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THQ looks set to abandon third-person action title Devil’s Third, the first game from Tomonobu Itagaki’s Valhalla Game Studios.
As part of a dramatic company-wide restructuring THQ has closed studios and is cutting down on licensing expenses, with the aim of focusing on franchises with the best return.
“The profitability profile for Devil’s Third no longer met our internal threshold and we are currently in discussions with third parties regarding the future of this title,” said THQ CEO Brian Farrell.
“There were a couple of unforeseen events that happened in the development of Devil’s Third. One was the company that Valhalla was using for the engine went out of business so we had to assist Itagaki-san and the team with a new engine and it took a fair amount of time and cost a fair amount of money.”
Farrell also pointed to extra costs associated with the appreciation of the yen against the dollar.
“Those increases in development costs just reduce the profitability when we ranked all of our product releases when we underwent our restructuring; the profitability of Devil’s Third was not competitive with our other releases,” said Farrell.
With THQ looking to offload Devil’s Third will any other publisher be willing to take a gamble on it? Recently we saw Square Enix emerge as the new publisher of Activision’s True Crime, under the new name Sleeping Dogs – a similar revamp may be required for Itagaki’s game.
Via Develop
