THQ: Homefront Has Potential To Compete With CoD

Homefront

Homefront wasn't a bad game at all, and sales still managed to outstrip both expectations and tentative critic recommendations.

Still, there's little chance of it competing with the mammoth Call of Duty franchise, right? Not so fast, says THQ: CEO Brian Farrell told IndustryGamers that "the market opportunity is there," and reminded everyone that Homefront is just the beginning of a new franchise. Said Farrell:

"When I think about it, if you go back and look at the original Call of Duty, how they built that, the first Call of Duty didn’t do 18 million units. The franchise was built over time, building a quality consumer experience and supporting it well. And hey, there’s a lot of room between 2.6 million units and 18."

While that's certainly true, lightning rarely strikes twice, and maybe we shouldn't forget that Call of Duty didn't have a FPS giant with which to compete. At least not one that sold 20 million copies, at any rate. But Farrell and Co. aren't fazed and he also mentioned Saints Row as another possible mega-blockbuster:

"Certainly you can’t count out Saints Row. We have a great opportunity this fall with that one as well. We have a lot of strong franchises; we’re the market leader in off-road racing with MX, and we’ve established a great niche that we own in these creativity and art-based games, with the uDraw series. We’re still a leader in our real-time strategy games with our Relic Studio, and we’re also building our Space Marine game, so we think it’s the best line up in our history coming out over the next 24 months. And I think it’s one that anyone in the industry would love to have."

We always appreciate confidence and enthusiasm, and Farrell shows a great abundance of both here. But there are a lot of factors that don't seem to be coming to light, such as the fact that CoD thrives almost entirely on multiplayer, while most will say the dramatic single-player was the reason Homefront did so well (the multiplayer felt bland and a little broken on launch day).

As for Saints Row...somehow, it would have to outstrip Grand Theft Auto's globally popular name and widely revered quality. But hey, who can predict the future?

Related Game(s): Homefront

Tags: homefront, thq, call of duty, homefront sales

5/10/2011 9:19:47 AM Ben Dutka

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