Agoura, Calif.-based THQ will miss its guidance for a breakeven second fiscal half on slow sales of key releases, said Cowen and Company analyst Doug Creutz in a Thursday research note.

Citing NPD data for U.S. software sales, Creutz said sales of the latest WWE wrestling game SmackDown vs. Raw 2009 were down 22 percent year-on-year during calendar Q4 2008, and the SpongeBob franchise was down 19 percent year-on-year.

"The WWE decline is particularly concerning since that franchise had been one of THQ’s last bastions of strength," Creutz wrote, adding that the latest WWE entry received higher quality scores than recent iterations (it's earning around an 80 percent at Metacritic).

The flagship Volition-developed free-roamer Saints Row 2 is also a sales downer, Creutz said. The analyst expects the Xbox 360 and PS3 crime romp to to sell around 900K in the U.S. in its first year.

Creutz noted, "...Previously we had been optimistic that the franchise could break the [1 million] mark, given its launch on two platforms. The original Saints Row sold roughly 750K U.S. units during its first four quarters in release on a single platform (Xbox 360) at a much earlier point in
the console cycle."

The original Saints Row launched in August 2006, when the other free-roaming crime series, Grand Theft Auto, was between major home console releases. Saints Row 2 launched just six months after the blockbuster GTA IV.

Cowen lowered its fiscal Q3 2009 earnings per share estimate from 11 cents to breakeven, and Q4 estimate from a loss of 14 cents to a loss of 20 cents.

"We think THQI share performance is unlikely to improve unless the company demonstrates renewed earnings’ stability, and we continue to rate shares Neutral," Creutz said.

THQ shares were down 14 cents, or 3.5 percent in morning trading to $3.86.