THQ's new head promises no more job cuts, but 'everything is up for change'

For a guy who's only been on the job for a dozen days, newly appointed THQ president Jason Rubin is awfully comfortable answering very specific questions. He probably should be, given his title, but it was impressive nonetheless that he was able to speak with such specificity to nebulous projects like Guillermo del Toro's planned "Insane" trilogy. "Currently it's still in the slate," Rubin told Joystiq in an E3 interview. That doesn't mean the barely detailed project is a sure thing, of course. THQ will be "a different company" in the next year or two, according to Rubin. Will ambitious projects like Insane make the cut?

"I'm taking every project as clay, a clay statue that's been built. It's not nearly been completed. It can be augmented, it can be shrunk, it can be changed. Everything is up for change to make the best possible product that could be," Rubin said.

With THQ's financial troubles as of late, it's fair to wonder if the trilogy will ever materialize, not to mention Turtle Rock's unnamed FPS project, or THQ Montreal's new IP. "I'm well aware of the other projects that are kind of in what you would call 'nebulous states' (though internally they may not be so nebulous)," Rubin said. "I have to go around and look at everything over the next few weeks, next month, and I have to then decide which of the titles are the titles we're gonna focus on based on what I believe our future should be."

Thankfully for THQ's employees (approximately 1,750 as of March 31, 2011), the coming change within the publisher doesn't mean a reckoning. "We have the appropriate number of teams and the appropriate number of people working on products, and we're not gonna be continuing to cut teams," Rubin told us. "But as far as product goes, I think we'll have to find out exactly where that's going."