Warner Bros might be a name you recognize more from movies and tv, but its gaming division has grown substantially over the years, and it’s become a much more significant part of the company.
This year alone it published the best selling game of 2023 in Hogwarts Legacy, and NetherRealm Studio’s recent Mortal Kombat 1 release has nearly hit 3 million copies sold in less than 2 months.
So it’s not all too surprising to see Warner Bros come to the inevitable evolution of wanting a live service game, as president and chief executive officer David Zaslav made it clear in the company’s third quarter earnings call on Wednesday.
“Our focus is on transforming our biggest franchises from largely console and PC based with three-four year release schedules to include more always on gameplay through live services, multiplatform and free-to-play extensions with the goal to have more players spending more time on more platforms.” said Zaslav.
He continued, “Ultimately we want to drive engagement and monetization of longer cycles and at higher levels. We have put specific capabilities. We are currently under scale and see significant opportunity to generate greater post purchase revenue.
Bottom line, we’ve come a long way in 19 months and have built a very solid foundation for growth. I’m energized by what we’ve done in such a short period of time and even more so than where we are headed as a company.”
While Zaslav might be “energized” about these live services efforts to come, whether they live or die will depend on if players are as ‘energized’ about yet another live service game or several all trying to take up all of a players time and money.
Source – [Warner Bros]