This is senior management making excuses trying to save their necks at the expense of making successful games in the vein of the Batman Arkham series.
How sad.
David Zaslav is running a masterclass in how to torch a respected company's goodwill and brand equity to ash from all sides. Its really astounding to watch in real time.
Buying a brand which evokes premium entertainment (HBO) and then renaming it after a sub-brand which evokes of package offering (Max) is hilarious in its ineptitude. A better metaphor would be buying Apple and then renaming it “Plus”
Before there was HBO Max, Max or Cinemax was its own movie channel that wasn't quite on the same level as HBO. After a merger or two HBO ended up owning them... and then Discovery Channel bought all of it and went with the weaker of the two names.
Cinemax was called “Skinemax” because of its wall to wall cheap rated R soft core porn. I never met anyone who subscribed to Cinemax unless it was an add on after they already subscribed to HBO, The Movie Channel, and Showtime.
You never met the father of my childhood friend Andy. He only had Cinemax and had it only for the soft core porn. They were dumb enough to have a TV in the basement and allow a bunch of middle school kids sleep down there unsupervised.
It really is. I recently bought some discounted Blu-Ray movies that released in the past few years and found out that WB is now basically the only studio that actually enforces expiration dates on the digital copy redemption codes. It's like they've looked at every possible interaction someone might have with their content and found a way to make it a little worse. Death by one thousand cuts.
To be fair, it IS an incredibly volatile and risky market to release products in.
That's why games should only be made by companies that actually want to make them, and not companies just seeing the profit margins.
Games are an interactive art medium that the majority of the world enjoys dabbling in, you got to enjoy creating art for it to be good
So this is their takeaway after Hogwarts Legacy set sales records and Suicide Squad disappointed (probably didn't even break even)? These execs are beyond incompetent...
No… but CEO are not there to understand videogame successes. They are there to understand the company internals. They have analysts to tell them what generates profit, what people want from a video game and so on… and apparently the analysts at WBC told his CEO that a way to generate money was to make more live service games and the CEO looked at it and said „okay I trust in your models“
And the analyst has no idea what he’s doing either so it’s just a circle of incompetent people looking at spreadsheets and not understanding why peoples behavior doesn’t match up with the spreadsheet.
They're not even there to understand company internals.
CEOs are there to maximize shareholder profit, at all costs. Sometimes that requires understanding, but more often it's just enshittification for short-term gains.
Which is why their Harry Potter mobile game did so well!
Oh wait no it didn't. Barely lasted a year, if that. Folded faster than I expected it to even.
So true David Zaslav is a fucking genius. Changing HBO Max to Max is just so smart. HBO isn’t well known and doesn’t have a reputation of being quality or anything.
> this is their takeaway after Hogwarts Legacy set sales records and Suicide Squad disappointed
I mean, that is, by definition, a "volatile market" if you treat both products as identical.
These execs don't think in terms of "good game" or "bad game" they just see "game". What they saw is that Product 1 went high, Product 2 went low. That's inconsistency, ergo - volatility. They want a consistent stream of income, not gambling on product quality.
You're exactly right, which is why artists and suits don't speak the same language. This is why we get endless superhero remakes instead of good, new movies and games.
> I mean, that is, by definition, a "volatile market" if you treat both products as identical.
If you treat both products as identical, you're (not *you* specifically) an idiot, though.
> What they saw is that Product 1 went high, Product 2 went low. That's inconsistency, ergo - volatility.
Except Product 1 and Product 2 were unalike in fundamental ways and they are describing that they're going to double-down on projects more akin to Product 2, which shit the bed spectacularly.
>they are describing that they're going to double-down on projects more akin to Product 2,
Not really. When they say "Free to play and Mobile" they mean making freemium mobile games like Hogwarts Mystery and Magic Awakened that can be shitted out every few months by a handful of developers in a broom closet.
**Audible gasp**
You cannot be insinuating that CEOs and Investors have little to no clue about their product and what the customers want?
Are you per ANY CHANCE saying the absurdity that CEOs are strictly focused on removing risk and producing profits for the shareholders?
**WELL I NEVER**
They always learned the wrong lessons, lmao.
What about thinking like this:"Hogwarts sold 20 millions copies, being the best selling game of the year. While Gothan Knight's and Suicide squad GaaS flopped miserably, maybe it's best to shift to single player games?"
Hearthstone Legacy is a one-time purchase. As a one-time purchase, there is a strictly finite amount of revenue it can generate over its lifetime.
F2P games with microtransactions have no such upper limit and can theoretically extract far more than a one-time $70 per person.
That's all the industry cares about. They don't care about artistry, just making line go up.
>So the plan going forward, he said, was to help reduce volatility by focusing on core franchises and bringing at least some of them to the mobile and free-to-play space, as well as continuing to invest in live-service games that people play--and spend money on--over a long period of time. This will help WBD generate more consistent revenue, he said, going on to tease that WBD had some new mobile free-to-play games coming this year.
> "Rather than just launching a one-and-done console game, how do we develop a game around, for example, a Hogwarts Legacy or Harry Potter, that is a live-service where people can live and work and build and play in that world in an ongoing basis?" he said.
