disney & Disney Pixars IP's.
There downfall was sadly similar to what Acclaim's downfall - wanting to grow too big and too fast (!) Not having the capacity and yet take the big gambles....
Their biggest issue was the infighting between the two divisions. How on earth there was that little oversight for the kids division and for that tablet absolutely baffles me.
@@sniperfi4532 So true. It became really messed up.
Excellent (and heartbreaking) breakdown of this whole mess. Goddamn I wish they had pulled their heads out of their asses and seen what a bad idea the uDraw HD was. So many great original games/franchises that lost their development teams because the company crashed just before they could be released.
THQ was so big especially in the 00s. All those wrestling games they've made since the N64/PS1 days, Red Faction, Destroy all Humans, Saints Row, Juiced, the SpongeBob games and all the other licensed kids games, Darksiders, Metro 2033. Sad how they fell off the last few years, I think years of their BS practices started to catch up to them as well as gaming in general massively changing after 2012.
I used to work for their QA Department in Phoenix, AZ; The third floor of a small office building leased out by Camelback Road and (I think) 32nd Street.
AZ gang
I would assume the Nintendo game you mention coming out not long after that Dood's Big Adventure game was Kirby and The Rainbow Curse, except that Kirby Canvas Curse came out in 2005 and already had similar drawing mechanics.
I was speaking mostly hypothetically there, like it has the vibe of a first-party Nintendo IP, but you're definitely correct on the Kirby front now that you mention it!
Great video!
I worked for a mobile company in the early 00s. We did a few THQ ports for BREW handsets. The quality of code we saw as mixed. Compared to Gameloft though these guys were rookies. Gameloft code was pleasure to work with and porting was a no brainer most of the time.
Didn't Gameloft make Smackdown? Great game.
What a treat! Thank you!
I personally believe the WWe games would be in a much better state if THQ never folded, especially with what 2K's been doing to the games now that Yukes cut ties with them.
THQ was the pinnacle of gaming quality for me growing up. It's sad how things turn out.
The depressed Pikachu at 11:33 says everything you need to know about the uDraw.
im very sure my ps2 collection had a major number of THQ games back in the day
They should have remarketed the uDraw tablets for PS3 and Xbox 360 as the definitive way to play real time strategy games on a console. The Company of Heroes IP would've been ideal to spearhead this. Might not have worked out in the end, but it would have re-oriented their business towards core games (what they wanted to do to begin with).
Facts.
Also would have helped not producing so many 😂
No childhood game ever started till we heard
T
H
Q
Boom
Game on
Got that right
I had literally never heard of the UDraw peripheral until watching this video. Never even seen one lol. I missed out on so much it seems.
Thanks for tackling this topic about the original thq! Well, the part that made them kick the bucket...
THQ used to make the best wrestling games. Those WCW & later WWF games were something special.
Yeah, good times. 😊
I had a few games from THQ on the WII. As fun as those were it's actually kinda depressing they went down the drain
Listening to the layoffs from back then makes me realize the layoffs now are exactly as bad as I thought.
I spent so many hours playing the WALL-E PS2 game with my sister. So sad to see such a huge company ended up like this.
Props for the Lock’s Quest OST in the background. One of THQ’s best games.
4:23 this was my first avatar game
I remember their Mx vs ATV games, and it is a shame to see what happened to them.
I happen to know somebody who worked for THQ until they shut down. I had the opportunity to look at some very unique production artifacts.
Whatever you say about THQ is probably accurate, but a few forgotten people **really** cared. If you know where to look, and I'm not telling, the quality really shines through.
19:09 Neil also voiced amazing spiderman in shattered dimensions so 2 video game credits
It strikes me as pretty hard to make an actually successful peripheral, and they managed to do one. The Wii U basically ripped them off, right down to the U
Also, I actually liked Homefront, even though I played it on a subpar PC. The Team Fortress 2 bonus drew me to it
Like most game developers, THQ was a great team with bad leaders. I don't know how or why, but the shotcallers in the AAA video game industry make bad decisions absurdly often. They either have a lack of understanding of video games or lack of understanding of business, both of which lead to miscalculating what the audience actually wants.
