Yeah but in the end they were left with about 1.4 million of the things unsold for those platforms.
They're not even going to be at E3 this year, which is a shame because CoH 2 is a game everyone wants to see firsthand. I suppose they can still do their own press conference for that.
Did they ever sort out their share prices BTW, or have they been de-listed now?
Do we know why 38 Studios missed that payment? They just started paying off the loan. There's no way that Amalur didn't make enough money for those initial payments. It sounds like they just decided to spend the money they made from the game on something else.
The interesting thing about Reckoning, though, is that the publisher was satisfied with its numbers. EA thought the game did pretty well for a new IP; nothing to jump up and down about, but they were ok with it. This was a case in which it was the development studio itself had unrealistic sales expectations for the game, not the publisher.
Yeah, pretty much.
The whole 38 studios thing shouldn't be blamed on the industry anyway. This is about mismanagement that ended in the citizens of rhode island and several employee's (the whole mortage thing among else) paying the price. That's the really horrible part about this.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
The interesting thing about Reckoning, though, is that the publisher was satisfied with its numbers. EA thought the game did pretty well for a new IP; nothing to jump up and down about, but they were ok with it. This was a case in which it was the development studio itself had unrealistic sales expectations for the game, not the publisher.
Yeah, pretty much.
The whole 38 studios thing shouldn't be blamed on the industry anyway. This is about mismanagement that ended in the citizens of rhode island and several employee's (the whole mortage thing among else) paying the price. That's the really horrible part about this.
Pretty much. After everything that has come to light it seemed like bad decision after bad decision right from the start.
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Brainiac 8Don't call me Shirley...Registered Userregular
uDraw for the 360/PS3, mind you. It did great on the Wii.
Yea, the uDraw did really well on the Wii. THQ's mistake there was assuming that the idea would fly on the HD twins. That gamble backfired in a big way. Now the company has a warehouse full of unsold uDraws. Maybe they'll put them in the same landfill that ET was.
Do we know why 38 Studios missed that payment? They just started paying off the loan. There's no way that Amalur didn't make enough money for those initial payments. It sounds like they just decided to spend the money they made from the game on something else.
38 Studios was burning through more than $4 million per month just to employ the massive staff (over 300 people) they were contractually obligated by the terms of their loan to keep hired - bearing in mind that they weren't even employing as many people as their loan agreement called for - as well as rent, taxes, and all the other essentials. Four million bucks a month is not a trivial amount of money for any dev house, never mind a startup that also has to make out regular loan payments that are in the seven figures range. Also bear in mind that while Reckoning sold 1.2 million copies, it was also published by EA via their Partners program. I expect that after everything was said and done, 38 Studios took home maybe $10 per copy sold.
If they'd stayed in Massachusetts with their initial 50-man dev team and secured funding the more traditional way instead of shackling themselves to a shitty loan that benefited nobody except Rhode Island lending firms, things would be looking much different right now.
I know im late to this party, but why is THQ having trouble? They had Saints Row, Company of Heroes, Darksiders, and Red Faction. Is this all cause of the uDraw, or did RF Armageddon and Space Marine really tank?
2011 in general was a shitty year for THQ. Red Faction sold pretty poorly from what I can tell (which should surprise exactly nobody; Red Faction has never been a sales giant despite being one of THQ's banner games for more than a decade), and Space Marine was sunk largely due to its technical issues on the PC and PS3 combined with its awful release timing on the 360 (two weeks before Gears of War 3), where it was the only place the game was really free of huge technical problems. THQ also sunk a lot of money into Homefront, which sold okay-ish, but not nearly enough to justify the investment, as evidenced by the fact that the studio that made it has since closed its doors and the sequel that I'd be shocked to see the light of day is in the hands of another developer. The Dawn of War 2 expansion, Saint's Row 3, uDraw on the Wii (whose success was pretty much mooted by its giant failure everywhere else) and I think one other game I'm missing were the only big breadwinners THQ had last year. Even sales from their evergreen stable of children's shovelware licensed titles have been drying up.
That's the big problem THQ's been having: their few big hits each year aren't quite big enough that they can keep subsidizing a slew of titles with middling sales. It's been like that for years now, and it's finally catching up to them.
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Also, THQ is the company that does the WWF wrestling games. And those have been sucking hind teat for a long while.
They're more a company that doesn't really know what they're doing accidentally stumbling onto the Treasure of the Sierra Madre, releasing a bunch of games just because, and then tripping over Blackbeard's Treasure and so on.
