THQ closes studios and franchises
THQ has been losing money recently and in an attempt to fix their money problems and restore profits they have closed two of their development studios. The first is Blue Tongue which has made 13 games in its history most of which were license games, but there most notable games are probably de Blob 1&2. Next on the chopping block was THQ Studio Australia which had made 8 games all of which were licence games, the most well known of which (thanks to achievement whores) might just be one of their worst; Avatar: The Burning Earth. 200 hundred employees lost their jobs thanks to THQ’s new strategy which involves staying far away from licence games and focusing on whatever will make them more money. This means that they have now discontinued the MX vs. ATV and Red Faction series due to poor sales on their latest instalments along with two unknown projects. Instead they will turn their attention to more “profitable” franchises such as Saints Row and Warhammer which both have upcoming games this fall. Also they believe that their upcoming Facebook game Margaritaville will lead to a lot of profit through micro-transactions which is something I’m not very fond of. The real question is will this change up work out for THQ in the long run or will we see more changes down the line?
Assassin’s Creed Revelations will have a beta
That’s right starting September 3rd Revelations will have a multiplayer beta running until the 11th. Unfortunately it will only be available for those with a PS3 and a PlayStation Plus account. Personally I don’t see why Ubisoft would only do a beta on the PS3 since they will be releasing on the 360 and PC as well and they should check the servers for all of them. Plus the majority of multiplatform games sell slightly better on the 360 which means that they are testing out on the second biggest audience and limiting it to only a fraction of said audience by making it exclusive for Plus members. So do they want to gather the attention from a beta but don’t want most of their fans to play it because they feel that they won’t buy the game if they already played it? Because that is the exact opposite of how betas work, you want as many people as possible to test the servers, find the bugs and give you crucial feedback on how to improve the experience. When you play a portion of a good game you want more especially if you only played a secondary component like the multiplayer in Assassin’s Creed, since the focus is story in those games. Or perhaps Sony is just offering them money to have a beta only for those who pay so that more people see the perks of PS Plus and want to join raking in a lot of cash for Sony.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
This is the brand new Counter-Strike game that will be coming to XBLA, PSN and PC early next year. It is being designed from the ground up with a new engine and a bunch of tweaks and improvements, as well as some redesigned maps. I know that Counter-Strike is still very popular on PCs but I don’t know how successful it will be on the consoles compared to the other modern day set shooters coming out at the end of the year like MW3 and Battlefield 3 which many people will still be playing by early next year. I do like that it will be an arcade game since it is multiplayer only, so it will probably only cost around 1200MP or 15 bucks US. What I want to know is since so many players on the PC have stuck with these games in the past, will they move on to Global Offensive or just stick with what they know?
New Arkham City trailer anyone?
The latest Arkham trailer is devoted to yet another classic Batman villain who will make his chilling debut in what is shaping up to be one of my most eagerly anticipated games of the year. Mr. Freeze is here and he seems like he has a pretty interesting story going on in the game. I love how many villains are in this game and how they are making them fit and keeping them true to their characters at the same time. As opposed to just throwing them in as random boss fights that have nothing to do with the real story just to fill space. Every villain seems to have his own chapter or section of the game that will be fleshed out and different from the rest to keep things fresh. The trailer is linked below.
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