THQ and Nickelodeon Renew SpongeBob Licensing Agreement

By Hector Cortez Oct 19, 2010, 3:13 GMT

Under the new agreement, THQ has the right to develop and publish SpongeBob SquarePants games across all platforms.

THQ and Nickelodeon today announced that they have entered into a new multi-year, licensing agreement, granting THQ the worldwide rights to develop and publish video games based on the SpongeBob SquarePants franchise. Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants has been the No. 1 animated program among kids ages 2 to 11 for more than seven consecutive years.

Under the new agreement, THQ has the right to develop and publish games based on the SpongeBob SquarePants property for the PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360 consoles, the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP handhelds, and the Xbox LIVE, PlayStation Network and Nintendo Wii Virtual Console online gaming portals.

Scheduled for release in 2011, the first game to be developed under this agreement is being designed to take advantage of the unique capabilities of Nintendo 3DS, THQ’s uDraw GameTablet for Wii, and Kinect for Xbox 360, no controller required.

THQ has been developing video games based on SpongeBob SquarePants since 2002, and recently launched top performing titles across all genres, such as SpongeBob Boating Bash (2010) and SpongeBob Truth or Square (2009). Global life-to-date games shipped for all published SpongeBob video game titles total more than 29 million units.