For what it's worth, everyone I've talked to about it says the latest WWE game (WWE '12) released at the tail end of last year is actually really good. But then again, it probably didn't do all that well at retail anyway.
From what I understand THQ isn't even that bad of a company, barring missteps like the uDraw on the HD platforms. They just seem to take an extremely hands-off approach when it comes to the studios making their games to let them do their own things; that's kind of admirable, but it's costly when you have someone Kaos piddling around aimlessly for years with something like Homefront.
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
I look at 3D Realms and think that any publisher should have concrete deadlines and then stick to them. Flexibility can be an asset when warranted, but sometimes you have to crack that whip.
THQ has been floundering ever since losing their exclusive Disney deal about seven years ago. Rudderless. From all reports mismanaged.
From what I understand THQ isn't even that bad of a company, barring missteps like the uDraw on the HD platforms. They just seem to take an extremely hands-off approach when it comes to the studios making their games to let them do their own things; that's kind of admirable, but it's costly when you have someone Kaos piddling around aimlessly for years with something like Homefront.
Most of the employees that have spoken out say exactly the opposite; management had no idea what they were doing.
All I really care to know about THQ is that they had AKI doing wrestling games and abandoned them for Yukes. At that point, they lost any 'devotion' I might have had. I've had fun with Saint's Row and still want to play SR3, but thinking about THQ as a whole? Completely unconcerned.
All I really care to know about THQ is that they had AKI doing wrestling games and abandoned them for Yukes. At that point, they lost any 'devotion' I might have had. I've had fun with Saint's Row and still want to play SR3, but thinking about THQ as a whole? Completely unconcerned.
Good man.
I even gave them a second chance when they actually did make decent AKI game clones on the GCN (Namely the DoR series) but when it came time to merge the three separate last games? Left it in the dust, took the PS2 brand name and the XBOX brand name and smushed it together. Now if they had just taken the engine from DoR and improved it instead of that relic from the PSX that they just kept building on instead, but noo....
So many people have been saying they want AKI to do a big wrestling game again that I'm a bit bewildered that no one has picked them up to do another, I remember how the originals they did even had non werestling fans playing them as a huge party game back in the day.
Ever wonder how well the Vita's Software did last holiday season? In Japan of course because it wasn't out here yet and because we actually got numbers on it!
Rank Title Publisher 2011 total First week Est. sell-thru
144 Everybody's Golf 6 SCE 92,993 61,412 31.82
165 Uncharted: Golden Abyss SCE 77,023 48,224 44.59
204 Dynasty Warriors Next Koei Tecmo 54,583 29,181 52.33
221 Lord of Apocalypse Square Enix 50,767 28,742 71.42
290 Disgaea 3 Return Nippon Ichi Software 36,870 22,453 56.32
351 Ridge Racer NAMCO BANDAI Games 28,169 17,526 35.74
373 Shin Kamaitachi no Yoru CHUNSOFT 25,525 17,105 38.93
469 Dream Club Zero Portable D3 Publisher 18,374 11,160 58.51
481 Shinobido II Spike 17,895 9300 27.23
492 Touch My Katamari NAMCO BANDAI Games 16,773 10,357 30.64
521 Blazblue Continuum Shift Extend Arc System Works 15,179 9096 47.03
526 Army Corps of Hell Square Enix 14,947 9186 26.34
595 Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Capcom 12,020 6353 30.72
682 Dungeon Hunter Alliance Ubisoft 9507 4496 42.36
693 Power Smash 4 SEGA 9249 3610 33.56
715 Mahjong Fight Club KONAMI 8564 4446 25.16
977 Monster Radar Sony Marketing 4321 2298 23.31
998 F1 2011 Code Masters 4049 2231 24.55
38 Studios was burning through more than $4 million per month just to employ the massive staff (over 300 people) they were contractually obligated by the terms of their loan to keep hired - bearing in mind that they weren't even employing as many people as their loan agreement called for
Wait. Wait.
So they got a loan from the state of RI, one of the terms of which was that they had to keep a certain number of people on payroll regardless of whether they needed or could afford them? Because they were "creating jobs in RI" as one of the justifications of them getting taxpayer funds or some shit like that I assume? And so then keeping all those people on payroll eventually helps sink the company and everybody loses their jobs anyway.
Ugh.
Yeah, I'm sorry to say I'm not even that surprised there would be a condition in their loan like that. This is why you shouldn't have government involved in private industry with stuff like this.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Yeah, honestly THQ's financial problems confused the hell out of me considering how many well received games they released.
Until I remembered the uDraw.
