THQ received a bloody nose recently with the timing of the release of its mixed martial arts UFC Undisputed 2010 game.
Brian Farrell, chief executive of the video game publisher, is hoping for a better outcome by holding fire with Homefront, a new first-person shooter that faces formidable opposition from Activision, Electronic Arts and Halo-maker Bungie.
Homefront, where North Korea invades the US, was the subject of a major marketing putsch at the E3 video game trade show this week as THQ’s flagship game. Banners were all over the LA Convention Center and a troop dressed as North Korean soldiers marched into the halls
While the game will not appear until early next year, missing the holiday sales season, the reason is not the common one of development problems and slippage.
THQ is instead determined to avoid a clash with other first-person shooters - Halo:Reach, the final Halo game from Bungie studios is released on September 14 in the US, EA’s Medal of Honor is out on October 12, Call of Duty: Black Ops from Activision follows on November 9 and Crytek’s Crysis 2 is due in December.
“We’re targeting a certain timeframe when we can own the hearts and minds of the press, retail and consumers,” Mr Farrell told me in an E3 interview.
That did not happen with UFC. UFC Undisputed 2009 was indeed the undisputed leader in video game sales in the second quarter a year ago.
But the follow-up this year came up against Take-Two’s Red Dead Redemption, a Spaghetti Western-style shooter game that has sold more than 5m copies.
“Pre-orders for UFC were 50 per cent up over last year so we think a lot of this year’s issue was the surprise-hit Red Dead Redemption sucking about $200m out of the game economy right when we launched – unlike last year when we were the title that sucked all the money out of the market,” said Mr Farrell.
“We delivered an awesome game and ,by the end of the year, UFC will be one of the best-selling products.”
Apart from better timing, Homefront will have the advantage of being a fresh intellectual property competing against retreads of other franchises, according to Mr Farrell.
“Our advantage is that it’s new, there are products out there on their third, fourth, fifth iteration. Homefront is resonating as something new to the shooter genre- why am I shooting? I am defending the homeland against an oppressive force, it’s not just scripted running through an environment, we’re not derivative.”
Having said that, the plot does sound a little like Sony and Insomniac Games’ Resistance 2 of 2008.
Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two executive chairman, told me that Red Dead Redemption had established a franchise for itself and he had high hopes for the company’s next big release – Mafia II in August.
But, like his THQ counterpart, he thought the economic environment was challenging with gamers being very selective about what they buy.
“People are choosy in this economy. If you have anything short of a triple-A title, it’s going to be a really challenging time, it’s going to be very tough to have a B product out there at a time when consumers are being prudent with their dollars,” he said.
