RIP THQ and Atari!
 

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Wee...ain-51849.html

At least most of the games they were both working on will carry on.

Big players to be going out of business.

The entire sector of the economy making video games is starting to fall on hard times, and I'm not just talking about these two companies that bit the dust. I was saying for years that there would be another crash in the industry, and it looks like it's beginning to happen.

I will always love Atari for their revolutionary classic games and industry innovation (pre-Hasbro/Infogrames). RIP.

P.S. Everyone should play Tempest today in memorial.

The video game economy is really tricky because it has gotten so expensive to produce the high end games. People think but that is how movies are as well, but the two really aren't the same. A movie has first run domestic, international release, dvd release, streaming, and cable. Most big budget movies if nothing else break even. This is contrary to what we think of as a flop for a movie. Sure a movie may only make 30 of its 80 million budget in a domestic release but once all the other revenue streams come in then it hasn't lost that much.

Video games on the other hand have no other revenue streams. The only way to recoup costs is to cut the price, but as anyone who buys games knows that if a game isn't successful then the price drops quickly. Then there are used games, which the game manufactures are trying to phase out in the next round of consoles. They want games to be download only with no ability to resell.

The other problem is despite more video gamers than ever before, most of the big games are still aimed at hardcore gamers. It seems like 99% of games are either hardcore games or casual games with not a lot in between. The problem here is that all the casual gamers who have been added over the last few years have nothing to move onto.

At any rate RIP to those two companies whose products I spent countless hours of my life with.

This shouldn't come off as a shock - Atari hasn't been relevant in a few decades, and most THQ games were shovelware. For every good game THQ made, there are several pieces of garbages they unloaded on the gaming public too smart to buy it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_THQ_games

Most of those games there are pure trash.

Download only won't happen. Yet.
They'll just serialize each game to a console and if you buy a used copy you'll have to pay to unlock it to play it, or something like that.

On the whole list the only games I ever played were destroy all humans, red faction (meh) and pit fighter( classic ).
The old and stale or regurgitated games need to die to make room for the fresh new ideas.

The Neverwinter Nights games were fun. Other than that, I haven't played much from Atari for a decade or so. Bummer though. Fond memories of the 2600 as a kid.

Maybe people will go dig up those buried copies of E.T. that nobody wanted, because now they'll appreciate in value.

There is quite a lot of junk in there, though I have sunk silly hours into the Saints Row games, Supreme Commander and the Dawn of War titles. S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Frontline, Darksiders, Company of Heroes and X were all good titles.


Download only is a concept which is a bit worrying, console game prices are daft as is (£50-£60 ($80-$95) RRP is just nuts, thankfully most games still start off less than that), I'd be concerned about it leading to monopolies.

They definitely had some good titles, but they were few and far between. I really enjoy the Saints Row series, as well as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Never tried Darksiders but I heard good things. I loved Road Rash 64 back in the day. :cool:


It looks like their studios with important IPs were acquired, which a good sign.

The Montreal one was bought by Ubisoft which looks promising.

As with everything else digital, it will take about half a second for someone to come up with, program, and distribute for free via social media a way to get around that. The only thing that will be slow in that process is the manufacturers realizing that it has happened. Once they (finally) figure that out, download only won't be too far behind. And then start right back at the beginning of this paragraph for what happens next.

As a big fan of Warhammer 40k series, that saddens me.

I sing praise of Darksiders as often as I can. I've heard that the people who made Anarchy Reigns have picked up Darksiders so I hope I can get an ending.

Once you get over the fact that Darksiders has borrowed a lot very liberally from other AAA titles and just learn to have fun it's great.

I suggest you pick both titles up. you will love them.

Man, missed Road Rash 64 from that, man those games were good fun!


Good news there, last I heard the Darksiders franchise was one of the IPs which hadn't been bought up, which I thought was surprising as it seems pretty successful!

in terms of units sold they were pretty successful, in terms of recouping investments and turning any kind of profit of note, not so much.

I really hope it's true and not just a rumor. definitely a game series that I'd hate to see die on the vine.

THQ put all the last of their money into Homefront, a very good FPS game in my opinion. Was supposed to be a COD killer, but of course didn't turn out that way. To hard to pry the COD sheep away.

Developers need to quit trying to kill COD. It's akin to climbing Everest and COD is trying to kill themselves anyway.

I liked the premise of Homefront but didn't enjoy the gameplay.

I'm sure COD will end itself eventually anyway, the last COD game I found really enjoyable was COD4, I've played through the story of WAW, MW2 and BO but the online part of those games was pretty mediocore (the story wasn't great either). Still going to play MW3 just to finish off the story but will probably give BO2 a miss.

I feel BO2 has the best multiplayer of the ones I've played. and fps is certainly not my thing.