THQ & Nickelodeon Extend Licensing Agreement

Following much speculation regarding the interactive publishing rights to Nickelodeon's various TV cartoon properties, originally scheduled to potentially change hands at the end of next year, THQ and Nickelodeon officially announced that the two have extended their licensing agreement through 2010. This move once again grants THQ video game publishing rights to all of Nickelodeon's existing and future animated television and movie properties, and comes as welcome news to THQ, recently in the headlines regarding legal trouble over the WWE games license. THQ President and CEO, Brian Farrell, commented: "As proud as we are of our many achievements over the years, we are even more excited about what the future of this partnership holds." He added: "Nickelodeon's ability to identify, develop and market the best content for kids is unparalleled. We are thrilled with the ongoing success of brands like SpongeBob SquarePants and our jointly developed Tak property and look forward to growing our business with the launch of several new Nickelodeon properties including Barnyard and Danny Phantom." THQ and Nickelodeon first partnered up way back in 1998 with the release of Rugrats for the original PlayStation. Since then, the license has been extremely lucrative for THQ, with a number of games based on Nickelodeon properties released over the years, including: Jimmy Neutron, The Fairly OddParents, Rugrats, and an intended cross-media 'game to cartoon' property, Tak and the Power of Juju. Concern over the extension to the master licensing agreement surfaced a few weeks ago, in part due to one of the possible contenders being Midway; a company that’s majority-owned by Sumner Redstone, CEO of Nickelodeon parent company Viacom. During THQ’s latest fiscal year, the company had 16% of its sales come from the Nickelodeon-licensed titles. The forthcoming THQ and Nickelodeon game line-up for fiscal 2006 includes games based on: SpongeBob SquarePants, The Fairly OddParents, Tak, the upcoming holiday 2005 theatrical release of The Barnyard Movie, and titles based on the Danny Phantom and everGirl properties.