Ben-DutkaWhen Tomonobu Itagaki left Tecmo and founded Valhalla Games, he opted to go with Western publisher THQ.
The team has been working on Devil's Third , a hot action game with lots of bullets and attitude (the attitude part is common to Itagaki), and initially, it seemed that THQ's expectations were high. Ours were, too.
But the publisher has ran into trouble this year and now, according to an investor conference call , THQ CEO Brian Farrell made it clear that they're now looking to unload Valhalla's debut effort.
"The profitability of Devil's Third was not competitive with our other releases."
A few things have contributed to this turnaround- First on the list is the fact that the third-party company Valhalla had tapped to create the game engine went out of business. Second, given the strengthening value of the yen against the dollar, THQ has been forced to reevaluate its "profitability profile." Obviously, all this means you probably won't be seeing Devil's Third on store shelves for quite a long time.
The question is, who might want to pick up the project? EA published its first Japanese-developed title last year ( Shadows of the Damned ), but that didn't sell particularly well…