I would say that Homefront was the biggest money loser for them. They put a lot of money into it trying to chase that Call of Duty dollar and lost big.
But yeah...For everyone 1 profitable game THQ had last year they had 2-3 failures so I can't say it was surprising.
And yeah...both THQ and EA ditching AKI was pretty dumb imo.
No Mercy and Def Jam were like the last few wrestling games I actually had fun with.
Ever wonder how well the Vita's Software did last holiday season? In Japan of course because it wasn't out here yet and because we actually got numbers on it!
If there's any luck in the world, Relic will ditch THQ before that shit dies and, I dunno, join up with EA or someone.
Their games are always super profitable (Space Marine excluded) and fuck this gay earth if they go under before making Homeworld 3.
Super profitable relative to costs I would say. Which is the problem. When a few games broke sales records and started selling in the 10's and 20's of millions, every major freaking publisher set that as their goal as if it were the most natural thing in the world, that the only option is go big or go home, as stupid an idea as it is. "They're getting those numbers so why aren't we getting those numbers?"
Also, IIRC Company of Heroes didn't do so well either. But then a large part of that I always felt was simply overshooting its system specs. Given the cult following and hype build up surrounding it, I'd be surprised if CoH2 wasn't a really successful title.
Even if its sales were low, well relatively low, they were good for an RTS, the game brought an awful lot of prestige to THQ. It's one of the highest rated games ever, on any platform in any genre. It's been more well received by critics than any Halo game. That has huge financial benefit in other areas, especially with investors and that side of things.
You know, ideally you make a game that sells a bajillion copies. And it's a bonus if the game is also good. But if your game doesn't sell well, you'd better make it be super fucking incredible. Because it will slowly sell forever, and raise the profile of the developer.
That's why we all know about Double Fine, despite their games all being atrociously bad sellers. They make good games. It all comes around.
I love DoW2 to death, and feel bad about getting into it with a dead online community. I hope DoW3 sticks with that micro heavy, actiony unit focus.
I got into DoW2 as well, I think it was just a case of timing in my case but it really is the online RTS that first got me truly hooked.
I was never big on RTS games, but I absolutely loved the last stand, and I abused the hell out of that feature in each of the three DoW2 iterations and I'm pretty sure I've spent more time there than I have on the actual storyline. Unfortunately it didn't really appear that Relic was too interested in really expanding upon it, because it didn't change to any particular extent across all three however. They added one more map, and...yeah.
I mean, they certainly seemed to have recognized the existence of popularity for it as they even went out of their way to make a standalone client for it on steam, but they still haven't done anything towards it full potential. The Tao Commander DLC was great but that was just a one-off. The rest of their efforts seem to have been concentrated on making skin packs...
I'm really hoping the feature makes it into 3 and has more developer attention paid to it, because Relic seems to be a very "fire and forget" company when it comes to adding anything particularly additional to their games after core releases that aren't skin packs.
Ever wonder how well the Vita's Software did last holiday season? In Japan of course because it wasn't out here yet and because we actually got numbers on it!
144 Everybody's Golf 6 SCE 92,993 61,412 31.82
Wait, what?
Top 1000 selling games of 2011. Hot Shot's Golf 6, 144th place with around 92,993 copies sold, 61,412 during the launch week, 31.82% of the number of units shipped out.
If there's any luck in the world, Relic will ditch THQ before that shit dies and, I dunno, join up with EA or someone.
Their games are always super profitable (Space Marine excluded) and fuck this gay earth if they go under before making Homeworld 3.
Super profitable relative to costs I would say. Which is the problem. When a few games broke sales records and started selling in the 10's and 20's of millions, every major freaking publisher set that as their goal as if it were the most natural thing in the world, that the only option is go big or go home, as stupid an idea as it is. "They're getting those numbers so why aren't we getting those numbers?"
Also, IIRC Company of Heroes didn't do so well either. But then a large part of that I always felt was simply overshooting its system specs. Given the cult following and hype build up surrounding it, I'd be surprised if CoH2 wasn't a really successful title.
Even if its sales were low, well relatively low, they were good for an RTS, the game brought an awful lot of prestige to THQ. It's one of the highest rated games ever, on any platform in any genre. It's been more well received by critics than any Halo game. That has huge financial benefit in other areas, especially with investors and that side of things.
You know, ideally you make a game that sells a bajillion copies. And it's a bonus if the game is also good. But if your game doesn't sell well, you'd better make it be super fucking incredible. Because it will slowly sell forever, and raise the profile of the developer.
That's why we all know about Double Fine, despite their games all being atrociously bad sellers. They make good games. It all comes around.
