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MCV 17/09/10 13 MCV INTERVIEW BRIAN FARRELL, CEO, THQ Rebuilding THQ
Having survived two years of corporate upheaval, cut backs and closures, THQ is finally on the way back up. Christopher Dring meets the publisher’s CEO Brian Farrell to discuss the restructure, the importance of building franchises and the thorny issue of pre-owned games…
THQ CEO Brian Farrell says focusing on fewer, bigger titles has helped the firm reverse its fortunes
After a tough couple of years THQ appears to be on the road to recovery. How have you managed it? The whole restructuring has been focused on the right titles. I think the entire industry realised that there were too many products. Back in October 2008, we said we were only going to do between two and four core games a year, we were going to focus our kids, family and casual business on just those titles
we were sure would be successful, and that we will continue to build our online business. Then I heard all of our competitors, all of them, say the same thing within six months.
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The market changed. And I think we were the first to see the changes. It was a very difficult two years – no one likes
restructuring or reducing headcount, but it had to be done. And now if you look at our line-up, the things we kept are right on strategy. We have presented this line-up now for the next 24 months: Homefront, WWE All Stars, Red Faction:
The market changed, and I think we were the first to see it. It’s been a tough few years but we’re back on track.
Brian Farrell, THQ
Armageddon, Space Marine and my personal favourite, Saints Row. And that doesn’t even include the regular WWE and UFC titles, or our MMOs planned for 2012. It has been a tough few years but it feels like we are there. Also, I’m sure you’ve seen our UDraw game tablet. I’ve been in the industry a
long time, and I’ve never seen a reaction to the product like this be so universal. Retail loved it and said “Oh, Nintendo should have done this.” This is exactly the reception we wanted. I don’t draw well but even I can doodle on the screen.
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THQ started off as a toy company and here you are making a new toy… It’s funny. I challenged the team because a couple of years ago, when Guitar Hero was doing so well,
people were saying “peripherals, this is where the business is going”. So I asked the team what sort of peripheral makes sense from an entertainment standpoint? I did not want Violin Hero. And when this idea came up, I realised this was it. Drawing is as universal as music right?
You have said that this is THQ’s rebuilding year. But UFC didn’t perform as well as you had hoped. So is everything still on track? Oh yes. When we began the restructuring two years ago, we said that calendar year 2009 was the turnaround year; it was the cost-cutting and refocusing effort. And as we’d cut so much, 2010 was just about executing on the products that we had. High quality and getting real mindshare for our titles are the metrics we’ve had for 2010. Unfortunately because we don’t have many products, financially I think re-building is the right way to put it. In terms of UFC, we were hoping for more. In fact the market was telling us it’d do more. That leads us to believe that the economy hurt us. But we’ll still do over 3m units – we were just hoping to grow off of last year. It got an 85 on Metacritic, as have all of our core games this year.
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