Analyst: Homefront Still To Be A 'Decent Seller' Despite Weak Reviews

Industry analysts and major publishers have made a common refrain of the idea that there's no room for the mid-level video game at retail anymore. At least as far as Metacritic is concerned, THQ's Homefront hasn't hit a high enough quality bar: "It is clear that Homefront has not lived up to expectations in terms of game quality," says Cowen and Company analyst Doug Creutz. "While this will likely hamper the title's ability to achieve breakout success, we still feel reasonably confident that it will achieve sales of 2MM units, and see no reason to change our estimates at this time," says Creutz. All day investors have been punishing the publisher's shares, which as of press time are down about 25 percent, movement likely compounded by comments from analysts like Wedbush's Michael Pachter yesterday that uDraw tablet sales were flat and that DeBlob 2 was underperforming. Still, Creutz calls the selloff "significantly overdone" in light of the fact Homefront is still likely to perform decently, even with a 72 rating that was "not what we were looking for." After all, as Creutz says, "poor review scores [were] not fatal" for EA's Medal of Honor, which has still sold 5 million units to-date despite middling reception thanks to "good marketing and pre-release buzz." "Homefront has been building buzz up to the launch date so we believe the title will still be a decent seller for THQ despite mixed reviews," concludes the analyst.