14 DAY TRIAL // THQ is another one of the companies that have presented financial information this week for the quarter that ended on June 30. The publisher is sending word that it managed to increase its earnings over 2007 by more than 33% to reach the sum of 137 million dollars.
The main performer in THQ's line-up was the videogame WALL-E, which is based on the animated movie created by Pixar. The title was released for the Mac, the PC, the Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable, the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 2 and the PlayStation 3 and managed to sell more than one million copies, mainly because of the success of the movie on which it is based.
Unfortunately for THQ, the deal with Pixar under which WALL-E was created, is set to expire, with only two more movies set to get game tie-ins. Disney plans to then create videogames based on Pixar properties itself. Dreamworks, which also creates animated movies, is close to entering another deal which would see its movies turned into videogames by THQ, beginning with Master Mind, set to launch in 2010.
Unfortunately, WALL-E was not enough to put the company's books in the black. The losses for the first quarter amount to more than 27 million dollars and there's little hope for the company to balance its books in the following months. THQ projects that it will again lose money in the next three months, with the deficit expected to surpass 20 million dollars. The main cause cited was the increase in costs when creating videogames.
The future might be rosier if one of the upcoming titles the company will publish turns out to be a big hit. During autumn and winter the company will launch games like de Blob, which is coming in September, Saints Row 2 and WWE SmackDown vs. Raw! 2009, Red Faction: Guerrilla, Darksiders: Wrath of War and Legends of Wrestlemania.