While Suicide Squad was quite a flop, Hogwarts Legacy sold incredibly well. Nevertheless, Warner Bros. wants to focus on service games
Mobile, Free2Play and service games are the future, the head of Warner Bros. Gaming is convinced, as he revealed during an event
In his article, however, J.B. Perrette cites two games of all things that seem to prove the opposite, namely Hogwarts Legacy and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
Does that even make sense?
The Harry Potter game doesn’t fit any of these trends: However, as a pure single-player role-playing game with an open world, it was able to set several impressive records last year. For example, it is one of the titles with the most active Steam users worldwide, was one of the best-selling games of 2023 and generated an estimated 2 billion US dollars in revenue for Warner.
Suicide Squad, on the other hand, is considered a flop: At its launch, there were just 13,000 active players on Steam at its peak, now there are only a few hundred. The shooter also had to contend with poor ratings. Warner Bros. itself admitted that the game had not lived up to expectations.
While Perrette acknowledges the success of Hogwarts Legacy and the failure of Suicide Squad, he draws a conclusion that will probably come as a surprise to many: Warner doesn’t want to move away from service games like Suicide Squad now, for example, and focus on single-player experiences.
Instead, the company believes that the market is far too volatile to rely on big productions like these two games. The focus should be much more on mobile, free2play and service games
Instead of releasing a big console game, how do we develop a game about, say, Hogwarts Legacy, or Harry Potter, that is a live service where people can live, work, build and play in that world permanently?
Service games would help Warner Bros. generate reliable revenue as fans play them over the years and spend money on them.
The decision has raised eyebrows across the industry. Insider Tom Henderson describes the decision as an “interesting maneuver” and points to the success of Hogwarts Legacy:
After releasing Hogwarts Legacy which did 22 million units in 1 year and releasing Suicide Squad which failed to meet company expectations, this is sure a move. https://t.co/SQQZ3qMR3b
– Tom Henderson (@_Tom_Henderson_) March 5, 2024
Industry analyst Mat Piscatella describes the conclusion as a “problem” and points out that it is an enormous challenge to compete with new service games against firmly established giants such as Fortnite, GTA, Minecraft or Roblox:
When a company points out that they believe making the best-selling premium game of the year did not provide enough return to not pivot the franchise that game was based on to f2p/live service… well that’s a problem.
– Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) March 5, 2024
Although service games and especially the microtransactions and battle passes often associated with them are very unpopular with many players, they continue to be extremely successful.
Warner’s reasoning makes this more credible, of course. You can read more about why this gaming trend will probably be with us for some time to come in our reports on the topic linked above
What do you think of Warner Bros’ controversial decision and do you think the change in strategy is understandable after the global success of Hogwarts Legacy? Let us know your thoughts and opinions in the comments below
