14 DAY TRIAL // THQ has announced that it plans to release a new Red Faction title in the period between April 1, 2010 and March 31, 2011, which is fiscal 2011, while a new videogame in the Saints Row franchise will be coming sometime after April 1, 2011. These wide release schedules appear in a conference call attended by top THQ personnel.
Previous news coming from THQ was pointing to a rather different picture. Fiscal 2011 was supposed to be the year of a new Saints Row release, which would probably directly compete with a fresh Rockstar made Grand Theft Auto title, while Red Faction was set to skip a year and come back in fiscal 2012.
It's not clear why the two games were switched around in the plans publisher THQ put out but the prospect of tough competition from GTA might have played a big part. Brian Farrell, who is the Chief Executive Officer of THQ, also pointed out to the complexity involved in creating an open world title like Saints Row as one of the reasons for the switch.
Red Faction: Guerrilla launched in 2009 was widely applauded for the destructible scenery it introduced, with the player being able to use a variety of weapons to destroy the various buildings they found in the game. The new Red Faction title might push the engine already used in Guerrilla to its limits and deliver similar but enhanced levels of destruction.
The Saints Row series has always been compared to Gran Theft Auto and the second full title makes no exception. A lot of people liked it for the fact that it never attempted the high level drama of the Rockstar series, instead focusing on delivering fun activities based around gang culture and property destruction. THQ is saying that the series has so far sold more than 5 million copies.