Look, no one claimed that executives, especially video game executives, were smart people. We recently have Ubisoft’s Yves Guillemot claiming that “Gamers need to get comfortable not owning games” as well as defending the high price tag of Skull & Bones by stating it was of AAAA quality, whatever that means. Not to be outdone, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO, J.B. Perrette made some pretty wild statements during a Morgan Stanley speaking event considering the context of the publisher’s recent history of okay-at-best to downright terrible games.
Perrette stated that he sees the video game sector as an area of WBD’s publishing that has potential for growth. He claims the numerous IP that the publisher has under its belt leaves it in a unique position for both the development and publishing of games. The CEO does admit that while there are success stories, like with Hogwarts Legacy which, depsite the controversy surrounding the IP and its creator, performed phenomenally well commercially and became the best-selling game of 2023, there are also abject failures like with the recent Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
Perrette’s plan to combat the volatility of the gaming sector is not to have a bigger focus on listening to the market and adjusting accordingly, but rather shifting some of its focus to appropriating some of its core IP to mobile and free-to-play games. Additionally, even though the publisher continually struggles to launch a successful live-service game, WBD is still committed to live-service games.
Whether this plan will work for the publisher remains to be seen, but there are future titles that are on WBD’s portfolio like a Harry Potter Quidditch game, which is a competitive multiplayer game, and a Wonder Woman game, which is being developed by Monlith Productions.