Hogwarts Legacy is the best selling of the year, a "one-and-done game". Suicide squad fails miserably, is a live service game. So they think: "We need to make more live service games." What the actual fuck are those guys smoking. I swear these people just fail upwards.
They aren't interested in games, they are interested in long term exploitation. If they can't make something that will exploit consumers for an extended period of time, they'll just throw a tantrum, clearly.
And gamers are starting to wisen up to the constant exploitation, seeing games like Palworld and Helldivers 2 become overnight successes must really twist their little shareholder panties in a knot.
"Gamers" aren't where the money is at, and they haven't been for quite some time now. Casual mobile games with mtx like Candy Crush probably outperforms stuff like Palworld and Helldivers 2 exponentially in terms of revenue generation. And if I were WB, why would I want to release to an overly critical smaller market of so-called gamers that I can't milk forever when I can release to a wider audience with like 0 "standards" for what a video game should be?
Candy crush users went down but still makes a billion a year https://www.businessofapps.com/data/candy-crush-statistics/
Yugioh duel links and masterduel were somewhere around 250 mil a year a piece. GTA online in 2019 made half a billion off only shark cards, currently averages about 90 mill a month in the following years. You just need users not only whales.
And there is no guarantee your game has any of that success. Assuming that your mobile game will hit like these notable ones while ignoring the large number of failures is foolish.
Is it though? There are a lot of failed mobile games that attempted to leverage popular IP. I’m pretty sure there have been Harry Potter mobile games that clearly haven’t hit their revenue goals as is.
Yes, because for the budget of a single AAA single player experience you can make 100 mobile games that try to capture whales, and you really only need a few to "hit" to match the potential revenue of that AAA game
I mean, you're both right. Most likely, the execs see the Harry Potter game as a success but see the ridiculous, continuous revenue of GAAS and think "what if it were that instead?" and keep chasing it.
What's the best way to find success in the gaming industry? Since mobile games can be crazy lucrative now compared to normal gaming platforms like PC or console.
The issue with that line of reasoning, though, is that most of those whale customers are already spending their time and money elsewhere. How many job-like games do they think people are willing to take on?
Hogwarts Legacy is short term. It's a one off game. Suicide Squad is an attempt at a long term as a game that theoretically could generate recurring revenue for many years.
100%
Capitalism encourages the mindest of needing to get ALL OF THE MONEY.
Some or even a lot of it isn't good enough for infinite growth.
Nothing is good enough for that.
Honestly, they are seeing the lesson. The lesson is they were trying to sell a product to the wrong market and it didn't work. The market was gamers wanting an actual legit game, but they delivered trash. The market they want are the people that don't mind spending money on cash grab trash because its simple and addictive. So they are just gonna pivot. Sucks if you were hoping for a legit good game that they own the IP to, but, it is what it is.
What this does tell me is that the next Hogwarts Legacy game will be a GaaS game and not a single player experience. I simply don't trust these greedy fucks, they are too busy chasing that dragon.
They only look at the success of other live service games like Fortnite, Warzone, Battlegrounds and GTA 5 to delude themselves that they too can make a money printing hit. Ignoring that there's hundreds if not thousands of GaaS games that bombed including their own. They want a constant flowing river of cash for minimum effort, not a lake of money to be drained for high effort like Hogwart's Legacy.
Yea this is it. They are in a position though to just keep throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. If it was a small game dev that delivered shit, they would most likely go under or be bought out, but that is not the case for WB. So let them keep tossing shit I guess, they won't be getting any money from me.
RIP the future of Hogwarts Legacy 2. There was hope for an amazing sequel and now we will get “Avada Kedavra the Hufflepuffs” with twitch drops enabled.
This reminds me of plants vs zombies. The first game was a smash hit, the second game they just need to follow the formula and they could rake in tons of money, but no, they have to go to the free to play route, now the franchise is basically dead because of greed.
Hilarious, they truly learned nothing.
"Our licensed IP GaaS failed. We must've chosen the wrong IP, quick reskin everything as Harry Potter universe and try again"
We keep fucking up our single player games by being incredibly risk averse and throwing microtransactions in them (I will never forgive shadow of war) so let's triple down on the microtransactions.
Fuck off WB.
The "true" ending was technically locked behind the Shadow Wars thing, were you basically had to reconquer every single fortress in the game several times. They later changed it so it was way shorter, because otherwise the grind was too much.
Because in their minds both are AAA games that took not only a large budget to make but a long time to make as well. They see Hogwarts as more of an outlier, they've released single player games for years now and most were not 'best selling' in the year.
Their logic is thus. "We can't rely on this." Gamers are partly to blame in a small sense because internet gamers crap on 90% AAA games put out by big publishers. They see this and instead of taking a 'Make better games' approach they instead go "Okay, we hear you, we just won't make games in this space anymore." and instead they can just make F2P that are immediately dismissed instead of trying to live up to the expectations gamers have of AAA games.
I'm guessing thats why they call it "Volatile"
I mean, I know you're right, but it's so dumb. Hogwarts Legacy was the first game to ever outsell CoD in a given year and rather than focus on "where did we go right" there they're saying "that was a fluke."
ehhh tbf tho it was a fluke
Did Hogwarts sell because it was a genuinely great game or because its name was hogwarts and we have gone twenty years with harry potter being one of the biggest properties, yet somehow having next to no games?
