THQ Inc. isn’t having a happy holiday.

The uDraw GameTablet that was a success for the Agoura Hills video game publisher last holiday season is not generating the sales that the company was expecting, forcing it to lower its revenue outlook for the current quarter and lay off employees from the underperforming division.

THQ had been expecting to bring in quarterly revenue of $510 million to $550 million, but it now forecasts sales of 25 percent less. The company also has laid off 30 employees from Play THQ, the division that developed uDraw, including division leader Martin Good.

UDraw, which is sold as an accessory separately from game consoles, is a tablet that gamers draw on to create images on their TV screens.

Last year, the company launched uDraw exclusively for the Nintendo Wii and sold more than 1 million of the devices. But the device has failed to capture the same audience since being released for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 this year.

Mike Hickey, a video game analyst with National Alliance Capital Markets in Denver, said the device is better suited for the casual gamers that use the Wii. “The product didn’t get market acceptance. The timing was right last year with the right market. This year, clearly it was the opposite,” he said.

UDraw’s poor performance has driven down THQ’s stock. Shares closed at 79 cents Dec. 14, down 67 cents from the previous week. The 46 percent drop far outpaced the 4 percent decline on the Nasdaq during that period. The company was the biggest loser on the LABJ Stock Index. (See page 18.)

A THQ spokeswoman declined to comment for this article. Hickey said the company has been unusually quiet after news of the uDraw sales decline and layoffs, which he sees as cause for concern.

“Everyone understands that games don’t work out like you expected them to,” he said. “But what you do want to see from management is communication about the ramifications of that. The lack of communication over the holiday period should be an alarm.”

When THQ lowered its guidance, Chief Executive Brian Farrell tried to put a positive spin on holiday sales. He said in a statement that other holiday releases – action-adventure title “Saint’s Row: The Third” and wresting title “WWE ’12” – should have higher-than-expected sales. “As we continue to move through the third quarter, we are focused on driving sales of our key holiday titles,” he said.

But Hickey said the significant decline in expected revenue signals those games also aren’t performing well. As the games came out in November, they face heated holiday competition.

“When they put ‘Saint’s Row’ out, there was too much competition,” he said. “If they’d moved it forward in the calendar, then it would have gotten considerably better traction.”

THQ has typically lagged behind industry giants such as Santa Monica’s Activision Blizzard Inc. But the company has had a bout of struggles in recent years. In 2009, it lost more than $330 million and its stock dropped to about $3, down from more than $21 in 2008.

Last year, THQ laid off more than 600 employees and cut expenses by $220 million. Shares rose to more than $7.50. But that may have been a temporary respite.

In August, THQ announced a restructuring plan that closed studios in Phoenix and Australia, resulting in 200 layoffs. And although the company reported higher revenue for the third quarter, up 90 percent to $146 million, net losses were wider than before at $92.4 million.

Hickey said the company’s problem is that its games don’t stack up against the competition.

“The plague within THQ is an average set of games in a market that’s demanding high quality,” he said. “That’s not going to change anytime soon.”