At a recent speaking engagement hosted by Morgan Stanley, J.B. Perrette, the gaming chief at Warner Bros. Discovery, outlined the company’s future gaming strategy.
This strategy emphasizes a greater focus on live-service, mobile, and free-to-play over traditional AAA story driven, single player games.
Perrette emphasized, “We’re doubling down on games as an area where we think there is a lot more growth opportunity that we can tap into with the IP that we have and some of the capabilities we have on the studio where we’re uniquely positioned as both a publisher and a developer of games.”
To paint this into perspective, Warner Bros wishes to double down on a failing strategy.
In 2023, Hogwarts Legacy, a story-driven single-player game, achieved remarkable success by selling over 22 million units throughout the year. Despite facing boycotts from mentally malnourished individuals online, Hogwarts Legacy defied the odds and surpassed Activision’s 15-year streak for the highest-selling game, overtaking Call of Duty, even after being excluded from that year’s ESG award ceremony.
Meanwhile, Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League represents the opposite end of the spectrum, being a live service title with a narrative focused on progressive themes. Although specific sales figures haven’t been officially disclosed, it’s widely regarded as a commercial failure by WB themselves.
The game’s player base has rapidly declined, with peak concurrent player counts dropping to around 400 just over a month after its release.
And what strategy does Warner Bros. choose to commit towards? Well obviously the one that loses money instead of making it, with more live service games planned in the distant future as they also desperately attempt to gain market share in the mobile gaming market which is utterly dominated by the likes of Tencent.
Hogwarts Legacy sold over 22 million copies, and yet J.B. Perrette proclaims that success is never guaranteed as real AAA experiences are deemed a “volatile market.”
“Rather than just launching a one-and-done console game, how do we develop a game around, for example, a Hogwarts Legacy or Harry Potter, that is a live-service where people can live and work and build and play in that world in an ongoing basis?”
Warner Brothers believes they can maintain a more consistent revenue stream by focusing on live service titles and free-to-play games that garners interest and in-game monetary sales over a longer period of time, versus producing quality games that people actually want to buy, such as a genuine Batman Arkham game that isn’t awash with progressive ideologies rather than a live service title that shits on its legacy.
Warner Brothers are more or less waving the white flag when it comes to gaming, abandoning true gaming experiences in favor of low quality slop in a move that can only be described as sheer ignorance, the only way WB can compete in such markets would be on merit, that’s to say they proactively produce quality installments that consumers ignore the obvious live service pitfalls, Helldivers 2 for example.
However, such a scenario is unlikely to unfold. Exiting the AAA industry would only hasten the decline of the console market, particularly as indie titles consistently outperform their live service counterparts on PC. Meanwhile, the mobile market is predominantly saturated with games featuring attractive women, fan service, and titties.