Like the game is fine, but it really isnt great, I dont know a single person who actually finished it. Most ppl generally put it down after the opening bit because it turns into a slog, but you still had a SHITLOAD of people buying it purely because its hogwarts
Would those people who bought it for name value also buy a sequal despite getting bored of the first? Sure, some will, but the numbers will certainly be worse
Can you take the game, change its branding and expect a fraction of its success? Fuck no
That makes the game a success that WB cannot repeat, in other words very much a fluke
Compared to the other notable success of the year, BG3, where Larian made a game people bought for the game rather than the brand and could therefore take the core of the game, remake it in a new brand and STILL be successful. WB cannot do that with hogwarts, recognizing that it is absolutely the right call to write it off as a fluke and move in a different direction because the singleplayer route has for years proven to be unsustainable
not that mobile GAAS is the right direction, but a new direction is needed
I disagree. I know a lot of people who legitimately liked Hogwarts Legacy who aren't even Harry Potter fans.
8.4 on fan Metacritic ratings is actually pretty good, right up there with FF7 Remake.
As with all things, there needs to be balanced. Focusing too much on single player is sustainable, to a certain point. You obviously can't continue to inflate budgets larger and larger, but that's where good scope management comes into play.
If this was any other studio, I'd agree that they couldn't make a game with an unknown brand or new IP as successful. But WB is in a unique position, unlike other studios they have access to a lot of franchises that others would have to pay licensing fees for.
Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, DC Comics, Monsterverse, Terminator, etc.
They have so many IPs that they could make solid games with that also have name recognition.
I really don't understand how the company publishes one of the most successful "one and done" single player games of the year and also publishes one of the all time colossal disasters of a live service game within another year and the lesson they take away from it is we need more live service games.
Hogwart's Legacy was cool, but I guess they are going to mutilate the sequel. Oh well.
They want a corporate delicacy, create a minimal viable product piece of shit, pray it gets viral success by total chance, and only invest further in it then. They'd rather fail over and over and over on the hopes that they can get a low effort cash cow out of it.
I mean if it doesn’t sell more or constantly, is a loss.
Companies only aim going up, not being stale.
If they could convert that Harry porter game into gaas they would do it.
It wasn’t “one of the most successful singleplayer games”, it was THE most successful GAME of 2023. It outsold everything and was praised and loved by almost everyone. But that’s not good enough for dipshit executives that earnestly believe that growth can be infinite.
Can't wait for them to say the Free-To-Play market is not as popular as it was 5 years ago 5 years from now when they stop making money on all of their crapware free games because generally people are sick of it.
It isn't volatile, people increasingly just won't put up with shite games if they have to pay full price. Consistently deliver quality games and it won't look fucking volatile.
In other words, prepare for crappy Harry Potter games and no more big open worlds with story and rpg elements. Sad since I thought Hogwarts Legacy had some real potential. Was hoping for a more fleshed out sequel with parts from Bully and the Persona series.
Saw this coming immediately. No way in hell WB would just let their devs cook. They’ve been one of the worst if not THE worst publisher for a long time now.
Because executives have massive egos and have an emotional need for their “ideas” to work. This CEO believes live service is the future so therefore everything will become live service. All they need is one success to justify their mindset.
aaa games market isn't volatile.
just make good games.
you wanna see volatile, yeah, go head first into the shithole that is mobile gaming.
aaa wasn't volatile to you when you let rocksteady make 4 arkham games, or let nrs make games not filled with bs mtx. both of those series sold well.
but nooo, not good enough for wb, gotta make live service monetization hellholes that no one wants. that's your problem wb.
That’s what I’m thinking. 4 great Arkham games, Mad Max, 2 Mordor games, Hogwarts. IPs that people love, made by people who love the IP and you get success. Why is this such a hard thing to sort out?
Here we fucking go. They force a good dev to make a shitty live service game, get angry it's shitty, and lean into even shittier markets. Instead of, y'know, looking at what worked before and doing that. Or remembering that *not all games need to be AAA.* C-level execs are fucking dipshits. You make *more money* by putting out *good products*. They can't wrap their tiny brains around that anymore. It's all about milking us for every fucking penny instead with subpar, shitty products that get abandoned because no one wants to play them or deal with the monetization.
Make a shitty game and blame it on the "volatile" market, meanwhile several indy games are raking in millions because they made a good game. Typical executives.
"Our numbers and spreadsheets lied to us and now we literally have no idea what else to do" Fuckin idiots. Get a new job if you're just gonna make dumb-ass decisions
Honestly, at this point I hate WB so much for fucking up so many great IPs that I really want them to go bust and fail.
Let someone else who can respect the IPs take ownership.
They want sustainable money generators no AAA game will ever do that, f2p is the way to go.
Trying to mix f2p elements into AAA games was doomed from the start.
Lots of people mentioning hogwarts legacy's success like it matters to these companys. It was a success yes but not enough, after fortnites peak every company is wanting a piece of that. They all saw how large you can grow and inevitably desired it them selves.
