Animated film tie-in games may not be the cash cow they once were, said THQ's Brian Farrell, speaking at the Wedbush Morgan Securities conference earlier today.
"The kids' business, as you know, has been a huge focus of THQ for many years," said Farrell. "But there has been a trend away from licensed TV and movie games, and it's become much more competitive for all participants."
THQ's 2007 Ratatouille game performed disappointingly, and analysts suggested it was because few players liked the idea of a rat protagonist. They looked forward to the Wall-E title, assuming that the film's adorable goggle-eyed robot would move more units for THQ -- and yet it performed even worse.
Farrell suggested the decreasing performance of its Pixar games has less to do with the games themselves and more to do with this competitive trend in the animated film environment.
"Back when we took the Pixar license on several years ago, Pixar was the only CG animated film company, and now there are several... up to 10 or a dozen CG animated films each year," he said.
"So it's much more competitive -- which means that the kids' pie is getting sliced in smaller pieces, which makes it less profitable."
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1). Poor media marketing
2). Lack solid tie-ins with movie based titles
3). Low quality games
One can only hope that Mr. Farrell's team can assemble a new talent that will learn from their paast mistakes.
But I doubt it.
Farrell's explanation might have something to do with it, but there were always plenty of cartoons getting released, and I doubt that the CG aspect of it matters all that much to kids. With enough parents in the know, it may actually become necessary for movie tie-ins to be good games before they can succeed.
PLUS - consumers are much more educated/sophisticated when it comes to buying liscensed games. You simply can't put a franchised IP on a dull game and have it be a hit any more (with few exceptions), which is what has been happening for years with movie-games.
And how many movies about a bunch of animals that go on an adventure do we need each year?
I bought the Wall-E game out of curiosity and it crashed my Mac out entirely, not many games can do that. Couldn't get past the first 2 scenes. Graphics were kind of ok, but without serious QA what do they think is going to happen? It is always about the games!