THQ’s admiration for EA’s console strategy

Fewer, bigger, better. That seems to be an increasingly common trend amongst traditional console games publishers, and THQ’s executive VP of core games Danny Bilson is all for it.

That’s all we can really do,” he told VG247. It’s not just Activision or us; look at what EA’s doing on consoles. Outside of sports you’re only really hearing about one title, basically, which is Battlefield.

Apart from that I think they have Need for Speed, and they have an RPG and, of course, the MMO, but it’s not like the old days where you look at a catalogue of everything coming.

There are really few games, and those games have to be really high quality events to get gamers to go out and spend their $60.”

And that, Bilson believes, is at the crux of the change seen in the core market over the last 24 months.

There’s a lot more interactive entertainment around, and I think the core gamer is careful,” he added. There are a lot of great titles this fall – probably six or eight that I personally want to buy, that core gamers are excited about – but they’re all what I’d call triple-A events: anything in the middle we’re not talking about.

We have to really shift our strategy to less games and bigger investment on every level; on resource, time, talent, cash and marketing. That’s where you’re going to see us headed, on focusing and, of course, learning from our mistakes.

I think what you’ll see in the coming months is more and more focus – which is the key word around here – on less titles in core, but much more careful rigour around how they’re built and how they’re brought to market.”