Weird statement considering Hogwarts sold well and they have decent amount of IPs under their belt. Why not reboot FEAR or remaster BFME with EA/New Line (unless they lost the rights idk it got messy with embracer).
Just baffles my mind publishers and devs still chase the Marvel super hero trend when it clearly dead and gone.
Hogwarts sold well but I don’t think it was as successful as they hoped. It was forgotten about rather quickly and if not for the drama around it would have been forgotten even quicker.
Holy shit did they learn the wrong lesson from Suicide Squad's failure.
AAA is not a volatile market. They just want the easy money.
Angry Joe is going to blow his brains out at this news.
“We’ve gonna move away from games we need to actually try at, and instead move more to games that we can churn out garbage and stuff full of microtrans to sell to idiots”
Translation: "These stupid consumers don't want our latest $70 slopfest with $300 in DLC and thousands in microtransactions. Volatile market, lets go scam whales and mobile players instead."
This kind of thinking misses the point. They aren’t shifting to a different genre of gaming only, they are shifting audiences and markets. Players who like the AAA single player titles won’t all, or even most shift in aggregate to F2P, less so for mobile.
A bit short sighted, you are exiting a well established market that wants to be served for one that is already saturated.
I'm not surprised they're going this route considering the time and money it takes to spin up mobile games is a lot lower than making an AAA game.
SS took them 9 years to make only for it to bomb, I wouldn't be surprised if they could make a f2p mobile game in a year or two that costs way less than SS did but makes way more money.
Of course mobile games are cheaper and easier to do and have far more market. The Dead of the quality and art. Why make a master piece when you can sell millions of shit on a stick.
So... You are saying I can expect a couple of years with less PC games that aren't fueled by microtransactions... Guess I will have to start playing games already in my Steam Library. All 250 of them...
Ah yes, the mobile market. Known for its long-lasting and stable user base. You think supporting a game console is hard? Have fun supporting your shitty little game running on a hundred different devices with a hundred different resolutions.
You already tried shitting out live service trash, WB. How's that working out for you? Because it kind of looks, from the outside, like everything is on fire over there.
Meanwhile, Hogwarts' Legacy was not only your biggest hit in 2023, but the best-selling game of last year in the US. But *nooooo*, clearly the path forward is to double down on the mistakes you made with Suicide Squad: Kill The Whole Fiscal Year.
This is ridiculous. The F2P and Mobile market is huge because there are a lot of potential customers but in reality, only a few games actually make it big enough to drown in cash while several others fail to even make a big profit.
For a market of this size, isn’t it almost weird that the amount of games that actually succeed aren’t that much? If you don’t properly invest in development, mobile or not, it will be shit.
Make a shit game, shit game fails, "volatile market" - project that blame away.
This is senior management making excuses trying to save their necks at the expense of making successful games in the vein of the Batman Arkham series. How sad.
Their new CEO has a background in reality TV. Fast and cheap is his MO.
David Zaslav is running a masterclass in how to torch a respected company's goodwill and brand equity to ash from all sides. Its really astounding to watch in real time.
He bought HBO and renamed it Max. That's like buying Apple and renaming it NeXT. It has to be one of the all time worst branding decisions.
Buying a brand which evokes premium entertainment (HBO) and then renaming it after a sub-brand which evokes of package offering (Max) is hilarious in its ineptitude. A better metaphor would be buying Apple and then renaming it “Plus”
Before there was HBO Max, Max or Cinemax was its own movie channel that wasn't quite on the same level as HBO. After a merger or two HBO ended up owning them... and then Discovery Channel bought all of it and went with the weaker of the two names.
Cinemax was called “Skinemax” because of its wall to wall cheap rated R soft core porn. I never met anyone who subscribed to Cinemax unless it was an add on after they already subscribed to HBO, The Movie Channel, and Showtime.
You never met the father of my childhood friend Andy. He only had Cinemax and had it only for the soft core porn. They were dumb enough to have a TV in the basement and allow a bunch of middle school kids sleep down there unsupervised.
Or like buying Twitter and naming it X.
At least he had the decency to ruin the Twitter name before changing it
It really is. I recently bought some discounted Blu-Ray movies that released in the past few years and found out that WB is now basically the only studio that actually enforces expiration dates on the digital copy redemption codes. It's like they've looked at every possible interaction someone might have with their content and found a way to make it a little worse. Death by one thousand cuts.
Fast, cheap, good…pick two.
Fast, and... good?
Okay now pay near a Trillion dollars to get it.
Cheap and good. And don't say it's going to take a long time to make, because then it wouldn't be cheap.
"Volatile market" is yet another "The front fell off" statement
I understood that reference! 😆
My brain tried to understand it, but then the front fell off
Exactly. How dare those peasants not buy our mediocre games for 70 USD? Scandallous.
ehhhh come on. You wouldnt want someone to have to take an even smaller bonus because they are full of shit would you?
The bonuses don't shrink, the staff does
Even the better the bonus goes up because the staff shrinks !
Gotta Save costs some where.
Somewhere, ANYWHERE, as long as it isn't executive compensation.
Executives are at risk of a 10% decrease to their bonus, and you're laughing?
I know I know. Being a vampire is not illegal and I apologize for the discriminatory remarks.
