During the company’s first quarter investor’s call last night, THQ’s new president Jason Rubin revealed that they have decided to stop pre-production on Guillermo del Toro‘s horror game, InSane.
Rubin broke the news to investors, saying:
“We have decided not to pursue further pre-production on InSane, and have returned all of our IP rights to Guillermo del Toro. By canceling these explorations outside of our core business, we feel we can improve focus on our core game portfolio, which remains unchanged.”
InSane was first announced way back in December 2010, and was being developed by Volition for a planned 2013 release. While it wasn’t directly stated by Rubin, the game’s stated “pre-production” status seems to suggest that Guillermo del Toro had not made a lot of progress in the last two years towards meeting InSane‘s 2013 launch window.
In happier THQ news, after months of restructuring, job cuts, and canceling projects, the company announced a successful earnings report last night, showing their first quarterly GAAP net income since the three months ending December 31, 2009.
Net revenue for the quarter ended June 30, 2012 came in at $133.7 million, and net income totaled $15.4 million. While that’s a far cry from the numbers that the big boys/girls in the video game industry typically pull in, it’s a much nicer pill to swallow than the $38.4 million net loss that THQ reported during the same period in the prior year.
THQ Chairman and CEO Brian Farrell commented on the results, saying:
“We have made significant progress reshaping the company. With the changes implemented over the last several months, we are in a much better position today to deliver on our pipeline of games, beginning with Darksiders II, which launches next week in North America,”.
With InSane now officially out of the picture, THQ’s current fiscal 2013 release lineup is as follows:
- Darksiders II – August 2012
- WWE’13 – October 2012
- Company of Heroes 2 – Q4 FY2013
- Metro: Last Light – Q$FY2013
- South Park: The Stick of Truth – March 2013
Source: THQ, GamesIndustry