5 Like Most non shocking news ever, Facebook and Casual games don't make money. Huh go figure lol.
InSane cancelled
By
Brendan Sinclair, Senior Editor
THQ stops work on Volition's Guillermo del Toro-helmed project, gives up on casual Facebook and mobile games, turns first quarterly profit in almost three years.
THQ has given up on inSane. In a post-earnings conference call today, THQ president Jason Rubin announced that Volition has stopped preproduction on the Guillermo del Toro game collaboration and returned all the rights to the intellectual property to the filmmaker. Originally announced in 2010, InSane was not expected to debut in the market until as late as 2014.
InSane is the latest in a string of high-profile cancellations and reconfigurations for THQ this year. The publisher had already washed its hands of Devil's Third, returning all rights to the game's developers, Tomonobu Itagaki and his team at Valhalla Studios. On top of that, THQ took its long-in-development massively multiplayer online role-playing game Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millenium and announced it was converting it to a more traditional RPG, laying off 118 employees in the process.
Beyond the InSane cancellation, Rubin also said THQ would not be pursuing any future casual Facebook or mobile games, instead focusing all its efforts on the core gamer market. Although THQ last year sold off its THQ Wireless division, it has stayed involved in the Facebook and mobile markets with efforts like the Jimmy Buffet-licensed social game Margaritaville Online and the WWE arcade-style title WrestleFest HD.
The cancellation of Insane may overshadow some good news for THQ, as the publisher today posted its first profit for a quarter since the final three months of 2009. For the three months ended June 30, THQ posted a net profit of $15.4 million. However, sales for the quarter were down roughly 32 percent year-over-year, with THQ reporting net revenues of $133.7 million. THQ's results also included a $4.3 million expense "related to decisions made to cancel or reconfigure titles," a charge executives said in the call included Insane, but not Devil's Third (which hit the books in the preceding quarter).
By
Brendan Sinclair, Senior Editor
Brendan Sinclair has been a games journalist since 1999. His tastes are eclectic, though he has a definite affinity for games with arcade roots. He's Canadian, but has also been at home in Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, and San Francisco.
96 comments
5 Like 
They should stick to their core series. Maybe make a FPS Red Faction with improved Geo-Mod technology. Armageddon and Guerrilla were good, but still did not have the impact that Red Faction had when it was released on PS2. I really like Space Marine awesome game.
I completely forgot about this game. I was looking forward to this just to see how it will turn out, but in a way I guess I'm not surprised it turned out this way.
2 Like I am disappoint. I love... LOVE the overwhelming amount of detail and hard work Del Toro puts into his films. I would love to have seen how this game would have turned out.
1 Like I like del Toro's work, but I never had high hopes for this ever, so this was a great move by former Naughty Dog Rubin as THQ head.
1 Like I'm sad that the game has been canceled but it's good to see this new president might pull THQ back out of the gutter. They've had some great games in the past.
Infogrames shoud buy out THQ and merge them into Atari but keep the developers THQ owns as subsidaries of Atari.
1 Like Oh, a game that was announced 2 years ago that i didn't know anything about from a director i know little about has been cancelled.
I'm so sad. :|
In my opinion, thank you Jason Rubin for focusing on the hardcore video gamers. I just wish that THQ kept the UFC license and sold the WWE license, becuase UFC is completly all real compare to WWE's scripted and focusing on the acting instead of the wrestling.
The thing with the UFC games was I was knocking out friends in less than 10 seconds. While funny at first it can get old fast.
Man, I was really looking forward to this one, I am cursing out loud as I type, man, this sucks!
2 Like A game they never released any info on is canceled?! No way!
SHOCKED!
This is just like Megaman Universe. It's announced, we hear nothing, and it's canned.
2 Like Rubin also said THQ would not be pursuing any future casual Facebook or mobile games. They not makeing any social games or mobile games. Farm social game not doing well know. FB not doing well so means end for soical and moblie gameing. free to play and consles games are the future.
1 Like Totally unsurprised by THQ dropping yet another ball.
The THQ freefall has been disturbing to watch. It's like Blackberry (or maybe Nokia?) devices, but for the gaming industry. Nah, THQ never had quality like Blackberry, but still an impressive fall.
2 Like Im a fan of darksiders and warhammer. Put your effort into those for now and stick to what works. im glad they got out of the diseased mobile market. Keep heading in the right direction!
To get thq out debt they need axe what wont work. This Big blow to mobile gameing and social gameing, id can there mobile games know thq. farm soical game not doing gd. people face it mobile gameing and soicla gaming dying out. Telling the truth Insane wont work out anyways. thq reasleing 3 more games for this gen darksiders 2, merto 2, WWE12 . Only one game at this moment is Saints Row4 what be bloddy next gen.
I think THQ will make it if they keep to making quality content like Saints Row and Darksiders. They need to stop with the crappy Nickelodeon games and such which they've put out since the N64.
11 Like I personally believe that cancelling Insane was one of the best decisions Rubin had undertaken. The game was announced in Spike VGA 2010 awards and was suppose to come next year and during that time the game had been collecting dust. No gameplay,trailer,screens were shown and really only THQ knows how much money was sinked into this project. Cancelling this game and the Social Games was good move.
