THQ market capitalization

I realize this is not even interesting to most people but I think it's worth noting when talking about the future of THQ and just how dire their situation is.

First off what led me to look up information on THQ's stock price was this article which seemed to claim that the humble bundle had boosted the stock price of the company.

But what people seem to miss is the extent of THQ's fall from grace. People may not realize this but at one point the market capitalization for THQ was just over 2 billion dollars. That was pre recession, it has since fallen to just under 10 million. So for a company that's supposed to be a major publisher it's valued closer to a single studio. You can see this for yourself on this graph

Anyways I thought that was a useful point to consider when talking about the future of the company because regardless of how their games do in the future at least the public investor market has totally abandoned them virtually.

I think this is very sad for a number of reasons. It makes you wonder where the industry is going in general. THQ is one of the last of the middle sized publishers between the goliaths (like Activision and EA) and the countless little indies. It doesn't seem like there's room for medium sized companies in the game industry anymore.

@Nonapod said:

I think this is very sad for a number of reasons. It makes you wonder where the industry is going in general. THQ is one of the last of the middle sized publishers between the goliaths (like Activision and EA) and the countless little indies. It doesn't seem like there's room for medium sized companies in the game industry anymore.

it's true, it might be because the industry has become so hit driven and without getting a major marketing advantage it becomes very hard to compete with bigger publishers. Selling a few million units of your best "AAA" experience is just not good enough anymore to create enough revenue to compete and make more "AAA" experiences.

Selling episodes of Spongebob Squarepants on GBA carts wasn't going to be a sustainable business model in any economic climate. Honestly they did a hell of a job trying to turn into a real publisher up until about 3-5 years ago. Then some real bad decisions (Udraw) screwed them.

I hope they survive, I really like a whole lot of their games. I just don't think they will. My guess is that in about a year, a new Saint's Row will come out, won't perform as well as they hoped, and they will start selling off assets. Hopefully some of the talented studios will remain intact through the transitions.

It's going to be almost impossible to fully undo the damage wrought by those tablets. I hope that they can pull through, but it was some very poor decision making that got them into this mess.

So what happened in September 2008?

It's an interesting point and it does really put things in perspective. It's shocking how fast things went downhill for them, and I hope those guys can stay afloat.

In the end, THQ will probably go out like Midway did. It'll get picked apart and hopefully Volition, Relic, Vigil and the Metro guys will hopefully get picked up by Warner Bros or Square. Those damn tablets and Homefront combined sealed THQ's fate a year ago.

$2B to $10M. Wow, that is huge. To put that into perspective in terms of the recession, that is like a $200,000 house in 2008, now being worth $1,000.

I didn't know they had fallen THAT far.

Guys lets pool all our money together and buy THQ. Giantbombs own publishing studio, think about it!

I'm not all up on the numbers or anything, but I was a tester at THQ in the summer of 2006 playing Spongebob games on clamshell phones and DS, and remember hearing figures about how it was a $700 Million/year company. They had the Disney licensed games, WWE, Saints Row, Titan Quest, whatever their WWII shooter was, etc. Having heard recently that the company is only worth $10M it was shocking to me because they had some really big time games back then that we were able to get for like $8 a piece from the company store.