Why THQ has rubbed out uDraw

The uDraw GameTablet and all related games have been discontinued after the franchise’s sales fell short by $100m.

"THQ has no future commitments or plans to manufacture uDraw hardware," the company said in its latest financial report.

Revenues for the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of uDraw – which were released last November – were $100m below the publisher’s expectations, according to Eurogamer.

The publisher’s CFO Paul Pucino also revealed that there are still 1.4m units to sell in THQ’s inventory.

"Revenues were lower by about $100m," he said. "Where that comes from is about 1.4m units still in inventory that we haven’t sold that we planned on selling. If you think about an average price of about $56 or so, that accounted for a shortfall of about $80m.

"Then the million of so units that we did sell-in we had to sell at a lower price. That, coupled with software sales that are associated with uDraw being lower as well, totals about $100m.

"From a contribution margin perspective, we would have double the profitability in the quarter were it not for uDraw. So it was something in excess of $30m in operating loss in the quarter as a result of uDraw."

Poor sales of uDraw were one of the key factors in the publisher’s losses of $56m for the third quarter of its current financial year. It was also a key driver in THQ’s withdrawal from the kids’ market.