Be sure to read our policy on citing sources before editing!
THQ
THQ (Toy Headquarters) was an American video game company best known for publishing games based on licensed franchises. Founded in 1990, THQ filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and went defunct in 2013; their properties would get sold off to other companies, with some purchased by Nordic Games, which renamed themselves to THQ Nordic in 2016.
History[edit]
THQ was founded in April of 1990 by former LJN co-founder Jack friedman. Over the next several decades, THQ would establish itself as a leader in the video game industry, paticularly with licensed games. They would implement the strategy of buying smaller studios as subsidiaries and publish low to mid budget licensed games based on licenses from other companies. Their most successful titles were games based on properties from 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., Viacom, Disney, Pixar and World Championship Wrestling.
THQ would have a brief relationship with Rare Ltd., in which they would publish several games for the Game Boy Advance. This was possible because Microsoft still allowed Rare to develop games for competitors' handhelds, including Nintendo's Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS, as Microsoft had no stake in the portable console market. In the case of Banjo-Kazooie, these games were Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge and Banjo-Pilot.
Going into the 2010's, THQ would accrue a large amount of debt to mounting licensing fees and the console license game falling out of fashion, making their business model and size unsustainalbe. Despite efforts to reorganize, THQ would file for bankruptcy in 2013, with many of their properties scattered to other studios that bought them at auction. The THQ name itself and several properties were bought by Nordic Games, who would rename themselves THQ Nordic in 2016. This new THQ has since developed and produced properties previously developed by both studios, including recently remaking several older titles to modern platforms.
