Warner Bros. Intends to Leverage Its IPs and Make More Games, License Franchises to Outside Studios
Warner Bros. Discovery intends to leverage its intellectual properties and publish more video games based on its biggest franchises, the company said at its second-quarter earnings call on Wednesday. In addition to developing games in-house, Warner Bros. is also looking to license its IPs out to other studios. Warner Bros.' Hogwarts Legacy, based on the Wizarding World IP owned by the company, was the best-selling game of 2023, but few WB properties have been utilised to their fullest potential in the games medium.
During the Q&A section of Warner Bros. Discovery Q2 2024 earnings call (as first reported by IGN), CEO David Zaslav said there was “a lot of interest” among outside parties to turn Warner Bros. IPs into video games. “We have 11 studios here, and we have a lot of IP,” Zaslav said during the call. “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,” he added.
JB Perette, CEO and president of global streaming and games, also said that Warner Bros. franchises were in “high demand” and could help launch new games. The executive also identified the free-to-play segment in gaming as a focus area for the company that has seen mixed results with its triple-A first-party titles.
Last year, Hogwarts Legacy, based on the popular Harry Potter franchise, sold over 22 million copies, becoming the biggest game of 2023. In 2024, however, Warner Bros. Games released Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which turned out to be a critical and commercial failure, leading to a 41 percent drop in Warner Bros.' gaming revenue in the second quarter of 2024.
“You still need a great game, and the reality is... 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,” Perette said during the earnings call.
Zaslav and Perette were responding to a question on the “uneven performance” of
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