By Warner Bros. Discovery global streaming and gaming chief Jean-Briac ‘JB’ Perrette has spoken some more about his company’s approach to gaming which has been roundly criticised in recent months.
Late last year Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav announced plans to overhaul the video game division with Perrette the one who says the company is gettting big into ‘always on’ live service games and mobile titles.
It was a head-scratcher as sentiment towards live service games is in a pit and only sinking further, and Warners was coming off the biggest game success of last year with the single-player driven “Hogwarts Legacy”.
Their first big live service title of this year, “Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League,” came out and has been seemingly dead on arrival – the game pulling in smaller comparable numbers than other WB Games titles a decade old.
Have they learned from this lesson? Speaking at a recent Morgan Stanley speaking event (via VGC), Perrette’s comments seem concerned with investor anxiety and says it’s a problem for the company when it can’t consistently deliver hits which is what the live-service model aims to fix:
“The challenge we’ve had is our business historically there has been AAA console-based. That’s a great business when you have a hit like Harry Potter. It makes the year look amazing. Then when you don’t have a release, or we also have disappointments… It just makes it very volatile.
Whilst Warners will release more mobile and multi-platform free-to-play games from its major franchises to bridge the gap between major releases, the plan is to bring live service elements to those major releases to – that includes a specific reference to its aforementioned single-player hit within the ‘Potter’ world:
“Rather than just launching a one-and-done console game, how do we develop a game around, for example, Hogwarts Legacy or Harry Potter, that is a live service where people can live and work and build and play in that world on an ongoing basis?”
Responses on social media to the comments have fallen along expected lines, but WBD is determined to stick to this path.
The post Next “Hogwarts Legacy” Going Live Service? appeared first on Dark Horizons.
