The last year-plus for Warner Bros. Games hasn’t been the best for the company, and Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav admits that. During the company’s latest earnings call on November 7, Zaslav said that the games business is “substantially underperforming its potential”.
This comes after financial disappointments such as MultiVersus and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League lost the studio more than $300 million this year alone. Now, Warner Bros. Games is going to put more emphasis on its most successful franchises moving forward.
“I think we’re through some of the worst — and it hasn’t been pretty — on the gaming business,” Zaslav said during the call. “But we have four games that are really powerful and have a real constituency that love them, and we’re going to focus on those four primarily. We’re going to go away from trying to launch 10, 12, 15, 20 different games. I think we have a real chance now with focus to have the gaming business be steadier.
He added: “We have four strong and profitable game franchises with loyal, global fans: Hogwarts Legacy, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, and DC, in particular, Batman. We are focusing our development efforts on those core franchises, with proven studios to improve our success ratio.”
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Warner Bros. Games is already working on a definitive edition of Hogwarts Legacy that Insider Gaming exclusively reported on in October. A sequel to the game is also in production.
With Mortal Kombat, the company continues to see character additions for the game with the latest being the upcoming launch of Ghostface on November 26.
On the Batman side, it’s been quite from the company overall since Suicide Squad. However, rumors recently began to circulate that Rocksteady could be working on a new Batman game.
Not mentioned on the call but still in development is the upcoming Wonder Woman game from Monolith.
What do you think of Warner Bros. Games putting the focus on a few key franchises rather than multiple titles? Let us know down below, and join the discussion in the official Insider Gaming forums.
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He’s saying the same thing again. I feel like he might sell but who knows? But still no update on other games outside Wonder Woman, Monolith has another DC single player game not announced what is it? Montreal has a single player DC game what is that? Is Injustice 3 happening? Also on the DC front there’s other IP they can use outside Batman like Nightwing makes perfect sense, Batman Beyond, Jonah Hex, Blue Beetle, Sideways, Static, Captain Marvel, The Question, Robin, Green Arrow, The Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Deathstroke, Warlord, like the list is endless. He previously mentioned licensing out games what about that any news?
MK1 flopped why invest more into it? Can we finally get a Batman Beyond AAA open world game based on the Kyle Higgins comic. Also they could easily make money teaming up with Arc System Works or Eighting making a 2003 Teen Titans and 2005 The Batman cartoon fighting game using the Jeff Matsuda and Glen Murakami art styles and have David Slack write a single player story.
They have no games for the future right now. How far away is Hogwarts 2? I’m honestly not interested.
Can not wait for Hogwarts Legacy 2 the first game was pretty good though could have used more variety in NPCs
Personally disliked the Batman games
Where’s Batman? You haven’t had a Batman AAA game since 2015 it’s been almost 10 years that makes no sense. Then again I could see these same idiots making Injustice 3 without Kevin Conroy and a shitty story 10 years after Injustice 2 came out so no surprise and in Unreal 4.
Elon Musk is going to buy WBD I think. On that topic how’s the Blade Runner game coming along I think it was Annapurna is it still happening or not?
Batman makes money, Hogwarts was a fluke.
Ed Boon needs to come out and address if he’s making Injustice 3 next or if it’s dead?