14 DAY TRIAL // THQ has announced, during its pretty gloomy financial earnings report, that it has decided to kill the Red Faction franchise, mainly due to poor sales of the last two titles released in the long-running series, Guerrilla and Armageddon.
THQ has tried to restructure itself and take on large scale games publishers like Ubisoft, Electronic Arts or Activision, thus investing heavily in the development and promotion of many triple-A titles like Homefront, for example.
These gambles haven't really paid off, with THQ being forced to shut down Homefront developer Kaos Studios and move the franchise to its new THQ Montreal division.
Things are even worse for the Red Faction series, which won't be "continued" in the future, according to a statement from THQ after posting its financial earnings, via Industry Gamers.
"Given that that title, now in two successive versions, has just found a niche, we do not intend to carry forward with that franchise in any meaningful way," THQ CEO Brian Farrell explained.
THQ's Red Faction gained critical acclaim many years ago, thanks to its destruction-focused gameplay, and saw two current generation releases in the form of Guerrilla, back in 2008, and Armageddon, released last month, not to mention a downloadable Red Faction: Battlegrounds title and a TV movie made in partnership with SyFy, called Red Faction: Origins.
All these things didn't help the series, which, according to Farrell, didn't manage to rise to the expectations of THQ and the gaming industry.
"In today's hit-driven, core gaming business, even highly-polished titles with a reasonable following like Red Faction face a bar that continues to move higher and higher," he said.
THQ is set to re-evaluate its current titles in order to make sure that such a situation won't happen again, with Ferrell adding that, ""Moving forward, our core game titles must meet a very high quality standard with strong creative and product differentiation, appeal to a broad audience, and be marketed aggressively."
The developer of the series, Volition, is still working on Saints Row 3: The Third, but a part of its team, which made Red Faction: Armageddon, is now being tasked with the Insane project announced by THQ in partnership with film director Guillermo del Toro.