Last week, THQ Partners was revealed with the goal of teaming up with estalished and upcoming developers in order to provide a launch platform to facilitate getting more games to the market, more easily. THQ have said that they are using EA as an inspiration as they plan to focus on the quality of the games, rather than the quantity they can produce.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Tim Walsh head at THQ Partners has said:
“I think they’re (EA Partners) an inspiration, for me personally. If you look at the success they’ve had, one of the benchmarks I’m most impressed with is that when they sign a partner, that partner tends to stay with them for a very long time – so obviously they’re doing a good job.
“And that’s what I want to do – I want to create a small group of partners that deliver high quality games year-over-year, and in a sense become part of the family – part of our release schedule.”
“I think that’s the other thing that’s important – when you talk to the larger studios, depending on what kind of resources they have in place, they have different needs, it’s important to work together to figure out what each partner brings to the table – and then figure out the economics based on that so that it’s fair.
On the subject of competing with EA Partners he had this to say:
“I guess the one thing that’s obvious is that we’re new to this as an official organisation, so I think there’s an opportunity for a major developer to be the big fish in a small pond, so to speak,
“There are certain business where the more you have, the better. In others you really want to know you have the mind share of the publishing group, and in this case I think that will be attractive to some people.”
With EA having partnerships with Valve, Harmonix and more recently Insomniac and Epic Games, we will just have to wait and see what THQ can add to their line up.
