Nordic, 505 Games make top bids for hot THQ properties
Nordic Games was the highest bidder for Darksiders, MX vs ATV and Red Faction - just one of a number of surprising results from THQ's final auction.
Nordic Games is the Austrian parent company of JoWood, DreamCatcher and The Adventure Company, and is best known for Arcania, Painkiller, Gothic and Spellforce.
As well as grabbing the Darksiders, Red Faction and Mx vs ATV lots, Nordic also lashed out on the Other Owned Software and Other Licensed Software bundles.
Pending court approval, it will be the happy owner of Destroy all Humans!, Summoner, Marvel Super Hero Squad, Supreme Commander and much, much more.
The company bid just $4.9 million for this whopping acquisition and was apparently the highest contender.
CEO Lars Wingefors seems suitable delighted by the result, and vowed to do its best with its suddenly bursting IP catalogue.
"We are very happy about this deal which also turns over a new leaf for the entire Nordic Games Group. In the long term, we either want to cooperate with the original creators or best possible developers in order to work on sequels or additional content for these titles," he said in a statement published on Joystiq.
"A very important point for us is not to dash into several self-financed multi-million dollar projects right away, but rather to continue our in-depth analysis of all titles and carefully selecting different financing models for developing new instalments of acquired IPs."
Of the two remaining lots, Gearbox Software picked up Homeworld for $1.35 million.
Meanwhile, somewhat unusually, 505 Games managed to secure the 5th Cell-developed Drawn to Life and Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter, which were initially included in Lot 5, Other Owned Software. It's not clear how the global publishing brand managed to pull a specific property from the lot, but it offered $300,000 for the privilege. 505 Games publishes a lot of mid-core and casual titles with some forays into triple-A; its catalogue inclues Cooking Mama, Sniper Elite V2, the upcoming Payday 2, ArmA and much more.
All sales must be approved in court and will potentially be finalised by the end of May.
If you're interested, we have a full list of everything included in the auctioned lots. Nordic Games has said it will discuss individual properties at a later date.