THQ president likes Xbox Live, wants Sony, Nintendo to follow suit

THQ head honcho Brian Farrell said at the BMO Capital Markets conference that Sony and Nintendo need to improve their online services and take it up a notch. Markets like Asia, China, Korea, and others are predominantly online and you never know when the trend of digital downloads gets hot, as Farrell puts it, so he’s hoping key partners push for DLC download mechanisms that consumers can adopt. He gave props to Microsoft’s Xbox Live service for being user friendly, but still asked for more console offerings to attract consumers.

Major developer and publisher THQ, known for WWE and Nickelodeon games, wants Sony and Nintendo to improve on online services for their platforms. According to CEO Brian Farrell, publishers won’t be getting much by providing downloadable content for the consoles Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii if online offerings don’t get any better.

Farrell commends the Xbox Live service available for the Microsoft Xbox 360, but wants more from the side of format holders. “If you look at markets like Asia, China, Korea and others it’s a digital download market because they are predominantly online,” he said at the BMO Capital Markets conference.

“Obviously we’re seeing a huge uptake with Xbox Live since that’s a very, very user friendly download system. We get a fair number of downloads on our PC business,” Farrell continued. On Sony platforms, however, THQ “haven’t seen the roll-out by Sony of their robust online strategy.” Farrell went on, saying “Nintendo keeps working on their digital download strategy as well.”

Farrell believes offering consumers the ability to download and consumers adopting to such mechanisms will show significant growth for the DLC scene. “It’ll probably keep growing but we need some more visibility from a couple of key partners to see that real growth driver over the next several years,” he added.