Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 made millions for Games Workshop, and now it wants more hit videogames: "Clearly we are looking for the next one"

pcgamer.com:

Warhammer videogames have been pretty hit-and-miss over the years, to put it mildly—but Saber Interactive's Space Marine 2 was firmly on the 'hit' side of the fence last year, reaching a player count of 4.5 million a month after launch and drawing more interest to the world's most grimdark sci-fi setting than ever. Unsurprisingly, Games Workshop's quite happy with that result—and pretty keen to see it happen again.

The company's half-yearly report reveals an enormous rise in revenue from licensing in the 2023/2024 financial year—from £12.1 million to £30.1 million—with «the increase being mainly from Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2». Even with the core business (miniatures, rulebooks, etc) continuing to boom, that makes licensing over 10% of the money the company earned in that period, largely off the back of one big success. The report also suggests that the resulting excitement has led to «more people coming into our Warhammer stores».

Of course, you get a boost like that, and you're going to want more. «We recognise that successes like these for Warhammer are not a given in the world of video games,» the report concludes, but adds that «clearly we are looking for the next one». Elsewhere, it says «we own what we believe is some of the most underexploited intellectual property globally» and lays out a plan to expand Warhammer's reach going forward, with film and TV via its deal with Amazon, and a continued focus on videogames. «We intend to ensure Warhammer’s place as one of the top fantasy IPs globally,» it says, brimming with confidence.

How realistic is that confidence? I'm a little on the fence. I can certainly understand why Games Workshop would look at their rich, layered worlds, still enjoying a dedicated fanbase over 40 years since the series began, and think «surely these could be more popular?» I do think as well that there's a big audience out there of Warhammer fans who love the settings but don't want to collect the miniatures and play the games, and