THQ may not be the first company you think of when it comes to major American publishers, but darn it, they want to be. Already having taken a page out of EA’s playbook with their THQ Partners program (which has garnered the next title from Tomonobu Itagaki), the company is now trying to do something many third parties have tried and failed to do: Be successful on the Nintendo Wii.
Global VP Ian Curran hinted at the game in an interview with CVG, stating that the game is being made exclusively for the Wii, and would have been the talk of E3 had it been revealed there.
“There’s something else that we’re going to reveal later on in the year that wasn’t at E3, which is just very, very innovative. There are very few people who know about it at the moment. It’s not another Kinect thing – it’s to do with the Wii. People are talking about Kinect and Move at the moment, understandably – but if we’d have had this at E3, people would have been talking about this as a significant step forward for the Wii as well,” said Curran.
Of course, THQ has exhibited some third-party success on Wii, much notably the unique action-platformer De Blob (which is getting a sequel) and a range of fitness games such as The Biggest Loser. The company also found success with the Drawn to Life series, the brainchild of Scribblenauts developer 5th Cell. But it boggles the mind as to what this game could end up being.
Of course, innovation doesn’t always breed success. While De Blob was a success due to word of mouth, it hasn’t worked in the past with several “unique” Wii games being thrown into bargain bins in favor of the latest release from Nintendo itself, or worse, another mini-game compilation. Still, three cheers for a publisher looking to put some real innovation into a console more known for cheap third-party cash-ins.
Curran did say that THQ might unveil the game at the Cologne Gamescom in August. Here’s hoping they do just so we can see what the fuss is about.