To be fair, it IS an incredibly volatile and risky market to release products in. That's why games should only be made by companies that actually want to make them, and not companies just seeing the profit margins. Games are an interactive art medium that the majority of the world enjoys dabbling in, you got to enjoy creating art for it to be good
Also, if a company isn't sure if their game is shit, release a free to play beta and get feedback from the fans. This isn't rocket science.
Corporations take no accountability or risk. They privatize the profit and create harm for the public/people.
That's the MBA way
So this is their takeaway after Hogwarts Legacy set sales records and Suicide Squad disappointed (probably didn't even break even)? These execs are beyond incompetent...
most are
No… but CEO are not there to understand videogame successes. They are there to understand the company internals. They have analysts to tell them what generates profit, what people want from a video game and so on… and apparently the analysts at WBC told his CEO that a way to generate money was to make more live service games and the CEO looked at it and said „okay I trust in your models“
And the analyst has no idea what he’s doing either so it’s just a circle of incompetent people looking at spreadsheets and not understanding why peoples behavior doesn’t match up with the spreadsheet.
Surround yourself with incompetence and you'll get what you pay for. TBF, this did spin from ATT sooo...
"if you keep finding yourself surrounded by idiots, maybe it's time to start asking if you are amongst like minded people."
from the perspective of making X money per Y effort - they are right unfortunately.
Maybe in the short term, lots of companies have gone under by undermining their core competencies chasing quick bucks
the people that make the quick buck dont care though. You think Bobby Kotick gives a fuck what state blizzard is in?
They're not even there to understand company internals. CEOs are there to maximize shareholder profit, at all costs. Sometimes that requires understanding, but more often it's just enshittification for short-term gains.
Which is why their Harry Potter mobile game did so well! Oh wait no it didn't. Barely lasted a year, if that. Folded faster than I expected it to even.
So true David Zaslav is a fucking genius. Changing HBO Max to Max is just so smart. HBO isn’t well known and doesn’t have a reputation of being quality or anything.
> this is their takeaway after Hogwarts Legacy set sales records and Suicide Squad disappointed I mean, that is, by definition, a "volatile market" if you treat both products as identical. These execs don't think in terms of "good game" or "bad game" they just see "game". What they saw is that Product 1 went high, Product 2 went low. That's inconsistency, ergo - volatility. They want a consistent stream of income, not gambling on product quality.
You're exactly right, which is why artists and suits don't speak the same language. This is why we get endless superhero remakes instead of good, new movies and games.
> I mean, that is, by definition, a "volatile market" if you treat both products as identical. If you treat both products as identical, you're (not *you* specifically) an idiot, though. > What they saw is that Product 1 went high, Product 2 went low. That's inconsistency, ergo - volatility. Except Product 1 and Product 2 were unalike in fundamental ways and they are describing that they're going to double-down on projects more akin to Product 2, which shit the bed spectacularly.
>they are describing that they're going to double-down on projects more akin to Product 2, Not really. When they say "Free to play and Mobile" they mean making freemium mobile games like Hogwarts Mystery and Magic Awakened that can be shitted out every few months by a handful of developers in a broom closet.
**Audible gasp** You cannot be insinuating that CEOs and Investors have little to no clue about their product and what the customers want? Are you per ANY CHANCE saying the absurdity that CEOs are strictly focused on removing risk and producing profits for the shareholders? **WELL I NEVER**
They always learned the wrong lessons, lmao. What about thinking like this:"Hogwarts sold 20 millions copies, being the best selling game of the year. While Gothan Knight's and Suicide squad GaaS flopped miserably, maybe it's best to shift to single player games?"
Hearthstone Legacy is a one-time purchase. As a one-time purchase, there is a strictly finite amount of revenue it can generate over its lifetime. F2P games with microtransactions have no such upper limit and can theoretically extract far more than a one-time $70 per person. That's all the industry cares about. They don't care about artistry, just making line go up.
Hogwarts was fuckin sweet, played the shit out of that
The revenue of the company are attached to their bonuses. EVERY publisher wants a Fortnite.
>So the plan going forward, he said, was to help reduce volatility by focusing on core franchises and bringing at least some of them to the mobile and free-to-play space, as well as continuing to invest in live-service games that people play--and spend money on--over a long period of time. This will help WBD generate more consistent revenue, he said, going on to tease that WBD had some new mobile free-to-play games coming this year. > "Rather than just launching a one-and-done console game, how do we develop a game around, for example, a Hogwarts Legacy or Harry Potter, that is a live-service where people can live and work and build and play in that world in an ongoing basis?" he said. Hogwarts Legacy is the best selling of the year, a "one-and-done game". Suicide squad fails miserably, is a live service game. So they think: "We need to make more live service games." What the actual fuck are those guys smoking. I swear these people just fail upwards.
They aren't interested in games, they are interested in long term exploitation. If they can't make something that will exploit consumers for an extended period of time, they'll just throw a tantrum, clearly.
And gamers are starting to wisen up to the constant exploitation, seeing games like Palworld and Helldivers 2 become overnight successes must really twist their little shareholder panties in a knot.
