GTA's Owner Refused $2 Billion. THQ Was Sold for Parts

GTA's Owner Refused $2 Billion. THQ Was Sold for Parts Subscribe to Parallel Fates for new business duels every week: two companies, one storm, different endings. Prefer to listen? Parallel Fates is also a podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6OdbdvY... 00:00 Two Billion Refused, One Company Auctioned 01:26 Toy Headquarters 02:31 Saints Row Gets There First 03:37 Take Two and Grand Theft Auto 05:08 The Scoreboard: February 2008 05:51 The Fork: Electronic Arts Makes an Offer 07:26 Grand Theft Auto IV Pays Off 08:09 The Storm Hits 09:34 Into Hardware: The uDraw 10:47 The Same Day in November 12:26 The Fall of THQ 12:58 Sold for Parts 14:13 Take Two's Choice 15:02 Grand Theft Auto V 16:08 The Scoreboard: Same Storm, Different Endings Take-Two vs THQ: in 2008, the owner of Grand Theft Auto turned down a $2 billion takeover offer from Electronic Arts. Five years later, its old rival THQ was sold off piece by piece in a Delaware bankruptcy court. Both publishers faced the same storm: a new generation of expensive consoles, followed by the 2008 financial crash. THQ, the former Toy Headquarters, had wrestling games, children's licenses and Saints Row, a crime series that reached the Xbox 360 almost two years before Grand Theft Auto IV. Take Two, officially Take-Two Interactive, had one series that carried the whole company, and a board that refused to sell before that series launched. This episode follows both paths: the record year of 2007, the hostile bid, the launch of Grand Theft Auto IV, and THQ's decision to move into hardware with the uDraw drawing tablet. On November 15, 2011, the new tablet and Saints Row: The Third went on sale on the same day. One became a hit. The other left 1.4 million unsold units in warehouses. By January 2013, Saints Row's studio had been sold for $22.3 million. Grand Theft Auto V went on to pass 230 million copies. This is a story about focus: what happens when a company spreads its bets at the exact moment every bet becomes more expensive. More business duels from the same world: Nintendo vs Sega, Game Boy vs Game Gear, PlayStation vs Saturn. Parallel Fates. Two companies. One storm. Different endings. #TakeTwo #THQ #BusinessHistory