1 Like @firehawk998 i agree. i bet the wwe wrestlefest may come to consoles i hope. bcause thq know they make money for the WWE games since the n64/psone days. we hope they clear the debt. rubin is the right guy 4 the job.
1 Like @firehawk998 Agreed. I hope Darksiders II will be a huge success because it deserves it and it would help THQ a lot.
In 4 years there have been literally no details made available to the video gaming public about this game what so ever. No screen shots, no gameplay write ups, no idea what to expect. del Toro is an exceptional film maker, and I was pretty interested in learning ANYTHING more about this game other than the people involved in it and the 30 second announcement trailer that lead me to believe it was Lovecraftian themed to some extent. Someone over at THQ needs to get their head out of their ass, because the whole company stinks of Akklaim.
10 Like "with THQ reporting net revenues of $133.7 million." Always good to have 1337 revenues.
6 Like Looks like THQ's new president is really putting down some changes in the company. About time. If I had to put in one more "online pass" when I bought a THQ product I was going to seriously reconsider some of my purchases.
2 Like "gives up on casual Facebook and mobile games" that tells us something about the casual market....It's a fad
@Nintyfan95 It's a pretty addictive fad, so I don't see it going away any time soon...That and the public library computers are busting with those junkies!
1 Like @Nintyfan95 Or maybe the "casual" gamers have moved onto more standard products? Most "casual" gamers I know now ask me about Skyrim and express interest in what I'm playing.
1 Like @Karjah That, and maybe THQ has noticed that it's too late to jump in the bandwagon if you're not willing to invest heavily. The Facebook market bubble may be about to pop, but as plenty other forms of gaming before, it is here to stay - and as that market shrinks back to its real, sustainable size, competition will be fierce between established players already. There's a reason why the likes of Disney and EA decided to buy companies already operating in that space as opposed to opening their own social gaming divisions from scratch - that would take more time and maybe money.
1 Like @msfan1289 At least they have managed to realise, even if it did take a loooong time. It's more than other certain companies have managed to work out.
1 Like Uh...if you're shifting away from mobile games to focus on core gaming, why would you cancel this project?
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hmm THQ is going down the toilet pretty fast. First they got rid of Devils Third now this? they are running out of real estate in terms of what they have of interest to be talked about. The only thing they really have left is wwe13...
@IanNottinghamX They also lost the UFC license, which I would assume it's a great seller.
1 Like "The cancellation of Insane may overshadow some good news for THQ"
Only because journalists like Brendan tailor their articles to make the bad news stand out when discussing things they don't personally like.
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2 Like @Gelugon_baat The problem is that Brendan and any professional journalist that has attend even 10% of their classes in college knows that most readers don't get past the first paragraph, and a good, sizeable portion of these do not even get past the headline. It's true for printed newspapers and even more pronounced a fact in web-based journalists.
And because of that, most professional journalists tailor each piece they write with that in mind. That's why there's the concept of 'lead' in journalism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_(news)#Lead_or_intro
Which, in turn, means that putting any 'sunshine' at the end of the article was most probably a deliberate decision.
You don't put more importance to the headline/opening personally? Too bad it's not written for you specifically, but for the majority. And that's where the problem lies.
Also, note that I only bothered to answer you to pass this information to all the other readers who may not know it. I couldn't care less if you died right now under a bus. I defend GameSpot pretty often as the best gaming site around by a wide margin, but you're on a whole other level. Why don't you come out and admit that you're an alt handle for one of this site's employees, or one of their spouses/family members? It's just impossible for someone to be as diligent and apologetic as you are to GameSpot unless one has a stake on it.
Or better yet... Brendan? You used to have more balls and answer with your own handle, man.
@RealFabioSooner He's not an employe's alt, unfortunately. Believe me -- we'd know if he were. He really is just some poor schmuck with a misguided sense of duty toward defending every single thing GameSpot does, as if they needed it (and they don't).
Just ignore him and maybe he'll vanish.
@RealFabioSooner This article is like the only mention of THQ's profit, and it's treated like a fucking footnote.
@Thanatos2k @sortajan I guess that makes me an above-average gamer, since the little they provide in the way of that knowledge is quite relevant. Such statistics to me means that the company has been making the wrong games or was incapable of staying competitive, which is a statement about their games in some cases. Either way I like the part about my being an above average gamer.
1 Like @sortajan This is news for gamers. Gamers don't care about the profits of a company, they care what games are being released that they can actually play. And THQ is cancelling them.
If you care about the earnings read some finance site.
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@Gelugon_baat I wasn't talking about education...I don't even remember what in the world I even bothered to chase this discussion for. Well, at least you didn't take offense. What a waste of time.
@Gelugon_baat Education aside, word is they used to teach that in 3rd grade, since I guess in the '50s some guys dropped out or whatever and managed a 3rd grade retention and could still read the paper right. That and the 'smarter than a 5th grader' used to be a '3rd grader' and actually not that long ago. So now who's feeling great about their education? It is just plain the way to read about anything. I haven't pored over ANYTHING since I learned to read, not even playing DDO or NWN! Either way I think he alluded to that but I think his delivery was awkward.
@Gelugon_baat Actually most people that score in college will be able to pretty well infer the rest based on the first part and their perusing of the ensuing paragraphs. Articles were always about scanning.
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