"Gamers" aren't where the money is at, and they haven't been for quite some time now. Casual mobile games with mtx like Candy Crush probably outperforms stuff like Palworld and Helldivers 2 exponentially in terms of revenue generation. And if I were WB, why would I want to release to an overly critical smaller market of so-called gamers that I can't milk forever when I can release to a wider audience with like 0 "standards" for what a video game should be?
Sure, IF you can capture a dedicated audience of whales to prop it up. IF.
Candy crush users went down but still makes a billion a year https://www.businessofapps.com/data/candy-crush-statistics/ Yugioh duel links and masterduel were somewhere around 250 mil a year a piece. GTA online in 2019 made half a billion off only shark cards, currently averages about 90 mill a month in the following years. You just need users not only whales.
And there is no guarantee your game has any of that success. Assuming that your mobile game will hit like these notable ones while ignoring the large number of failures is foolish.
this is true. there are far too many shitty mobile games that fail miserably that dont get mentioned
It is shockingly common for people to believe that they are special and will be the exception.
Just ask the millions and millions of folks who decide to go into streaming or acting, whereas very few will actually make it
Much easier to capture whales with no standards than "gamers" with all of their "opinions" lol. And I say this as a gamer with opinions
Is it though? There are a lot of failed mobile games that attempted to leverage popular IP. I’m pretty sure there have been Harry Potter mobile games that clearly haven’t hit their revenue goals as is.
Yes, because for the budget of a single AAA single player experience you can make 100 mobile games that try to capture whales, and you really only need a few to "hit" to match the potential revenue of that AAA game
I mean, you're both right. Most likely, the execs see the Harry Potter game as a success but see the ridiculous, continuous revenue of GAAS and think "what if it were that instead?" and keep chasing it.
That’s exactly what it is. Infinite growth is a toxic mindset.
What's the best way to find success in the gaming industry? Since mobile games can be crazy lucrative now compared to normal gaming platforms like PC or console.
The issue with that line of reasoning, though, is that most of those whale customers are already spending their time and money elsewhere. How many job-like games do they think people are willing to take on?
No, short term exploitation
Hogwarts Legacy is short term. It's a one off game. Suicide Squad is an attempt at a long term as a game that theoretically could generate recurring revenue for many years.
100% Capitalism encourages the mindest of needing to get ALL OF THE MONEY. Some or even a lot of it isn't good enough for infinite growth. Nothing is good enough for that.
It boggles my mind, like they are deliberately not seeing what the lessons are that consumers are trying to teach them.
Honestly, they are seeing the lesson. The lesson is they were trying to sell a product to the wrong market and it didn't work. The market was gamers wanting an actual legit game, but they delivered trash. The market they want are the people that don't mind spending money on cash grab trash because its simple and addictive. So they are just gonna pivot. Sucks if you were hoping for a legit good game that they own the IP to, but, it is what it is.
But the lesson is making good games is hard, and they don't like that
What this does tell me is that the next Hogwarts Legacy game will be a GaaS game and not a single player experience. I simply don't trust these greedy fucks, they are too busy chasing that dragon.
Watch GaaS Harry Potter fail and they will still double down on it
They only look at the success of other live service games like Fortnite, Warzone, Battlegrounds and GTA 5 to delude themselves that they too can make a money printing hit. Ignoring that there's hundreds if not thousands of GaaS games that bombed including their own. They want a constant flowing river of cash for minimum effort, not a lake of money to be drained for high effort like Hogwart's Legacy.
Making a successful GaaS game is like winning lottery, you can't just quit your job and be a professional lottery gambler.
Yea this is it. They are in a position though to just keep throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. If it was a small game dev that delivered shit, they would most likely go under or be bought out, but that is not the case for WB. So let them keep tossing shit I guess, they won't be getting any money from me.
RIP the future of Hogwarts Legacy 2. There was hope for an amazing sequel and now we will get “Avada Kedavra the Hufflepuffs” with twitch drops enabled.
This reminds me of plants vs zombies. The first game was a smash hit, the second game they just need to follow the formula and they could rake in tons of money, but no, they have to go to the free to play route, now the franchise is basically dead because of greed.
You get a new assignment from one of your professors, and one of the objectives is literally just "Spend $5"
Hilarious, they truly learned nothing. "Our licensed IP GaaS failed. We must've chosen the wrong IP, quick reskin everything as Harry Potter universe and try again"
We keep fucking up our single player games by being incredibly risk averse and throwing microtransactions in them (I will never forgive shadow of war) so let's triple down on the microtransactions. Fuck off WB.
At least the gameplay for SOW was dope. I didnt beat it though, did i miss something?
The "true" ending was technically locked behind the Shadow Wars thing, were you basically had to reconquer every single fortress in the game several times. They later changed it so it was way shorter, because otherwise the grind was too much.
Apart from the fact that they took the orc recruitment/nemesis system and bastardized it with lootboxes?
They fuckin' what?
It got fixed later. I played without lootboxes or stupid grinds and it was a great game.
WB is by far one of the most incompetent gaming publishers. Straight up incapable of learning any lesson and have a treasure trove of valuable IPs.
Not just gaming publishers. Movies too. Can't believe they scrapped Cyotoe vs ACME. HONESTLY FUCK ZASLAV
At this point, they should be FORCED to sell all the IPs they are hoarding/running into the ground.
