THQ Nordic Announces Acquisition of IP to "Alone in the Dark", "Act of War" Franchises

[Raevenlord]

THQ Nordic today announced they had acquired rights to two different IPs from Atari Europe SAS. The agreement extends to both the Alone in the Dark and Act of War franchises - of which the first is the most well-known.

Alone in the Dark, with its survival horror archetype, saw early instalments of the series based on the writings of master horror storyteller H. P. Lovecraft. Later entries in the series drew inspiration from other sources including voodoo, the Wild West, and the works of H. R. Giger. Act of War, though, is a different beast: a story-driven, real-time strategy game developed by Eugen Systems that featured a fine-grained story penned by NYT bestselling author Dale Brown. Daily operations in the two newly-acquired franchises (sales and distribution, evaluation of sequels & new content etc.) will be done via THQ Nordic GmbH in Vienna, Austria. Here's hoping this eventually leads to a new lease of life for these currently estranged franchises (and the real time strategy genre in itself).



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[FreedomEclipse]

Im sure Atari have a tonne of IP that they do absolutely nothing with other than just sit on and prevent other companies trying to use it.

Its like HarmonyGold with the Macross Franchise... Lots of fans want a new Macross but HG have the rights to it outside of Japan and they have done nothing with it apart from attempting to make a poor excuse for a live action and giving up when fans started shitting on it back in 1999/2000. Yet they refuse to license it out or sell the rights to the franchise to other studios/filmmakers who really really want it.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Act of War is fantastic. I hope the first thing they do is push out the High Treason update that's been sitting on the backburner for years.

That said, I'm getting concerned with how many IPs THQ Nordic is acquiring. These are AAA series they bought and they require an AAA budget to make another installment. They might end up sitting for a long time in THQ Nordic's hands.

 

[neatfeatguy]

Friend of mine in middle school had a 3DO. We spent a good chunk of time playing Alone in the Dark on it....that, and Road Rash. Alone in the Dark was a pretty decent game from what I remember. It was the only entry in the series that I ever played. Would be nice to see something better come out than the most recent one Alone in the Dark: Illumination that was pretty much garbage from what I remember reading in reviews.

 

[rtwjunkie]

That said, I'm getting concerned with how many IPs THQ Nordic is acquiring. These are AAA series they bought and they require an AAA budget to make another installment. They might end up sitting for a long time in THQ Nordic's hands.

IDK, man, I don’t see any problem with their financials. I’ve included link to their 2017 year-end report. It looks excellent. And each of the quarters so far this year are more of the same profit growth.

http://mb.cision.com/Main/15049/2500604/825689.pdf

http://www.thqnordic-investors.com/en/financial-reports/

 

[FordGT90Concept]

$15.69 million USD. That's probably not even enough for Kingdom of Amalur, nevermind the rest.

1 SEK ~= 0.11 USD

 

[BorgOvermind]

Friend of mine in middle school had a 3DO. We spent a good chunk of time playing Alone in the Dark on it....that, and Road Rash. Alone in the Dark was a pretty decent game from what I remember. It was the only entry in the series that I ever played. Would be nice to see something better come out than the most recent one Alone in the Dark: Illumination that was pretty much garbage from what I remember reading in reviews.

AoW was the 1st truly worthy RTS since the RA2/YR times.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Yeah, it was the closest to a C&C Generals sequel we got. Gameplay wise, it wasn't quite as interesting but story/campaign wise, Act of War was miles ahead of Generals. Generals was going to get rebooted but EA canceled it. As far as I know, C&C is dead IP.

 

[BorgOvermind]

Yes, unfortunately EA killed both C&C and RA series.

A 'Generals' may be resurrected at a point.

AoW continuation will depend on how good are the ones making it of not ruining the original ideas.