ON24.com publishes a weekly special called Executive Impact. This week, Executuve Impact featured THQ's Brian Farrell, President and CEO of THQ. The special speaks of market focus during a transitional year, and while most of it would be considered un-interesting to your average gamer .. there was one particular little quip that caught my attention:

"Now that we have some Dolphin systems in-house .."

In this time of little information as to what developers have Dolphin development kits in-house, we, as we figure you will, find this information interesting.

While I won't torture you with a 33 minute audio file this time .. here is a small clip of the cool stuff: THQ

Although, if you do want to listen to the entire broadcast, it can be found here. Brian contiunues to talk about the business during a transition year .. one thing interesting was the comment made about how it's "hard to see a long-term strategy for Dreamcast"

Apparently this is probably because of so many new consoles coming onto the market, it will be difficult to support all of them, particularly the one that will be considered the most under-powered of the bunch.

They also talk about 1999 performance for THQ, and projected 2000 performance, and gave numbers for past and expected sales.

For Fiscal Year 1999 -

PSX 40%

N64 37%

GBC ~15%

PC 10%

For Fiscal Year 2000 -

PSX 50%

N64 20%

GBC ~15%

PC 10%

Brian also stated that the WWF franchise for the Nintendo platform did "very well". But stated that high cartridge costs were the reason why he expects the Nintendo titles to not do so well this year. He also stated that the N64 was primarily a platform for Nintendo-published titles.

Well, I would have to agree with a lot of that for a lot of reasons. I still like cartridges to a certain extent, I believe that they are technically superior to other media types for various reasons .. but we all know very well that the business model for cartridges is really bad for developers and also consumers to a certain degree.

He's right in that the N64 is mainly a platform for Nintendo published titles. Perhaps that is because we, as Nintendo gamers, are spoiled by the gems that we are used to playing from Nintendo and close associates. If you take a look at the reviews for THQ software that has been released on both the PSX and the N64, you will find that *generally", the games that got released on the PSX platform got better reviews. Generally, not always the case. THQ has shown itself to be a average publisher, with some select titles that have done well .. some real dogs.

Perhaps the cartridge format can also be blamed for that, as well. As consumers, with the high prices of new games on new cartridges, we tend to only buy the premium Nintendo published titles at this late stage in the systems life. While not always the case, new titles on the N64 platform still can sell for an average of $15 more than the equivalent on the PSX platform.

Perhaps another reason why THQ will not be doing so well in this next year on the N64 platform, is the titles that they have slated for release.

With the exception of Aidyn: The First Mage (an RPG, whohoo!), I can't see any titles by THQ that I would want to purchase for myself.

Other titles slated to be released on the N64 platform are:

Rugrats

Scooby Doo

Power Rangers

Which is targeted towards the "mass-market". I don't know what he means by this, "mass-market" .. but that certainly is the "late adopter" category. The kids that get the N64 for presents from their parents THIS YEAR.

All I know is that games like Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage, Perfect Dark, Kirby, StarCraft, Banjo-Tooie, Ogre Battle, Turok 3, and Zelda and Pokemon will do VERY well this year. It's funny that a majority of those titles are Nintendo published .. but what is real funny is that these titles are actually good ..

Yea .. maybe the N64 will be selling for $50 (maybe) this Christmas, which would make it the perfect gift for the kid who's parent won't kick down the hundreds of dollars on a present for a child so young, who knows, but will Scooby Doo and the Power Rangers be selling for $19.95 as well?

Well, it obvious that THQ will be supporting Dolpin, which is great. He called the Dolphin the "Dark Horse" of the 3 new consoles .. not really sure what he means by that, but I think it was something to do with market support .. which is a concern.

He did mention that he did not have any information regarding royalty structures on the Dolphin, said they haven't been provided that information yet .. but expects them to be in line with the model that Sony and Sega are using. I hope so. That would be better for Nintendo, too. See, we can continue to buy all the great Nintendo titles we want. Royalties on those shouldn't matter a whole heck of a lot to Nintendo (why pay royalties to yourself?), but at least give other developers the incentive to publish more titles .. even if they are crap compared to the Nintendo gems. With a DVD medium, it's perfect. Economies of scale.