THQ considers offload of Devil’s Third

THQ is considering passing it’s publishing duties for Devil’s Third to a third party, the company’s CEO Brian Farrell said today during a conference call.

The embattled publisher released its Q4 earnings report today, revealing a massive overhaul of the company structure and business plan.

As part of this overhaul, the company has closed many studios, reduced its licensing expenses, and plans to focus costs on franchises with a higher return on sales costs.

"The profitability profile for Devil’s Third no longer met our internal threshold and we are currently in discussions with third parties regarding the future of this title," said Farrel.

“There were a couple of unforeseen events that happened in the development of Devil’s Third. One was the company that Valhalla was using for the engine went out of business so we had to assist Itagaki-san and the team with a new engine and it took a fair amount of time and cost a fair amount of money."

These additional development costs, combined with shifts in forgein currency, are exactly the sort of thing THQ is seeking to avoid.

"There’s also been a substantial appreciation of the yen against the dollar. Those increases in development costs just reduce the profitability when we ranked all of our product releases when we underwent our restructuring; the profitability of Devil’s Third was not competitive with our other releases."