Last week THQ confirmed that it had lowered its third-quarter projections, mostly based on poor sales of the HD versions of its uDraw tablet for Xbox 360 and PS3. On Friday the company delivered some retribution to 30 of its employees who worked on that project in some way. The company laid off 30 employees from its Play THQ development team, including unit leader Martin Good. That team worked out of THQ’s Agoura Hills, California offices.
“Due to weaker than expected sales of the uDraw Game Tablet, we are taking a difficult but important step to reduce the number of employees that supported this brand. 30 people will be leaving the company and business unit leader Martin Good will also be leaving to pursue new opportunities outside the company. This action will allow us to reduce costs, increase efficiency and increase the focus of our organization,” the publisher told Game Informer.
This seems like a knee-jerk reaction to numbers that haven't fully been realized given that there are still at least 12 days left in the holiday shopping season. Perhaps this move was meant to calm investors down. We will have to wait and see just how well uDraw did when the final numbers for December come out in January before we can figure out if this was a smart move on THQ's part.
Source: IndustryGamers