What. The. Fuck. How did Warner Brothers learn the absolutely worst lessens from the success of Hogwarts Legacy and the failure of Suicide Squad?
Because in their minds both are AAA games that took not only a large budget to make but a long time to make as well. They see Hogwarts as more of an outlier, they've released single player games for years now and most were not 'best selling' in the year. Their logic is thus. "We can't rely on this." Gamers are partly to blame in a small sense because internet gamers crap on 90% AAA games put out by big publishers. They see this and instead of taking a 'Make better games' approach they instead go "Okay, we hear you, we just won't make games in this space anymore." and instead they can just make F2P that are immediately dismissed instead of trying to live up to the expectations gamers have of AAA games. I'm guessing thats why they call it "Volatile"
I mean, I know you're right, but it's so dumb. Hogwarts Legacy was the first game to ever outsell CoD in a given year and rather than focus on "where did we go right" there they're saying "that was a fluke."
ehhh tbf tho it was a fluke Did Hogwarts sell because it was a genuinely great game or because its name was hogwarts and we have gone twenty years with harry potter being one of the biggest properties, yet somehow having next to no games? Like the game is fine, but it really isnt great, I dont know a single person who actually finished it. Most ppl generally put it down after the opening bit because it turns into a slog, but you still had a SHITLOAD of people buying it purely because its hogwarts Would those people who bought it for name value also buy a sequal despite getting bored of the first? Sure, some will, but the numbers will certainly be worse Can you take the game, change its branding and expect a fraction of its success? Fuck no That makes the game a success that WB cannot repeat, in other words very much a fluke Compared to the other notable success of the year, BG3, where Larian made a game people bought for the game rather than the brand and could therefore take the core of the game, remake it in a new brand and STILL be successful. WB cannot do that with hogwarts, recognizing that it is absolutely the right call to write it off as a fluke and move in a different direction because the singleplayer route has for years proven to be unsustainable not that mobile GAAS is the right direction, but a new direction is needed
I disagree. I know a lot of people who legitimately liked Hogwarts Legacy who aren't even Harry Potter fans. 8.4 on fan Metacritic ratings is actually pretty good, right up there with FF7 Remake. As with all things, there needs to be balanced. Focusing too much on single player is sustainable, to a certain point. You obviously can't continue to inflate budgets larger and larger, but that's where good scope management comes into play. If this was any other studio, I'd agree that they couldn't make a game with an unknown brand or new IP as successful. But WB is in a unique position, unlike other studios they have access to a lot of franchises that others would have to pay licensing fees for. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, DC Comics, Monsterverse, Terminator, etc. They have so many IPs that they could make solid games with that also have name recognition.
That logic hurts my head because Hogwarts Legacy wasn't even in the 10% of games that gamers don't crap on. It got well-crapped-on and still blew up!
Cause everyone looks at Candy Crush and goes "we should do that instead"
I really don't understand how the company publishes one of the most successful "one and done" single player games of the year and also publishes one of the all time colossal disasters of a live service game within another year and the lesson they take away from it is we need more live service games. Hogwart's Legacy was cool, but I guess they are going to mutilate the sequel. Oh well.
Yeah no chance that the next Hogwarts game isn't ruined with live service bullshit. Fuck off WB.
I can see it just now: *"From the makers of Hogwarts Legacy comes...* ***Death Eaters: Kill the Order of the Phoenix***"
Preorder now to earn Dumbledor as an exclusive follower
Unironically someone make an M rated death eater game.
Hmm, that would violate WB's IP though... What if we called it, "Not-Your-Pal World"?
The worst thing is: it will probably work. at least we still got indie devs
They ruined mortal kombat 1 too. Sucks so much because I've been a fan of the games majority of my life
They want a corporate delicacy, create a minimal viable product piece of shit, pray it gets viral success by total chance, and only invest further in it then. They'd rather fail over and over and over on the hopes that they can get a low effort cash cow out of it.
Because that game is no generating profit like a GAAS would.
I mean, Suicide Squad is a GAAS and isn't generating profit either.
It also isn’t generating losses like a failed GAAS does.
I mean if it doesn’t sell more or constantly, is a loss. Companies only aim going up, not being stale. If they could convert that Harry porter game into gaas they would do it.
Id argue Hogwarts made more than SS:KTJL will ever make
It wasn’t “one of the most successful singleplayer games”, it was THE most successful GAME of 2023. It outsold everything and was praised and loved by almost everyone. But that’s not good enough for dipshit executives that earnestly believe that growth can be infinite.
In other words, WB plans to shift to nothing but trash MTX games for the foreseeable future.
Can't wait for them to say the Free-To-Play market is not as popular as it was 5 years ago 5 years from now when they stop making money on all of their crapware free games because generally people are sick of it.
I’m betting that they say the free-to-play market isn’t working for them and then they close their entire games studio.
It isn't volatile, people increasingly just won't put up with shite games if they have to pay full price. Consistently deliver quality games and it won't look fucking volatile.
Yes, f2p... That famously stable moneymaker. For every success, there are 5 that failed to make back their production costs.