I love DoW2 to death, and feel bad about getting into it with a dead online community. I hope DoW3 sticks with that micro heavy, actiony unit focus.
I got into DoW2 as well, I think it was just a case of timing in my case but it really is the online RTS that first got me truly hooked.
I was never big on RTS games, but I absolutely loved the last stand, and I abused the hell out of that feature in each of the three DoW2 iterations and I'm pretty sure I've spent more time there than I have on the actual storyline. Unfortunately it didn't really appear that Relic was too interested in really expanding upon it, because it didn't change to any particular extent across all three however. They added one more map, and...yeah.
I mean, they certainly seemed to have recognized the existence of popularity for it as they even went out of their way to make a standalone client for it on steam, but they still haven't done anything towards it full potential. The Tao Commander DLC was great but that was just a one-off. The rest of their efforts seem to have been concentrated on making skin packs...
I'm really hoping the feature makes it into 3 and has more developer attention paid to it, because Relic seems to be a very "fire and forget" company when it comes to adding anything particularly additional to their games after core releases that aren't skin packs.
I think the success of Last Stand took them by surprise. IIRC there was a time when one of the devs mentioned that roughly 50% of the players online at any given time were doing Last Stand. It still got a decent amount of support (there was also DLC wargear), and you have to remember originally it started off with just 3 commanders. Now there's 6 + 1 DLC addon for a race that's not even in the game. More maps might've been nice, but primarily I think they were experimenting to see what did and didn't work out when it came to DLC (both paid and free). Like I said, I really do feel DoW 2 suffers a little from being the test-bed for ideas, but it's also kind of necessary because it occasionally does throw up awesome stuff like Last Stand.
I don't think you need to worry about it getting into DoW 3. Relic seem to be pushing the "co-operative" aspect of multiplayer more and more now, because that seems to be the most popular online.
Yeah, I've played maybe an hour of the SP DOW2 campaign, and like 20 hours of Last Stand. I bought Retribution just to play Last Stand over Steamworks. Relic would be well served to expand on the ideas there.
38 Studios was burning through more than $4 million per month just to employ the massive staff (over 300 people) they were contractually obligated by the terms of their loan to keep hired - bearing in mind that they weren't even employing as many people as their loan agreement called for
Wait. Wait.
So they got a loan from the state of RI, one of the terms of which was that they had to keep a certain number of people on payroll regardless of whether they needed or could afford them? Because they were "creating jobs in RI" as one of the justifications of them getting taxpayer funds or some shit like that I assume? And so then keeping all those people on payroll eventually helps sink the company and everybody loses their jobs anyway.
Ugh.
Yeah, I'm sorry to say I'm not even that surprised there would be a condition in their loan like that. This is why you shouldn't have government involved in private industry with stuff like this.
The loan itself is a valuable asset for the state, and is something that has helped other companies prosper. The problem here was the specific management of 38 and a lack of understanding from the officials who underwrote it.
'Should't have government involved in private industry with stuff like this' is a silly overreaction. The reason you've only ever heard of such a stimulus going tits up is because the thousand times that other big companies have received employment stimulus loans, they've gone by without a hitch and nobody even cared to report it.
38 Studios was burning through more than $4 million per month just to employ the massive staff (over 300 people) they were contractually obligated by the terms of their loan to keep hired - bearing in mind that they weren't even employing as many people as their loan agreement called for
Wait. Wait.
So they got a loan from the state of RI, one of the terms of which was that they had to keep a certain number of people on payroll regardless of whether they needed or could afford them? Because they were "creating jobs in RI" as one of the justifications of them getting taxpayer funds or some shit like that I assume? And so then keeping all those people on payroll eventually helps sink the company and everybody loses their jobs anyway.
Ugh.
Yeah, I'm sorry to say I'm not even that surprised there would be a condition in their loan like that. This is why you shouldn't have government involved in private industry with stuff like this.
The loan itself is a valuable asset for the state, and is something that has helped other companies prosper. The problem here was the specific management of 38 and a lack of understanding from the officials who underwrote it.
'Should't have government involved in private industry with stuff like this' is a silly overreaction. The reason you've only ever heard of such a stimulus going tits up is because the thousand times that other big companies have received employment stimulus loans, they've gone by without a hitch and nobody even cared to report it.
I am not arguing that poor decisions by 38 were not largely responsible for this outcome, but it definitely seems like silly conditions in the loan set by the state were also a contributing factor.
Yeah, I'm sorry to say I'm not even that surprised there would be a condition in their loan like that. This is why you shouldn't have government involved in private industry with stuff like this.
