Warner Bros. to Transform Its Big IPs Into Live Service Games - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 09 November 2023 / 2,545 Views
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav speaking during the company’s latest earnings call revealed it plans to transform its biggest IPs from single-player focused into live service games.
"Our focus is on transforming our biggest franchises from largely console and PC based with three-four year release schedules to include more always on gameplay through live services, multiplatform and free-to-play extensions with the goal to have more players spending more time on more platforms," said Zaslav via Seeking Alpha.
"Ultimately we want to drive engagement and monetization of longer cycles and at higher levels. We have put specific capabilities. We are currently under scale and see significant opportunity to generate greater post purchase revenue."
Zaslav did mention "Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, DC, which is mainly Batman today, and Mortal Kombat" as its key franchises.
Warner Bros. did have success in 2023 with the launch of Hogwarts Legacy, which has sold over 15 million units worldwide and generated over $1 billion in retail sales.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
More Articles
After they just had massive success doing the opposite. Companies man...
They are always looking at the neighbor grass.
Of the games they released this year (full titles not just mobile) they had Hogwarts, a single player game with massive success and MK1, a fighting game so, automatically has potential for monetisation but great success for just sales. I would even say both boosting their recognition and yet here they are again seeing the money made my mobile and whales/steamers buying nothing on D4 and thinking "We want our cut."?
There's only so much of that cut to go around, make great games people want to buy.
Ugh, RIP Hogwarts Legacy, I was looking forward to the sequel, but they likely just killed any chance of me playing it. I'll not play a game balanced around requiring paid XP boosts to avoid huge amounts of grind, nor will I play a game where most of the best outfits, wand designs, broom designs, and even magical beast mounts are paid microtransactions.
The two points you put I don't really care (I don't mind grind if I like the game nor do I mind cosmetic stuff not being available), but the concept of GAAS and the story not being tailored for a start, mid, end pisses me royally. I like to start my game and play until the end instead of needing to keep installed and go check 30 min everyday. Having to wait for new chapters of manga and the like everyweek is already my limit on this type of stuff.
The outfits were one of the biggest flaws in Hogwarts Legacy as it was irritating to have to collect and swap up outfits so that the combat was a total slog. And then your character ended up looking ridiculous because the outfits are there to look zany and edgey. The devs even recognised this by have appearance settings separate to the outfit so you could boost stats without looking like a mismatched fancy dress outfit,
So hogwarts alone had a revenue of over 1 billion dollars but instead of learning and focusing on that they do the opposite. What kind of terrible consultants and management board comes with these ideas. They’re gonna ruin their franchises and then later on sell their gaming division because their stupid decisions caused devaluations.
"Having money is good, but what if we had ALL the money! Surely betting our current success away is worth the inevitable payout, no?"
facepalm
Reminds me that the Switch version of Hogwars Legacy is coming out in a few days. Wonder how good it'll be.
Hope they fail and need to sell the studios and lease the IPs but regular employees keep their work with new management.
Sometimes I really miss the old days before movie executives stuck their dirty little toes into the gaming industry.
Ah engagement. DLCs, not uninstalling, how about no. I'll move on to the next game thanks. Too much padding/bloat is not fun. What wasted money, competition and dumb design.
Do they play video games no so why should we with whatever badly paced stories built around DLC that ruins moments/engagement or eh game mechanics/level design.
I don't even play Warner Bros games anyway so like I care even, but it is disappointing for those that do enjoy their games.
I bought up a few Square Enix 2022 games with Valkyrie Elysium/Diofield/Tactics Ogre 2 remake, may Front Mission 1st or Triangle Strategy later, I barely do that so if they have hack n slash/tactics games I find interesting, that's why I bought them.
Same with Klonoa for Namco (will Pacman Repac eventually). Cheaper price, still the new price I paid f or the Square/Namco games so they still got their money.
Even Ubisoft I'm only playing their older games. Prince of Persia, Red Steel duology, Rayman. Balan was my Rayman 3 suits game. Some of their old Tom Clancy games for linear tactical shooting fun. All used/second hand. I may consider Sands of Time Remake if they don't ruin it.
Wanted Dead my Devils Third successor.
Any Indie/AAs/retro games for me these days for my 'engagement' companies.
Please don't.
