THQ’s uDraw Tablet Fails To Penetrate the Market

According to a post on GamesIndustry today, revenue for THQ is going to come up shorter than they’d predicted this year—and the company is laying the blame at the feet of the uDraw Tablet controller.

“Management blamed poor sales of uDraw on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 for the miss,” financial analyst Cowan & company is quoted as saying. However, the analysts suspect that the tablet can’t have been the sole reason for the 25 percent drop in sales for the company’s third quarter:

“The $130 million revenue downside suggests that there was likely some incremental weakness elsewhere. At a roughly $50 for uDraw across all platforms, including the Wii, it would take a 2.6 million unit shortfall to account for the full revenue miss; THQ’s planning implied less than 2.6 million units of total uDraw sell-in.”

The article offers speculation from another analyst, Wedbush Morgan, that posits the revenue shortfall can also be blamed on overestimates of software orders, as well as an overcrowded release schedule—and if you’ve been paying attention to how many AAA titles have been hitting shelves over the last few months, you’d agree that there was a huge amount of competition for gaming dollars this season.

The post also suggests that this may be the fourth of the past five years that THQ would be in the red.

I’m not too terribly surprised about the low sales of the uDraw Tablet. I reviewed the device myself and enjoyed it enough, but from what I could see, there doesn’t seem to be quite enough software to justify its support on the “hardcore” systems of PS3 and Xbox 360. If you’ve got kids, there are other, more adult-friendly devices to satisfy parents’ needs to give their kids fun video games—the Kinect’s Once Upon a Monster is a huge hit in my brother’s house with his two-and-a-half year old daughter, as is Kinectimals.

It’s a good idea on THQ’s part to have created the tablet, and it’s got potential, but to say that the market’s crowded is an understatement. Between Kinect and PS Move, I can see a lot of consumers wary of yet another gaming device with few desirable titles gathering dust under their televisions.

Personally? I’m still waiting for a bad-ass dungeon crawler that lets me take advantage of the tablet controller. Or Scribblenauts, as I mentioned in my review. I’d go out and buy a damn copy.

Via GamesIndustry

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