THQ
From RelicWiki
THQ (or Toy Headquarters) is a game publisher that purchased Relic and subsequently published Relic's Dawn of War series of games, The Outfit, and Company of Heroes.
Key People; Brian J. Farrell (Chairman, CEO, President), Edward K. Zinser (CFO) and Tranj (PR as in Provocator)
Contents |
History
THQ was founded in 1989, and started as a Toy company (Hence the Toy Headquarters acronym), later moving into the gaming industry and, from 1994 onwards, solely making and publishing video games.
In recent years it has maintained a steady amount of income and remains debtless, and has brought a number of studios to produce titles. Generally, subsidiaries of THQ are treated as more independent than most others owned by their publishers.
THQ so far has various games of many genres on many platfroms (PC, PS2, XBOX, N64, GameCube, GBA, DS, PSP, X360, on mobile platfroms (majorly cellphones, under THQ Wireless) and a website with browers based games ranging from board games to casino games at Slingdot
THQ
What makes THQ different is that they pick the right developer to do games which they have proven to the best at. It is indeed a good trait since they have lots and lots of "Licenses" for games from Disney, Nickolodeon, movies, comics... So we are unlikely to see Relic doing a SpongeBob game. THQ seems to avoid original games and have a tendency to produce more and more licensed games of established francises, which will sell anyhow. Leaning towards such games is understandable since the gaming market is as harsh, risky and competitive as ever. However this doesn't mean THQ is devoid of original, or in another word risky games. One of the prime examples being S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Which is suffering a problematic final development stage and has been the wet dream of everyone who wants Fallout in FPS form for about five years.
It is safe to assume that THQ does not reject ambitious projects but simply doesn't plan to have many of them at once. So it is very likely we will see a brand new Relic game. Also one of the better things is that they don't completely assimilate or put extreme pressures on development teams that they take over as opposed to many other large publishers like them.
Acquisition of Relic and Changes
On 27 April 2004, THQ announced it was acquiring Relic in an all-cash transaction, completing in early May 2004.
THQ have aquired the license for the Homeworld series of games. This was a surprising yet extremely well recieved move on their part. This may mean that a HW3 is planned at some stage.
THQ usually handles all the core Public Relations for Relic, using Relicnews.com as the official forums for the Relic Games. After Marweas stopped doing PR for Sierra after Homeworld 2, Tranj has stepped in after THQ acquired Relic and is the main THQ personality on the forums.
