14 DAY TRIAL // Paul Pucino, who is an executive vice president and a chief financial officer at video games publisher THQ, has stated during an investor briefing that the company expects the Warhammer 40,000-based MMO Dark Millennium to cost around 50 million dollars during the development process.
The executive said that the number was pretty high for an AAA project but that the company is ready to make the investment because the potential rewards are also great.
Pucino has not said how many subscribers it would need to get for Dark Millennium to break even, but the THQ executive has said the MMO can “continue to generate over a long period of time - five, six, seven, eight years.”
Dark Millennium is a very ambitious project as it aims to take the table top experience and make it more personal, allowing each player to become one Space Marine supersoldier and then tackle the many enemies of the Imperium of Man, including Orks, Eldear, Chaos and Tyranids.
THQ has not said when the Warhammer 40,000-based MMO would be launched, but it's one of the high profile titles that the company is counting on in the near future.
Publisher THQ has already published a series of strategy games, the Dawn of War series, based on the same universe, developed by Relic, and there are also plans for a more traditional shooter linked to Warhammer 40,000, called Space Marine.
THQ is not only focusing on creating and launching AAA titles that appeal to the hardcore crowd and says that it expects to sell 1.7 million uDraw tablets for the Nintendo Wii before the end of the fiscal year in May.
The tablet has been more successful than THQ predicted and the publisher says that it will be launching new software for it every three or four months.
There are also talks going on with other publishers and developers that are interested in delivering uDraw-based products.