Opposable Thumbs / Gaming & Entertainment

Boom to bust: THQ’s “revolutionary” uDraw now filling warehouse shelves

Despite a strong launch on the Wii, THQ is currently sitting on a costly …

If you need 1.4 million of these for some reason, THQ's got a warehouse that it'll probably sell you dirt cheap.

Back in the long-ago days of the 2010 holiday season, it looked like THQ had a hit on its hands with its out-of-left-field uDraw Game Tablet, a slate-like controller that used a stylus to let players draw on the TV. The company sold 1.7 million of them to Wii owners by early 2011, beating expectations and leading some to speculate that the uDraw might be the biggest game control revolution this side of the Kinect.

Buoyed by the initial success, THQ quickly cranked out uDraw tablets for the Xbox 360 and PS3, and got to work licensing new compatible software from big, family-friendly brands like Kung Fu Panda, Spongebob Squarepants, and Disney Princesses. But that expansion now looks like a colossal mistake, as excess uDraw inventory was a major factor in the huge financial loss reported for the company's recent 2011 holiday quarter.

How big was the debacle? While THQ said it had shipped "one million or so" uDraw tablets to stores in 2011, it admitted many of those had to be sold at a reduced price (most retailers are now selling the device for $50, rather than its $70 to $80 launch price).

What's more, THQ says it has over 1.4 million uDraw tablets sitting unwanted and unloved in its warehouses, damaging its bottom line for the quarter to the tune of $100 million and contributing to a dismal $55.9 million loss for the company as a whole.

THQ seems to be taking the weak performance of the uDraw as support for the idea that there's no money to be had in the family-friendly gaming market anymore. The company announced last week that it would no longer make any games based on kid-focused properties like Scooby Doo, Cars, My Little Pony, and Bratz, a move that likely helped it cut 240 employees from its workforce.

It's easy to see why THQ made such a move—the company said its kid-focused titles, including those for uDraw, performed "far weaker than anticipated" during the quarter, while decidedly adult games like Saints Row: The Third and WWE '12 exceeded expectations to ship 3.6 million and "over 2 million" copies, respectively.

Yet kid- and family-friendly titles like Activision's Skylanders, UbiSoft's Just Dance 3, and Nintendo's Super Mario 3D Land did very well over the holiday season, suggesting there hasn't been any systemic change in the video game market as a whole.

Think twice

Some might see the uDraw's failure as worrisome for Nintendo, whose upcoming Wii U sports a tablet controller of its own, but I'm not sure there's much of a relationship. For one, the Wii U controller sports features like a built-in LCD screen, a motion-sensing gyroscope, and an array of analog sticks and buttons that give it abilities well beyond those of the uDraw.

For another, the Wii U's tablet will be packed in with the system, making it the standard input method for both system owners to use and developers to support. Remember, even though THQ had 1.7 million uDraw-owning Wii players to sell its games to, it still had to compete with games targeted at over 90 million Wii owners with standard Remotes.

The truth is, it's really hard to rise past "fad" to "critical mass" for a controller that doesn't come standard with a system. Over the last decade we've seen whole classes of extraneous plastic controllers rise and fall, from dance pads and plastic guitars to drums and and even webcams (Anyone remember the 360 Live Vision camera? I didn't think so).

Microsoft and Sony are working mightily to ensure that the Kinect and PlayStation Move avoid the same fate, but those technologies will probably have to be integrated into the next generation of systems from the get-go if they're to really have a wider impact. For the time being, though, developers would probably be smart to wring what they can out of the controllers everybody already has, rather than trying to foist yet another "revolutionary" controller onto the market.

Expand full story

You must to comment.