Warner Bros. wants other studios to make games based on their franchises
Warner Bros. Discovery plans to leverage its intellectual property and publish more video games based on its biggest franchises, the company said Wednesday during its second-quarter earnings call. In addition to developing games in-house, Warner Bros. also plans to license its IPs to other studios. Warner Bros.’ Hogwarts Legacy, based on the company’s Wizarding World IP, was the best-selling game of 2023, but few WB properties have been fully leveraged in the gaming medium.
During the Q&A portion of Warner Bros. Discovery Q2 2024 Earnings Call (as first reported by IGN), CEO David Zaslav said there was “a lot of interest” among outside parties to turn Warner Bros. IPs into video games. “We have 11 studios here and we have a lot of IP,” Zaslav said on the call. “And there’s also a lot of interest among others to come and take advantage of some of that IP for gaming, which we’re looking at,” he added.
JB Perette, CEO and president of worldwide streaming and games, also said that Warner Bros. franchises were “highly sought after” and could help launch new games. The executive also identified the free-to-play segment in gaming as a focus area for the company, which has seen mixed results with its triple-A first-party titles.
Last year, Hogwarts Legacy, based on the popular Harry Potter franchise, sold over 22 million copies, becoming the biggest game of 2023. However, in 2024, Warner Bros. Games released Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which was a critical and commercial failure, leading to a 41 percent decrease in Warner Bros. gaming revenue in the second quarter of 2024.
“You still need a great game, and the reality is… in a short 12-month period, we went from having a record year of 2023 with Hogwarts Legacy to unfortunately going to the other end of that spectrum with Suicide Squad,” Perette said during the earnings call.
Zaslav and Perette were responding to a question about the “uneven performance” of WB’s games in recent years, the “strategic value” of video games to the conglomerate and whether it saw games as a core part of its vast portfolio.
While Warner Bros. Games, part of the conglomerate’s Global Streaming and Interactive Entertainment unit, has published games based on popular Warner Bros. franchises like Batman and Harry Potter, several major properties like Game of Thrones and Superman remain underutilized when it comes to the interactive medium.
According to Zaslav, the company needs to change that and maximize the potential of its IPs as video games. “…we need to become bigger, and the IP that we own and the value that it has in the gaming space is something that we want to take advantage of,” he said in response to the question.
During its third-quarter earnings call in November 2023, Warner Bros. had said it would transition its biggest franchises into live-service games, with a focus on extending the lifecycles of its releases. “Ultimately, we want to drive engagement and monetization for longer cycles and at higher levels,” Zaslav had said at the time. “We are at scale right now and see significant opportunities to drive higher post-acquisition revenue.”
WB made its biggest bet on the live service model earlier this year when it released Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, with planned post-launch content drops. The game, however, was met with criticism for its live service model, and lackluster sales resulted in Warner Bros. losing $200 million on the title. In our own review, we felt the game was hamstrung by its decision to step away from Rocksteady’s expertise in single-player, story-focused titles.
However, in March of this year, Warner Bros. reiterated its commitment to the live-service model of games, despite the underwhelming critical and commercial performance of Suicide Squad.
