Warner Bros Discovery has finally decided to bite the bullet and license out its massive list of IPs to other video game developers. This decision was likely made due to the awful launch of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. According to WB CEO David Zaslav, the company is looking into the prospect of licensing out IPs to non-Warner Bros studios to make more games.
Zaslav was speaking on the topic after the company’s financial results and mentioned why he thinks that Hogwarts Legacy by Portkey Games from 2023 did so well. And some good news, the Harry Potter-based game will be used as a template for future WB games.
According to Zaslav, Hogwarts Legacy did so well because players were able to enter the world that they had seen in movies and experienced in the original books. And that is where the industry is going because movies and TV shows are limited in that regard.
WB has 11 studios that are working on games, but the company also has tons of IPs, that other video game developers are interested in. The company has near-endless potential when it comes to possible games that could be made using the aforementioned IPs.
The only games from WB that have done well in recent memory are Hogwarts Legacy, and Mortal Kombat 1. While Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League was by far the biggest flop from the company. MultiVersus came out recently as well, and considering it’s a free-to-play title, its player base is continuing to grow.
The Batman Arkham series got its last game back in 2015 and has gotten a new VR Batman game called Arkham Shadows, but that’s about it. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League had Batman in it, but fans were disappointed with how that played out. Hopefully, this new change will mean more Warner Bros IPs will be licensed to veteran developers.