As has been said before, government giving tax incentives and other benefits to encourage businesses to move to a place in order to bring more jobs is usually okay, but a guaranteed loan to a game company isn't exactly the best way to do it.
Especially considering the loan was in the form of guaranteed bonds with a 7% interest rate; that benefits absolutely nobody but the bondholders, who will be making an absolute killing off of this no matter how it goes.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
The state really doesn't need this right now. It's been hard times the last few years, with almost every local town/county government getting state funding cut. That means less firefighters, police, etc. Providence in particular was left with a pretty big financial crisis when David Cicilline went from mayor to congressman.
The 38 Studios deal was something former Governor Carcieri slipped in near the end of his final term. From what I remember reading, him and Schilling were good buddies. Carcieri came from private sector business himself, finincial conservatism was part of the platform he ran on. Weird quirk with RI (one of many), we're one of the bluest states in the union, but we keep ending up with these conservative governors. Anyways, Carcieri may have known about business, but definitely not the video game business. A studio isn't going to just come out of nowhere and have a Blizzard level success off the bat. That's what it would have taken for them to even pay us back the money, much less profit.
Current Governor Chafee did indeed raise a big stink about it at the time (this was right around the leadup to his election), but it still got voted through.
The worst part is that the 38 Studios money was 60% of RI's economic development fund. This was definitely not the basket to put all our eggs in. Providence and the state has a lot of potential, but we have a ways to go before we start living up to our re-branding as the "Creative Capital". A big problem is that we have world renowned schools right here in Providence, Brown University and Rhode Island School Of Design. Yet, most of the graduates leave the state, because there aren't enough jobs here for them, or jobs that would take advantage of a high level degree. That's why a (well run, financially sound) game company would have been a great start for us.
Oh well. I guess now we'll just have to sell off the Alamur IP for table scraps, and eat 50+ million that could have been doled out to smaller companies that might have actually had a hope of turning a profit.
Do we know why 38 Studios missed that payment? They just started paying off the loan. There's no way that Amalur didn't make enough money for those initial payments. It sounds like they just decided to spend the money they made from the game on something else.
38 Studios was burning through more than $4 million per month just to employ the massive staff (over 300 people) they were contractually obligated by the terms of their loan to keep hired - bearing in mind that they weren't even employing as many people as their loan agreement called for - as well as rent, taxes, and all the other essentials. Four million bucks a month is not a trivial amount of money for any dev house, never mind a startup that also has to make out regular loan payments that are in the seven figures range. Also bear in mind that while Reckoning sold 1.2 million copies, it was also published by EA via their Partners program. I expect that after everything was said and done, 38 Studios took home maybe $10 per copy sold.
If they'd stayed in Massachusetts with their initial 50-man dev team and secured funding the more traditional way instead of shackling themselves to a shitty loan that benefited nobody except Rhode Island lending firms, things would be looking much different right now.
So there's nothing in the loan agreement that says what would happen if Amalur failed to make enough money? Wouldn't there be some kind of escape clause that lets the studio shut down all their other projects so the state could recoup as much of the loan as they could if the game failed?
The Yukes wrestling games aren't that bad at all. Not up to the AKI standards but still fun, especially with friends. And no western wrestling game has ever come close in matching them in presentation, options, and creation modes.
So there's nothing in the loan agreement that says what would happen if Amalur failed to make enough money? Wouldn't there be some kind of escape clause that lets the studio shut down all their other projects so the state could recoup as much of the loan as they could if the game failed?
In the corporate world, there would typically have been a slew of things in the contract to prevent a contract-mandated drain on resources. People would've been laid off long before the situation could get to where you're paying 4 million a month for people to do nothing.
In this case, I'm betting there was a lot of tunnel vision, politics, and inexperience involved in the contract. People that shouldn't have been involved decided to involve themselves, saw only the parts that benefitted themselves, and didn't have the experience/know-how to see the enormous problems they were creating.
They're not even going to be at E3 this year, which is a shame because CoH 2 is a game everyone wants to see firsthand. I suppose they can still do their own press conference for that.
I don't even know what CoH 2 is short for
I doubt they could build an entire press conference around that
So there's nothing in the loan agreement that says what would happen if Amalur failed to make enough money? Wouldn't there be some kind of escape clause that lets the studio shut down all their other projects so the state could recoup as much of the loan as they could if the game failed?
In the corporate world, there would typically have been a slew of things in the contract to prevent a contract-mandated drain on resources. People would've been laid off long before the situation could get to where you're paying 4 million a month for people to do nothing.
