Publisher THQ had high hopes for Q3 2011, especially with their blockbuster titles Saints Row: The Third and WWE ’12. Unfortunately, the failure of its uDraw tablet hit the company hard, resulting in what was expected to be an incredibly profitable quarter turning into quite the opposite.
CEO of THQ Brian Farrell summed it up perfectly, when he said “On our last call we told you we anticipated that our third quarter would be the largest in our company’s history. Unfortunately, we were wrong.” In fact, the company was wrong to the order of $56 million, as these losses almost triple that of last year. Their sales also saw a slip from $314.6 million to $305.4 million.
Farrell went on to explain the reason behind the company’s lack of success, attributing much of the loss to the unsuccessful uDraw tablet.
Revenues were lower by about $100 million. We’ve got 1.4 million [uDraw units] still in inventory we haven’t sold that we planned on selling. We would have doubled the profitability in the quarter were it not for uDraw.
Hopefully THQ find more success in the future as they seek to abandon kid’s licensed entertainment in order to focus on their core franchises.
[Source]
