THQ bins games, series, studio

By Ellie Gibson Published 24 January, 2008

No more Juiced or Stuntman.

As reported by the Richard Quest types over at GamesIndustry.biz, THQ's latest financial report has revealed plans to cancel two games and discontinue two franchises.

Turns out the rumours were true - there won't be a PS3 version of Frontlines: Fuel of War after all. THQ has also binned the PS2 version of Destroy All Humans!: Big Willy Unleashed, so it looks like the game will only get a Wii release now.

And it's goodbye to Juiced and Stuntman. THQ hadn't announced any further instalments in either series but now it's confirmed there won't be any in the future.

THQ is also closing down Californian studio Concrete Games. The company said a "substantial number" of staff members will be offered jobs at other studios.

Those report figures in brief: THQ reckons net sales for the quarter ending March 31st will stand at USD 200 million, and for the whole year it'll be USD 1.04 billion. Stuntman: Ignition, Ratatouille and Conan didn't sell as well as the company predicted, but WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008 and MX vs. ATV Untamed exceeded expectations. In financial terms, obviously.

Picture of Ellie.

About Ellie Gibson

Since joining Eurogamer in the mid 2000s, Ellie has written about subjects as diverse as the fall of Gizmondo, the rise of Hollyoaks actresses in Red Alert games and the noise a bear makes under NSFW circumstances.

Read more articles from Ellie by visiting the Ellie Gibson archive page.

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Comments (23) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • seasidebaz #1 4 years ago

    juiced went downhill when thq picked it up anyway

  • Triggerhappytel #2 4 years ago

    It's the developers I feel sorry for. If you're job is not secure with a huge publisher like THQ, who is it secure with?!

    I'm playing Stuntman: Ignition at the moment and I'm not particularly keen. The whole trial and error element doesn't really do it for me. I didn't like the demo for Juiced: HIN either, although I don't necessarily think both franchises were dead in the water.

  • pjmaybe #3 4 years ago

    Juiced was no great loss. Need for Speed dumbed down for the bling generation and always crappy gameplay.

    Stuntman's a bit of a loss though, damned shame because Stuntman Ignition is a bit of a "lost classic" on the 360 and definitely had at least another game in the IP before it got tedious.

    Bet THQ won't be sacking any of their tedious kid-game devs any time soon though...

  • sickpuppysoftware #4 4 years ago

    Upset about stuntman couldn't care less about juiced. Feel sorry for any devs that lost their jobs :(

  • barnard666 #5 4 years ago

    Stuntman probably needed to look a lot prettier to sell.

  • SeanLB #6 4 years ago

    Just a shame that Juiced is what became of Lamborghini. Oh well.

  • chrisjm #7 4 years ago

    is stuntman a series, they only resurected it from the dead recently.

  • DrDamn #8 4 years ago

    The stuntman engine is actually nicely capable. Art direction it could do with some work, but watch the replay on completion of a level and it shows some class. Its a pitty as Stuntman could have gone somewhere by including on foot non-vehicle sections.

  • rudedudejude #9 4 years ago

    Dawn of War 2.

    You know it makes sense.

    And bring back the cheesy 'THQ' american voiceover on your logo movie!

  • SBfistfun #10 4 years ago

    Juiced was balls from the off

  • JohnnyWashnGo #11 4 years ago

    The developers I feel sorry for, the publisher can go to hell.

    I haven't really kept track of the quality of their titles, but I remember since the SNES days, actively avoiding anything that had THQ on the box. What did I miss out on?

  • Triggerhappytel #12 4 years ago

    Johnny - Red Faction. Not much else.

  • spitfire1945 #13 4 years ago

    I'm not crying for the losses we had.
    Juiced was another of those games to milk the Fast and Furious trend that was affecting the youngers.
    Stuntman (the one made by Reflection on PS2) was good but to rigid with that trial anda error system.
    Destroy all Humans was fresh and funny the first time, then it became tiresome as any other 3d person shooter.

    Concrete Games never did a title that I remember of, so sorry for the people, but that's it!

  • skillian #14 4 years ago

    Johnny - Red Faction. Not much else.

    And STALKER, and Company of Heroes. Two of my favourite games of the last couple of years.

  • UncleLou #15 4 years ago

    And Supreme Commander. And Titan Quest. And Dawn of War.

    THQ is the best publisher for PC games at the moment. Great new IPs, great support.

  • Triggerhappytel #16 4 years ago

    Yeah, I meant those games as well. I assumed it was so obvious there was no need to say :p

  • miiiguel #17 4 years ago

    PS3 weirdo architecture colateral damage...

  • Pasco #18 4 years ago

    "Juiced was no great loss. Need for Speed dumbed down for the bling generation"

    Hahahaha, how is it even possible to dumb down "Need for Speed: Underground" for the bling generation?

  • Kropotkin #19 4 years ago

    Juiced was made by Juiced Games. The first one was average and its sequel was even worse. No one will miss it but the developers are now no more which is a bit sad seeing as they were fellow countrymen. What bothers me though is everyone else knew that the Juiced franchise, all be is short lived, was a poor imitation of the NFS series which is pretty dire anyway, how comes they themselves didn't see that? Very odd...

  • BBIAJ #20 4 years ago

    Actually, it's Juice Games, not Juiced Games.

    And as far as I'm aware, only Concrete Games have closed, not Juice Games, nor Paradigm Entertainment.

    I think you might be reading into this a little too much, or maybe you just didn't read the article thoroughly enough?

  • Tweakmonkey #21 4 years ago

    Wait - they're canceling the PS2 game and not the Wii? Don't they know how badly 3rd party sales are?

  • jaxon58 #22 4 years ago

    "Juiced was made by Juiced Games. The first one was average and its sequel was even worse. No one will miss it but the developers are now no more which is a bit sad seeing as they were fellow countrymen."

    That's not true, Juice Games are ticking along just fine.

  • L42yB #23 4 years ago

    Meh! The only game in that list that I care about is "Destroy All Humans". I always liked that game, great sense of humor :)

    But that wasn't coming to 360 anywayz, and I sold my Wii so no real loss there...