THQ reported a $136.1 million dollar loss for the fiscal year ending March 31st, 2011. While the news does not sound good at first glance, it is actually $9 million dollars less than the previous 12-month period. The better news is that company sales are stronger, with the company shipping over 2.6 million copies of Homefront and the company acknowledging that Homefront will be a strategic franchise for the company moving forward, which we now believe officially confirms that Homefront will get a sequel (which we never thought was in doubt).
The company will be expanding the uDraw franchise by bringing it to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The company also confirmed that they will be putting what they call a “digital ecosystem” beyond their key franchises including SaintRow, Red faction, Warhammer 40,000, MX vs. ATV, UFC, WWE and uDraw. The company hopes that this will keep players engaged longer and buying additional content to generate an additional revenue stream for these key franchises.
The company also confirmed that it continues to invest heavily in the development of its MMO known as Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online. While the company has not yet announced when the MMO will go live, the company is committed to the project and continues to move forward. The company is planning to release Dark Millennium on a subscription-based model during fiscal year 2013.
In addition to the 2.6 million copies of Homefront that shipped during fiscal 2011, THQ also confirmed that they shipped 4 million units of the WWE branded titles, 3 million units of UFC 2010, and 1.7 million units of uDraw for the Wii.
As for upcoming releases, THQ remains excited about the slate of titles that it will offering between now and the end of the year. The new MX vs. ATV lower priced title experiment will arrive next week with a lower retail price and a ton of purchasable, downloadable content for users to buy in this new strategy experiment. UFC Personal Trainer is set to arrive on June 14th, to be followed by Warhammer 40,000 Space Marines in August and, of course, Saints Row: The Third for this holiday season. Look for a new revamped WWE title to be released as well yet this year.
A new UFC title will be coming in 2012 that will be totally revamped to appeal to both the casual and hardcore UFC audience. THQ will apparently showing this new UFC title during E3 in June.
The company has a number of other titles in its pipeline, including some new Kinect titles. The company is looking to the future with planned releases of Darksiders 2, Devils Third, and Metro Last Light, which is the sequel to Metro 2033.