Always funny to think how one little mistake can completely destroy hundreds of lives/careers...
“Their own KFC” 💀
It's unfortunately very common for companies to cling to an unprofitable core devision which strangles the new division they hope will save them. The obvious fix is to spin the new division off as a separate firm, but that requires giving up management control.
Very informative video, I wanted to play with the Udraw tablet back in the day, but it did not work well for people who are left-handed, real shame,
I have been subscribed since 2016 and this is one of the best videos you have posted. Thanks Mike 🙌🏽
THQ bought so many IPs but never remade any of them
2:24 This feels like the Imperial Japanese Military and that is definitely not a good thing...
For those who don't know one of the biggest enemies Japan had during WW2 _was their own military and its branches fighting each other constantly._
Even though I'm not able to financial support Yall I truely do absolutely love and appreciate all yall truely amazing high quality information filled entertaining Content and hope yall can keep up the amazing work
Just goes to show you can do everything right and still fail if the wrong people have your back
how is putting an $80m hole in your balance sheet for hardware that predictably won't sell "doing everything right"
drawn to life was a huge part of my childhood, i can't believe it indirectly caused the death of THQ lmao
THQ made a LOT of the games I enjoyed on my childhood... OG Xbox era... that logo is stuck on my head.
I think 90% of the wii games i have are made by THQ tbh
im actually pretty proud that ive managed to buy all 3 of these tablets at thrift stores, one being complete in box, and all 3 still work fully
THQ made my very first N64 game (and one of my all-time favorites), Rugrats in Paris, so it will always have a special place in my heart. O how the mighty have fallen 😔
They did create the best Hot Wheels game ever. Stunt Track Challenge. Still my highest bar for Hot Wheels
Thq should’ve only focused their family divison on the handheld market because the budgets could be lower and have mass appeal
We need a telltale deep dive brotha
Talk about putting all of your eggs in one basket, while that basket was over a very brittle and wobbly table with two legs missing.
udraw ist maybe also a reason why everyone thought the wii u is another wii periferall.
Wow, has it really been this long since THQ went under? I'm old! Haha. I remember being so dejected for darksiders, one of my favorite franchises. Luckily it made a comeback.
Ive been a big game since the early 90s so it's a pretty sad day to see THQ fall. I've played countless games done by them, they've always been a staple in the gaming community. We've had some real losses these past few years. It's sad, really loved them
I worked at GameStop and we got about 50 uDraw tablets and sold maybe one of them. We weren't really encouraged to sell it either. It seemed like GameStop was even like wtf do we do with this? By contrast, we got hundreds of Skylanders, but we sold hundreds of Skylanders and had a Skylander section from the get-go.
Great retrospective
Manta sound is amazing! I'm a nightshift worker, and the sound was worth the 150 bucks canadian I spent! no more ear plugs and and shitty masks or hoods to sleep in the daytime. need music to help me sleep, and I could only use ear buds for a few hours before my ears would hurt
I’m still disappointed we never got a true red faction guerrilla sequel
I remember just not being keen on THQ games. They always just felt bleh.
awesome video, this was amazingly made. super underrated
I never knew there was this shit happening behind the scenes there, I never thought of them past "they made 'x' game"
also putting the udraw music as the background music at 0:05 brought back soooo many memories of drawing in the instant artist studio and playing pictionary with my family so thank you for putting that music there lol I love the wii
edit wrong timestamp and wii dickriding
Man, THQ was my childhood. Hate to see it go like this.
11:10
So he’s the guy that made nfts…
12:10 Challenge accepted. I'm doing my part! o7
I didnt even know homefront was a game from thq. I distinctly remember it being interesting and well made but shockingly short. After brief disappointment i promptly forgot about the game entirely until now
11:08 LMAO "World's FIRST NFT sighting" 💀💀💀
Its funny that you mentioned Neil Patrick Harrison because I cant think of him and not think about the fact that he was DJ Veteran Child
MadCatz‘ rock band disaster comes to mind, speaking of physical production fiaskos
I actually had the Wii one when I was younger. We had the actual drawing tool and then some sort of platformer game, which I forgot the name of. I didn’t play either for too long, what with all the other great Wii games available.
I just want Timesplitters 4. Please