The lights are on
The consumer market is hard. Sometimes people make money, and sometimes people end up udrawing a pink slip from their inbox.
THQ recently laid off several members of its Play THQ development team in Agoura Hills. We reached out to a THQ spokesperson and received the following statement:
Due to weaker than expected sales of the uDraw Game Tablet, we are taking a difficult but important step to reduce the number of employees that supported this brand. 30 people will be leaving the company and business unit leader Martin Good will also be leaving to pursue new opportunities outside the company. This action will allow us to reduce costs, increase efficiency and increase the focus of our organization.
WWE '12 and Saints Row: The Third are two of the top games this holiday season and we also have another huge hit coming up in February with the launch of UFC 3. We want to make sure that we are focused on maximizing the sales and profitability of these titles as well as the broader pipeline of titles that matter most to our future.
We wish those who are now looking for work the best of luck.
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peripherals are a hard market it seems. Best of luck to those people.
Shame. I wish these people luck.
"Business unit leader Martin Good will also be leaving to pursue new opportunities outside the company." what a crap thing to say.
When you make stupid things like that, and don't sell, don't expect to keep your jobs
Didn't even know this thing existed, goodluck to the people that got laid off, I hope they fare well.
Sorry to hear this, but lets be real here. How can they expect a monochrome game tablet with a stylus to be competitive against a slew of other handheld tablets, smartphones, ereaders, etc?
Wasn't the ipod touch already out at the time of uDraw's conception? I hope the employees they are cycling out are marketing personnel.
I honestly had never heard of this before just now. It doesn't seem like that thrilling of a design, considering the other handheld titles that are coming out. Hey THQ, ever heard of Etch-A-Sketch? That's okay, it came out 50 years ago.
Nonetheless, best of luck to those out of a job.
P.S. Dig the "bad puns" tag.
Well, what did THQ expect with their bad marketing about this product. Almost no one even knew about this product, and besides the market is already over saturated. THQ just wanted a quick buck, but they ended up losing a lot more.
Man, it must be frustrating to lose your job because other people poorly marketed your product. And just before Christmas too. Here`s hoping the team find their way again...Wii U development maybe?!
Sorry to those that lost their jobs, I hope they find work soon! :/
I think I remember saying that this thing wasn't going to be very practical in the game world; I can't remember; anyway, good luck and best wishes to the people who are out looking for a job.
LOL I just picked one up yesterday it was on sale at Best Buy for the PS3 the selling point for me was they had Pictionary. I knew going in that it wasn't going to be an amazing peripheral, but I did expect a little more than I got. The "game" (if you can call it a game) it comes with has a nice tutorial that explains how to use the different MS paint type functions. The second lesson shows you just how poorly designed the thing is, drawing a tomato. You cannot for the life of you no matter how slow or steady you think your hand is draw a circle.
The problems are greater and more annoyingly later on when you try to actualy hunker down and draw just for fun. The stylus is attached to a short maybe two foot cord that is constantly in the way. the draw pad it's self is touch sensitive so in all reality you don't need to even use the stylus you can just use your fingers. But if you do use the stylus and try and draw like a normal person your hand ends up resting on the draw surface and fights with the stylus as to which is the desired place to draw and mistakes the two points as the pinch zoom function like with Ipods/phones/tablets so its constantly .oving the canvass in and out while you're trying to create something. Another problem is it doesn't save where your last stroke was so if you are say working in the corner of the page you have to draw in the corner of the Udraw device.
Like I said though I knew it wasn't going to be amazing and I went in with that mentality so it didn't break my heart. Also i wanted it strictly for Pictionary which as a game and an idea works decent enough and is enjoyable especially since its only going to come out for party's and drinking games. However for I'd say 90% of people who enjoy pictionary the board game and actually drawing don't buy it because when you try and draw a kitty cat you might get a slug with whiskers if you're lucky.
It's sad that people are losing their jobs but after playing with the device for 3 hours it doesn't surprise me that they're scaling back and probably shutting down that division of their company.