THQ Kills Its Juiced, Stuntman Franchises

via IGN

As part of its recently-announced effort to trim the fat from its production pipeline, THQ has announced that it will cancel some upcoming games, kill two of its franchises and close a studio.

As part of an updated financial outlook the company released today, THQ said it has canceled the PlayStation 3 version of Frontlines: Fuel of War and the PlayStation 2 version of Destroy All Humans! Big Willy Unleashed. The PC and Xbox 360 versions of the former game and the PlayStation Portable version of the latter appear to still be alive.

Despite recording a killer fiscal third quarter, fueled by hot sales of SmackDown vs. Raw 2008 and MX vs. ATV Untamed, THQ said games like Ratatouille, Conan, Stuntman: Ignition underperformed and two unannounced games were costing more than expected.

The two unannounced games, under development for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, were scheduled for release in 2010. THQ has pulled the plug on at least one of those titles and closed the studio behind it - Concrete Games.

In today's financial report, THQ also said it no longer plans to "pursue its Juiced and Stuntman" franchises. The company did not say if it plans to sell off the intellectual properties or hold them for future use.

"In October, we announced certain product quality initiatives, including personnel and structural changes in product development and a more rigorous internal and external product evaluation and feedback process," said Brian Farrell, president and CEO of THQ. "Consistent with these initiatives, we have taken actions to strengthen our pipeline and position ourselves to compete aggressively with compelling, high quality games."

I really enjoyed the first 2 Destroy all Humans games (on xbox), I hope the PSP version is still alive (and has the voice actor from the first 2/Invader Zim).

Ratatouille performed lower than expected? They shouldn't have expected anything! It was just another uninspired video game based on a movie. Did anyone at THQ actually think that a game based on a movie about a rat that liked to cook would be in high demand? (Sigh...)
Wasn't THQ behind Red Faction? We need another one of those.

Destroy all humans on the PSP would be great, hopefully it's still on THQ's plate. Hopefully they sell off the Stuntman franchise and somebody runs with it because it's some good mindless fun and it worked out well with EA and the Burnout franchise.

They really could have done more with Jucied 2, like make it a fully interactive online experince, kinda like the real event! Where you could use your money to buy space in the event and show off your car, and you can walk through the event looking at what cars people have, etc.

Stuntman was a good game, I would have bought it but I never got around to it. It was pretty hard though, if Atari ever gets back, they should buy it back.

Stuntman was fun, it's disappointing that there might not be any new versions.

They will probably sell the game licenses to other companies, just like they've acquired licenses for games in the past.