They're not even going to be at E3 this year, which is a shame because CoH 2 is a game everyone wants to see firsthand. I suppose they can still do their own press conference for that.
I don't even know what CoH 2 is short for
I doubt they could build an entire press conference around that
They're not even going to be at E3 this year, which is a shame because CoH 2 is a game everyone wants to see firsthand. I suppose they can still do their own press conference for that.
I don't even know what CoH 2 is short for
I doubt they could build an entire press conference around that
Company of Heroes 2, I think.
Yes, Company of Heroes 2. Relic develops, THQ is the publisher. And they've already had a press conference for the announcement (complete with WW2 Russia themed set location from some of the pictures and videos I've seen). In this case though, they said they were going to be showing more footage of it later, so I presumed that they'd be holding an event day for journalists to view it and possibly get their hands on it.
I'm not talking a "Microsoft at E3" event that spans several days and costs bajillions. Just something to show off the title.
EDIT: To provide a bit more background, Company of Heroes is basically one of the highest rated RTS's of all time. Heck, one of the highest rated games in general in every publication that reviewed it at the time. It's an exceptionally good game, I never thought I'd get into a WW2 RTS because the theme's been overdone in a hundred other games, but CoH executed the whole thing really well.
I have heard of Company of Heroes, but never outside of this forum
Well-reviewed or not, I was just saying it doesn't have the name recognition or clout that something like a big-name franchise does
Though I guess THQ doesn't really have any of those anymore. Maybe Saints Row after The Third did pretty well, but it's not like it did exceptionally well
I have heard of Company of Heroes, but never outside of this forum
Well-reviewed or not, I was just saying it doesn't have the name recognition or clout that something like a big-name franchise does
Though I guess THQ doesn't really have any of those anymore. Maybe Saints Row after The Third did pretty well, but it's not like it did exceptionally well
Actually were saying that it doesn't even warrant a press conference, even when it's already had one. It's also one of the few titles which THQ can really bank on to give them some success, which is why they've been pushing it when it announced, and why I would expect them to continue to do so, E3 or not.
No it's not a title on the scale of GTA. But then scale of expectations and publishing is stuff we went over on the last page so I wouldn't want to go over it all again.
Speaking of THQ, and something they can possibly bank on, how did the first Darksiders sell? Amazing game, but I seem to remember it hitting bargain bin prices pretty quickly. It launched same day as Bayonetta, another game that didn't set the world on fire, but it launched the same month as Mass Effect 2 as well...
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They're not even going to be at E3 this year, which is a shame because CoH 2 is a game everyone wants to see firsthand. I suppose they can still do their own press conference for that.
Did they ever sort out their share prices BTW, or have they been de-listed now?
Yeah, pretty much.
The whole 38 studios thing shouldn't be blamed on the industry anyway. This is about mismanagement that ended in the citizens of rhode island and several employee's (the whole mortage thing among else) paying the price. That's the really horrible part about this.
Pretty much. After everything that has come to light it seemed like bad decision after bad decision right from the start.
Yea, the uDraw did really well on the Wii. THQ's mistake there was assuming that the idea would fly on the HD twins. That gamble backfired in a big way. Now the company has a warehouse full of unsold uDraws. Maybe they'll put them in the same landfill that ET was.
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38 Studios was burning through more than $4 million per month just to employ the massive staff (over 300 people) they were contractually obligated by the terms of their loan to keep hired - bearing in mind that they weren't even employing as many people as their loan agreement called for - as well as rent, taxes, and all the other essentials. Four million bucks a month is not a trivial amount of money for any dev house, never mind a startup that also has to make out regular loan payments that are in the seven figures range. Also bear in mind that while Reckoning sold 1.2 million copies, it was also published by EA via their Partners program. I expect that after everything was said and done, 38 Studios took home maybe $10 per copy sold.
If they'd stayed in Massachusetts with their initial 50-man dev team and secured funding the more traditional way instead of shackling themselves to a shitty loan that benefited nobody except Rhode Island lending firms, things would be looking much different right now.
2011 in general was a shitty year for THQ. Red Faction sold pretty poorly from what I can tell (which should surprise exactly nobody; Red Faction has never been a sales giant despite being one of THQ's banner games for more than a decade), and Space Marine was sunk largely due to its technical issues on the PC and PS3 combined with its awful release timing on the 360 (two weeks before Gears of War 3), where it was the only place the game was really free of huge technical problems. THQ also sunk a lot of money into Homefront, which sold okay-ish, but not nearly enough to justify the investment, as evidenced by the fact that the studio that made it has since closed its doors and the sequel that I'd be shocked to see the light of day is in the hands of another developer. The Dawn of War 2 expansion, Saint's Row 3, uDraw on the Wii (whose success was pretty much mooted by its giant failure everywhere else) and I think one other game I'm missing were the only big breadwinners THQ had last year. Even sales from their evergreen stable of children's shovelware licensed titles have been drying up.
