When you take a look at the industry's top publishers, who do you think of first? Activision Blizzard? Electronic Arts? You might even have answered Ubisoft or Take-Two, but most of you probably didn't immediately think of THQ. CEO Brian Farrell believes his company deserves the recognition, however. He sees THQ standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of EA or Activision.
"We certainly think of ourselves as one of the big ones," Farrell told IndustryGamers following the quarterly earnings call.
Activision and Electronic Arts have market caps of $12.93 billion and $7.73 billion, respectively, compared to just $279.3 million for THQ. Moreover, Activision and EA have massive resources and billions in cash to tap, which THQ does not. That doesn't seem to faze Farrell, who's extremely confident in THQ's ongoing turnaround plan.
"We had the top selling game in March with Homefront. ...There was a time, 'Oh my gosh, THQ! You’re launching Homefront in March. It’s so crowded. You’ve got Crisis, you’ve got dadadadada...' We were number one. We crushed the competition here and in the U.K. and in other markets that we track. So our goal is to have great products, pick our spots, where we can compete and win. We talked about how we’re going to do that with Saints Row: The Third later this year. So it’s picking your spots, having great games from great creators, and it’s not about numbers of products - it’s about bringing great products to market, marketing them as we did with Homefront and as we intend to do with the rest of these games. So when we can compete, we win," Farrell said confidently.
"We talked about that on our call and I think the way we like to think about this is, we undertook a brand new strategy 2 years ago and turned the company around in 2010. Last year was kind of the quiet year for us, we didn’t release a lot of products, and now we’ve got a pipeline that I think our competitors would be envious of. So I’m a competitor, I love to compete, and we intend to compete and win."
THQ should be commended for its recent efforts, but whether the publisher can grow its business to EA or Activision-like levels remains to be seen. It certainly would help if a franchise like Homefront or Saints Row could see success on the scale of Call of Duty, as Farrell previously hinted at.
