Del Toro’s inSANE cancelled

With THQ only just barely in the green this quarter, the publisher has binned Volition Inc. and Guillermo del Toro’s survival horror…er* inSANE after two years in development, and returned all IP rights to the film director.

The decision to dump the project comes amid a crackdown on expenses at the company, which has also seen Tomonubu Itagaki’s Devil’s Third cancelled, and a refocus on THQ’s product line.

“We have stopped development for certain areas that are not productive for our new strategy. Consistent with this vision, THQ has made a few changes to previously announced projects. First, we made the determination not to pursue any casual Facebook games. Second, we will not be publishing casual mobile games, including those with Innovative Leisure. And third, we have decided not to pursue further pre-production on inSANE, and have returned all of our IP rights to Guillermo del Toro,” THQ president Jason Rubin said.

“By canceling these explorations outside of our core business, we feel we can improve focus on our core game portfolio, which remains unchanged.”

Most of that focus is now probably fixed on Darksiders II, which launches 21 August. Isn’t it ironic that a game about death could breathe new life into the cash-strapped publisher?

After its reveal at Spike Video Game Awards in 2010, inSANE sort of vanished from public sight and not much additional information about the game was ever revealed, except that it would be the first in a trilogy. But a game by Guillermo del Toro? That was always going to be awesome just because. Hopefully he’ll shop the game out to some other publisher and we’ll still get to play it one day.