That's the big problem THQ's been having: their few big hits each year aren't quite big enough that they can keep subsidizing a slew of titles with middling sales. It's been like that for years now, and it's finally catching up to them.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
They're more a company that doesn't really know what they're doing accidentally stumbling onto the Treasure of the Sierra Madre, releasing a bunch of games just because, and then tripping over Blackbeard's Treasure and so on.
Do not engage the Watermelons.
From what I understand THQ isn't even that bad of a company, barring missteps like the uDraw on the HD platforms. They just seem to take an extremely hands-off approach when it comes to the studios making their games to let them do their own things; that's kind of admirable, but it's costly when you have someone Kaos piddling around aimlessly for years with something like Homefront.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Do not engage the Watermelons.
Most of the employees that have spoken out say exactly the opposite; management had no idea what they were doing.
Do not engage the Watermelons.
Until I remembered the uDraw.
Good man.
I even gave them a second chance when they actually did make decent AKI game clones on the GCN (Namely the DoR series) but when it came time to merge the three separate last games? Left it in the dust, took the PS2 brand name and the XBOX brand name and smushed it together. Now if they had just taken the engine from DoR and improved it instead of that relic from the PSX that they just kept building on instead, but noo....
Wait. Wait.
So they got a loan from the state of RI, one of the terms of which was that they had to keep a certain number of people on payroll regardless of whether they needed or could afford them? Because they were "creating jobs in RI" as one of the justifications of them getting taxpayer funds or some shit like that I assume? And so then keeping all those people on payroll eventually helps sink the company and everybody loses their jobs anyway.
Ugh.
Yeah, I'm sorry to say I'm not even that surprised there would be a condition in their loan like that. This is why you shouldn't have government involved in private industry with stuff like this.
I would say that Homefront was the biggest money loser for them. They put a lot of money into it trying to chase that Call of Duty dollar and lost big.
But yeah...For everyone 1 profitable game THQ had last year they had 2-3 failures so I can't say it was surprising.
And yeah...both THQ and EA ditching AKI was pretty dumb imo.
No Mercy and Def Jam were like the last few wrestling games I actually had fun with.
Wait, what?
I was never big on RTS games, but I absolutely loved the last stand, and I abused the hell out of that feature in each of the three DoW2 iterations and I'm pretty sure I've spent more time there than I have on the actual storyline. Unfortunately it didn't really appear that Relic was too interested in really expanding upon it, because it didn't change to any particular extent across all three however. They added one more map, and...yeah.
I mean, they certainly seemed to have recognized the existence of popularity for it as they even went out of their way to make a standalone client for it on steam, but they still haven't done anything towards it full potential. The Tao Commander DLC was great but that was just a one-off. The rest of their efforts seem to have been concentrated on making skin packs...
I'm really hoping the feature makes it into 3 and has more developer attention paid to it, because Relic seems to be a very "fire and forget" company when it comes to adding anything particularly additional to their games after core releases that aren't skin packs.
Top 1000 selling games of 2011. Hot Shot's Golf 6, 144th place with around 92,993 copies sold, 61,412 during the launch week, 31.82% of the number of units shipped out.
I think the success of Last Stand took them by surprise. IIRC there was a time when one of the devs mentioned that roughly 50% of the players online at any given time were doing Last Stand. It still got a decent amount of support (there was also DLC wargear), and you have to remember originally it started off with just 3 commanders. Now there's 6 + 1 DLC addon for a race that's not even in the game. More maps might've been nice, but primarily I think they were experimenting to see what did and didn't work out when it came to DLC (both paid and free). Like I said, I really do feel DoW 2 suffers a little from being the test-bed for ideas, but it's also kind of necessary because it occasionally does throw up awesome stuff like Last Stand.
I don't think you need to worry about it getting into DoW 3. Relic seem to be pushing the "co-operative" aspect of multiplayer more and more now, because that seems to be the most popular online.
The loan itself is a valuable asset for the state, and is something that has helped other companies prosper. The problem here was the specific management of 38 and a lack of understanding from the officials who underwrote it.
