In an interview game GameInformer, THQ President Jason Rubin lays down his view of the structure of the console games market and his vision of how it’ll eventually come to mimic that of PC games.
When asked about THQ lack purported lack of 90+ rates games in recent history, Rubin explained what he sees as the fundamental issues with the current structure: ” In general, how do you succeed with games that aren’t Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and Assassin’s Creed? The way the industry has been set up with all titles selling for roughly the same price at retail next to each other is that there’s been a race to make the biggest, baddest-ass game.
“If you walk into a store as a gamer and see a massive $120 million dollar game next to a $30 million dollar game, and a $80 million marketing budget backed that $120 million game up, it’s likely you’re going to pull that one off the shelf.”
And he’s right, why are seemingly all console games, save for the diabolically terrible ones to be swept under the rug and never seen again, priced identically, even if they offer hugely varying levels and types of content?
Rubin then went on to explain how he thinks THQ can compete in the future and how the structure will eventually change: “At the size of THQ, that is probably not the appropriate way of going about this. If you look at a Naughty Dog-sized game, which I can tell you is not the size of Call of Duty but is still an amazing game that’s rated very well, I think we can compete in that area.
“As time progresses, the entire industry will move closer to what we see in the PC model emerging now, which is a lot of different-sized games and different types of games that all get a place in the sun because you can buy things that aren’t $60 boxed goods. If you look at something like Portal, an excellent game that clearly is not a Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto, bingo.”
You can read his full interview on GameInformer.