Warner Bros. has some absolutely humongous franchises amongst its ranks across movies, TV and games, and the company says that it wants to better leverage that IP in gaming.
In a recent earnings call (via IGN), CEO David Zaslav talked about the growing medium of games and how the team wants to take advantage of that with its own series'. Zaslav says that the company has "a lot of interest" from other studios wanting to use its IP - hinting that WB may have to take up some of those offers "to get bigger" in the future.
"We have 11 studios here, and we have a lot of IP. And there's also a lot of interest among others in coming to take advantage of some of that IP for gaming, which we're looking at. Because as JB said, we need to get bigger, and the IP that we own and the value that it has in the gaming space is something we're looking to take advantage of."
Of course, WB has plenty of its own teams too — as mentioned in the quote up above — but those have produced mixed results in recent years. Zaslav went on to namedrop both Hogwarts Legacy and Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League as examples of successes and failures from its own internal studios in recent times.
"You still need a great game, and the reality is, we've had the unfortunate- in a short period of 12 months, we went from having the record year in 2023 with Hogwarts Legacy to unfortunately having the opposite side of that spectrum with Suicide Squad."
Here at Pure Xbox we happened to enjoy both of these games, but especially Hogwarts Legacy which scored a 9/10 in our PX review last year. We'd love to play through more experiences like that from WB in the years to come - whether those be internally developed or outsourced to some of the other hugely talented developers in this industry.
Is there a dream team that you'd like to take hold of a Warner Bros IP? Tell us what combo you'd pick down below!
[source ign.com]
Comments 13
Suicide squad is awful hogwarts legacy is great though hopefully a developer that intents to use these licence games right and no Definitely not Microsoft they destroy everything
Licensing out their IP's may well be the better option for WB right now - much like say Disney licensing out Star Wars and Marvel IP's to various Studio's. EA and Ubisoft have Star Wars games and Sony/MS have Marvel games (Spider-Man, Wolverine and Blade).
It seems WB though haven't really handled their Studio's or IP's that well in recent times. Suicide Squad wasn't their first 'flop' but after Gotham Knights, didn't seem to learn from that or the failures of Marvels Avengers too.
WB has considered selling its Studio's before - but without IP's, they are perhaps not that 'enticing'. Publishers could recruit unhappy staff to improve their own Studios for example and buying Rocksteady wouldn't come with owning 'Batman' or DC IP's. So maybe licensing those IP's could work better for them...
Is it me or does it sound like they're aware of how they effed up?
As in "it's clear we don't have to do that again" aware.
Not holding my breath, but here's hoping.
Microsoft should follow suit with their dormant / unused IP.
@101Force reports were saying that Microsoft was interested in WB studios. Maybe if true they'd be able to make a few?
WB destroys basically everything it touches. I'm sure it will end up being a disaster.
Other than DC Comics, what do they own outright that people would buy video games based on?
These companies have gone from making games to creating speculative crypto like ventures… so sad
I suspect this means they will shut the WB studios and farm out the IP
@cragis0001 WB have tried to sell some of thier studios before but they have no value without the IP and WB wont sell the IP
@trev666 that was before Xbox purchased ABK. Now they own a ton of dormant franchises that people have want to see revived. But not enough studios to make them.
@Vordus Harry Potter is the other big one. There’s also Mortal Kombat. They may also have the rights to Game of Thrones games (since they have the TV rights). They also own Looney Toons and Monsterverse (if that still even exists).
@bestuardo Harry Potter is something they licence rather than own, which raises the question of who pays JK Rowling if a third party makes a Harry Potter game. Same for Game of Thrones and George RR Martin. Monsterverse they co-own with Legendary, using monsters they licence from Toho. Considering Kong is public domain, it would probably be cheaper to deal with Toho directly there.
Looney Tunes is a good call though, although whether they'd really sell in large quantities these days is questionable. Hanna Barbera is in the same category; lots of IP but not very culturally relevant right now.
Mortal Kombat, well. NetherRealm pretty much has that handled. But I'm sure Zaslav can always make some terrible decision to outsource their most reliable series.
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