'Should't have government involved in private industry with stuff like this' is a silly overreaction. The reason you've only ever heard of such a stimulus going tits up is because the thousand times that other big companies have received employment stimulus loans, they've gone by without a hitch and nobody even cared to report it.
I am not arguing that poor decisions by 38 were not largely responsible for this outcome, but it definitely seems like silly conditions in the loan set by the state were also a contributing factor.
As has been said before, government giving tax incentives and other benefits to encourage businesses to move to a place in order to bring more jobs is usually okay, but a guaranteed loan to a game company isn't exactly the best way to do it.
Especially considering the loan was in the form of guaranteed bonds with a 7% interest rate; that benefits absolutely nobody but the bondholders, who will be making an absolute killing off of this no matter how it goes.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
The state really doesn't need this right now. It's been hard times the last few years, with almost every local town/county government getting state funding cut. That means less firefighters, police, etc. Providence in particular was left with a pretty big financial crisis when David Cicilline went from mayor to congressman.
The 38 Studios deal was something former Governor Carcieri slipped in near the end of his final term. From what I remember reading, him and Schilling were good buddies. Carcieri came from private sector business himself, finincial conservatism was part of the platform he ran on. Weird quirk with RI (one of many), we're one of the bluest states in the union, but we keep ending up with these conservative governors. Anyways, Carcieri may have known about business, but definitely not the video game business. A studio isn't going to just come out of nowhere and have a Blizzard level success off the bat. That's what it would have taken for them to even pay us back the money, much less profit.
Current Governor Chafee did indeed raise a big stink about it at the time (this was right around the leadup to his election), but it still got voted through.
The worst part is that the 38 Studios money was 60% of RI's economic development fund. This was definitely not the basket to put all our eggs in. Providence and the state has a lot of potential, but we have a ways to go before we start living up to our re-branding as the "Creative Capital". A big problem is that we have world renowned schools right here in Providence, Brown University and Rhode Island School Of Design. Yet, most of the graduates leave the state, because there aren't enough jobs here for them, or jobs that would take advantage of a high level degree. That's why a (well run, financially sound) game company would have been a great start for us.
Oh well. I guess now we'll just have to sell off the Alamur IP for table scraps, and eat 50+ million that could have been doled out to smaller companies that might have actually had a hope of turning a profit.
So there's nothing in the loan agreement that says what would happen if Amalur failed to make enough money? Wouldn't there be some kind of escape clause that lets the studio shut down all their other projects so the state could recoup as much of the loan as they could if the game failed?
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
In the corporate world, there would typically have been a slew of things in the contract to prevent a contract-mandated drain on resources. People would've been laid off long before the situation could get to where you're paying 4 million a month for people to do nothing.
In this case, I'm betting there was a lot of tunnel vision, politics, and inexperience involved in the contract. People that shouldn't have been involved decided to involve themselves, saw only the parts that benefitted themselves, and didn't have the experience/know-how to see the enormous problems they were creating.
I don't even know what CoH 2 is short for
I doubt they could build an entire press conference around that
This is basically what I'm saying.
Company of Heroes 2, I think.
Yes, Company of Heroes 2. Relic develops, THQ is the publisher. And they've already had a press conference for the announcement (complete with WW2 Russia themed set location from some of the pictures and videos I've seen). In this case though, they said they were going to be showing more footage of it later, so I presumed that they'd be holding an event day for journalists to view it and possibly get their hands on it.
I'm not talking a "Microsoft at E3" event that spans several days and costs bajillions. Just something to show off the title.
EDIT: To provide a bit more background, Company of Heroes is basically one of the highest rated RTS's of all time. Heck, one of the highest rated games in general in every publication that reviewed it at the time. It's an exceptionally good game, I never thought I'd get into a WW2 RTS because the theme's been overdone in a hundred other games, but CoH executed the whole thing really well.
Well-reviewed or not, I was just saying it doesn't have the name recognition or clout that something like a big-name franchise does
Though I guess THQ doesn't really have any of those anymore. Maybe Saints Row after The Third did pretty well, but it's not like it did exceptionally well
Actually were saying that it doesn't even warrant a press conference, even when it's already had one. It's also one of the few titles which THQ can really bank on to give them some success, which is why they've been pushing it when it announced, and why I would expect them to continue to do so, E3 or not.
No it's not a title on the scale of GTA. But then scale of expectations and publishing is stuff we went over on the last page so I wouldn't want to go over it all again.
Not niche exactly, but I would say the only recognizable-to-mainstream PC-exclusive titles are the ones coming from Valve and Blizzard
EDIT: Never mind, Valve's stuff isn't even PC-exclusive