• By Tom Magrino, GameSpot
• Posted Mar 15, 2011 4:10 pm PT

Publisher ends trading day down 21% as analyst says sub-80 Metacritic average has spooked investors.

The first-person shooter genre has enormous potential for turning a buck, but investors are under the impression that only the best survive. With THQ's Homefront hitting store shelves on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC this week, the reviews have started to come in, and investors apparently don't like what they're seeing.

"This score is a bit of a disaster for THQ and the share price today is reflecting that," Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey told Reuters. "The market is a quality-driven market, (and) you need at least a score of 80 and above on Metacritic to do well."

Developed by Kaos Studios (Frontlines: Fuel of War), Homefront is a story-driven shooter set after North Korea invades and overruns the continental United States. The single-player component sees the player as a member of the American resistance fighting the Korean People's Army in an attempt to regain control of the ruined nation. The multiplayer modes are set earlier, letting players engage in military scenarios from the invasion itself.

THQ has previously indicated that it is planning to expand Homefront first with add-on content and then a full-blown sequel. However, as part of an event during this year's Game Developers Conference, THQ executive vice president Danny Bilson cautioned that games need to prove their success first before any future developments move beyond the concept stage.

Check back later today for GameSpot's review of Homefront.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6304041.html

I'm surprised that stock can fluctuate so much on something like relatively small differences in meta which has little to nothing to do with sales.  I could understand it if the game was broken like a meta of 4 or something, but it's just not all that great which I doubt will deter most people that had planned to buy it.

I was in my local gamestop the day Homefront released and they said they were quite busy so I at least don't think it did terribly its first day. 

Think the main thing thats killing the game is the short campaign length. If they did a sequel and made it longer then theyd probably have more success, as oppose to canning the series and going back to the drawing board.

Irrefutable proof that the review system is toxic and needs to be altered, i say.

The most generic looking shooter in recent memory (not including the Conduit) performed worse than anyone expected? I'm shocked. SHOCKED!

Depends on what you mean by 'worse than expected'

As part of my predictions thread (still not too late!), I asked people to predict how Homefront would sell this month

Judging by this, it looks as though no-one expected it to sell better than 500k anyway, and looking at the number of shipped copies and reviews, that looks about right...

So it's whether or not you class that as a bomb.

OT: Strange for stocks to fall over poor reviews, but I'm not in-tune with the stock market

EDIT**

Also, don't do a S**c* and say that it's not what you meant. You may have meant critical reception or sales. But I thought you meant sales. Upon re-reading your comment, maybe not. Never mind, it's relevant (sorta...)

Homefront is out? it isnt out in britain till 18th of march soo unfair! :(

Everyone should be playing total war anyway

Well, the game has some of the highest preorder numbers one can get, so we can either believe that:

1) This Gamespot article and its single quoted analyst are correct that a metacritic score has severely affected stock price for the first time ever, or

2) The above two sources have no idea what they're talking about, and the drop occured due to other reasons, possibly including news from the CEO's presentation to investors which occured on the 15th.

Sadly, I have little faith in the intellect of most stock brokers, so I can't say for sure which one is correct.

Does the battle AI still have all the tactical brilliance of General Burnside, or has it learned that chargings its archers uphill into your entrenched spearmen is a bad idea?

Total War rhymes with Yakuza 4, so I see how you got confused there.