Warner Bros. plans to put many of its properties, which includes mega-franchises like Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Batman, Looney Tunes, and many more, on the market for game developers to license to increase its performance and revenue.
The new game plan from WB comes after Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League flopped. 2024 isn’t over yet and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has already been dubbed the year’s worst game. It performed so badly that the title’s underperformance resulted in a a $200 million revenue hit for Warner Bros. Ouch. To combat this, and the general underperformance and the revenue loss, Warner Bros. is considering putting its biggest franchises on the market to be licensed by other game developers, as reported by IGN.
What this means is, in the future, developers and publishers would be able to pick up the licenses for these franchises and create games in their universes. It’s unclear how much of a guiding hand Warner Bros. would have, but it would very likely be a collaborative effort à la Sony’s Spider-Man series or licensed sports games like NBA 2K.
This could be an incredible thing for Warner Bros. or a bad thing, depending on how well these games are developed and (of course) how much money they make.
When you look at the success of Hogwarts Legacy—which has sold over 22 million copies—or the long-running success of the Batman Arkham series, it’s clear there’s a huge market for these Warner Bros. franchises. I, for one, will probably try any and every Harry Potter game there is. And with how popular this franchise still is, there are many others out there like myself who would be willing to try more from this series.
Harry Potter aside, Warner Bros. has many other franchises that could do well. For example, Willy Wonka could be made into a farming sim like Disney Dreamlight Valley or The Lord of the Rings films could make an incredible ARPG like Diablo. It’s no secret Game of Thrones fans have dreamed of a Crusader Kings-style game for their universe too.
The bottom line is, the opportunities are endless—that is, so long as Warner Bros. green lights the plan and license out its more popular franchises, anyway.
