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THQ has announced shipment figures for some of its key releases in fiscal 2009 (April 1, 2008 – March 31, 2009), highlighting the success of Saints Row 2 as a model for future releases.
“… we are focusing on delivering one to two high quality titles targeted to the core gamer each year. Today we have shifted more than 2.6 million units of Saints Row 2 posting sales in excess of $100 million on this title,” said Brian Farrell, THQ president and CEO during an earning call last night. “Saints Row 2 achieved a Metacritic rating of 82 and we marketed the game aggressively. The conclusion, when we focus make a great game and market it aggressively we succeed.”
Farrell added: “We intend to apply these three steps to the upcoming launch of games like Red Faction: Guerrilla and Darksiders. Our goal with each of these titles is to launch high quality games, market it aggressively into windows where we can win.”
Another highlight was WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2009, which has shipped more than four million units to date.
Farrell commented: “… we are the leaders in the fighting category and we are looking to expand this in two ways. We look into these new games based on the WWE brand and our first games spends on the ultimate fighting championship this spring.
“Specifically in March we look forward to launching a new game WWE Legends of WrestleMania in conjunction with WWE’s WrestleMania 25 event.
“In UFC we have one of the most exciting new brands and we are delivering a fun, high quality game that truly captures the mixed martial arts sword.”
THQ also announced shipments to date of 700,000 units for de Blob and 1.2 million for Big Beach Sports.
Farrell explained that THQ has a three-pronged attack lined-up for Wii.
“One is the sort of high end titles like de Blob where you do something very innovative that takes very good advantage of the Wii play pattern and price of the full price point. We have other titles be announced that are consistent with those kind of themes.
“We also like the budget categories like Big Beach Sports and we also have several other budget titles like that and we will be announcing some of those as we get later into our year. And then finally all of our big license franchises Pixar, Nickelodeon, WWE also should improve overtime on the Wii so that’s how we are thinking about the Wii.”
