THQ still sees opportunities on Wii

Third publishers who continue to treat Wii with scepticism may be letting opportunities slip them by, THQ CEO Brian Farrell told MCV.

Do we see big growth prospects on a platform that’s been out for so long? No. But are there opportunities? Absolutely,” he stated.

Some times you have to take a step back. This time last year hardware numbers on Wii weren’t good, and people were saying it was dead. But then holiday arrived and sales shot up. Consumers still know about Wii, it’s still good value, it is still a mass-market product.

I love it when competitors say they’re going to de-emphasise it. There’s still a huge Wii market – over 70m users worldwide. With UDraw we don’t need a huge attach rate to do very well.”

The publisher’s enthusiasm for Wii comes ahead of the Christmas launch of its UDraw tablet for Wii.

I’ve been in the industry a long time, and I’ve never seen a reaction to the product like this be so universal,” he added. Retail loved it and said ‘Oh, Nintendo should have done this’. This is exactly the reception we wanted.

I challenged the team because a couple of years ago, when Guitar Hero was doing so well, people were saying ‘peripherals, this is where the business is going’. So I asked the team what sort of peripheral makes sense from an entertainment standpoint? I did not want Violin Hero. And when this idea came up, I realised this was it. Drawing is as universal as music right?”

To read the full interview with Brian Farrell, click here.