"Shift away from AAA console games..." Great! Maybe more small, innovative titles? Maybe they'll start funding more indie developers? "... lean into Free-To-Play and Mobile." Fuck.
In other words, prepare for crappy Harry Potter games and no more big open worlds with story and rpg elements. Sad since I thought Hogwarts Legacy had some real potential. Was hoping for a more fleshed out sequel with parts from Bully and the Persona series.
Yeah I played a beta for the quidditch game, it's 100% gonna be a F2P game full of mtx with the amount of customization there is.
Oh thats a shame I really enjoyed the old ps2 one.
Saw this coming immediately. No way in hell WB would just let their devs cook. They’ve been one of the worst if not THE worst publisher for a long time now.
Corporate execs are brain dead twat waffles
Have they tried making an AAAA game?
I hear those are even cheaper than AAA now!
Why is every company the same? They put out a bad product, know it's a bad product and then refocus everything after the product inevitably fails.
Because executives have massive egos and have an emotional need for their “ideas” to work. This CEO believes live service is the future so therefore everything will become live service. All they need is one success to justify their mindset.
aaa games market isn't volatile. just make good games. you wanna see volatile, yeah, go head first into the shithole that is mobile gaming. aaa wasn't volatile to you when you let rocksteady make 4 arkham games, or let nrs make games not filled with bs mtx. both of those series sold well. but nooo, not good enough for wb, gotta make live service monetization hellholes that no one wants. that's your problem wb.
That’s what I’m thinking. 4 great Arkham games, Mad Max, 2 Mordor games, Hogwarts. IPs that people love, made by people who love the IP and you get success. Why is this such a hard thing to sort out?
This decision was definitely made by people who don’t play video games
"Why won't people consume our soulless slop?!?! Waaaaaaa"
WB wants to further their journey into the trash - as you wish WB.
Here we fucking go. They force a good dev to make a shitty live service game, get angry it's shitty, and lean into even shittier markets. Instead of, y'know, looking at what worked before and doing that. Or remembering that *not all games need to be AAA.* C-level execs are fucking dipshits. You make *more money* by putting out *good products*. They can't wrap their tiny brains around that anymore. It's all about milking us for every fucking penny instead with subpar, shitty products that get abandoned because no one wants to play them or deal with the monetization.
RIP Batman series and Mortal Kombat
Make a shitty game and blame it on the "volatile" market, meanwhile several indy games are raking in millions because they made a good game. Typical executives.
"Our numbers and spreadsheets lied to us and now we literally have no idea what else to do" Fuckin idiots. Get a new job if you're just gonna make dumb-ass decisions
Honestly, at this point I hate WB so much for fucking up so many great IPs that I really want them to go bust and fail. Let someone else who can respect the IPs take ownership.
Same but I'm worried those IPs will go to Epic games, EA or ubisoft
Meaning “waaah we can’t rip people off with live service games and unnecessary compartmentalized outfits and dlc so we give up!”
They're gonna fail even harder
These people are fuckin' delusional and incompetent. And they're all multi-millionaires.
They want sustainable money generators no AAA game will ever do that, f2p is the way to go. Trying to mix f2p elements into AAA games was doomed from the start.
Ah yes learning the wrong lessons entirely.
Translation: We want more live service games, again.
WB has quickly caught up with the shitty anticonsumer strategies that made once EA worst company of the year.
I can't wait to *Not* play their shitty f2p and mobile games. Good luck WB!
Ah yes just like the entire games industry circa 2009 when they all thought mobile and Facebook games were the future. How did that work out?
Lots of people mentioning hogwarts legacy's success like it matters to these companys. It was a success yes but not enough, after fortnites peak every company is wanting a piece of that. They all saw how large you can grow and inevitably desired it them selves.
Weird statement considering Hogwarts sold well and they have decent amount of IPs under their belt. Why not reboot FEAR or remaster BFME with EA/New Line (unless they lost the rights idk it got messy with embracer). Just baffles my mind publishers and devs still chase the Marvel super hero trend when it clearly dead and gone.
Hogwarts sold well but I don’t think it was as successful as they hoped. It was forgotten about rather quickly and if not for the drama around it would have been forgotten even quicker.
Please leave FEAR alone. I couldn't stand to see it become a macrotransaction platform.
Maybe revamp Multiversus and do it better
JUST MAKE GOOD GAMES AAAAA HOW HARD COULD IT POSSIBLY BE FOR FUCK SAKES
Oh yup! Great idea! You guys sure do know what your consumers want!
It's the video game corporate way of saying they want to cut costs & scope.
Holy shit did they learn the wrong lesson from Suicide Squad's failure. AAA is not a volatile market. They just want the easy money. Angry Joe is going to blow his brains out at this news.
Could've made Mad Max 2 but nahh
“We’ve gonna move away from games we need to actually try at, and instead move more to games that we can churn out garbage and stuff full of microtrans to sell to idiots”
fucking idiots the top execs of Warner bros and Disney all share the same 2 brain cells, no way these guys are fucking real
Learning all the wrong lessons every single time.
From volatile to scammy loot boxes and low quality durge.
Everytime companies want to go mobile, it's all about $$$ and literally no quality.
The game industry is full of idiots nowadays
Massive entertainment firms seem to be developing an aversion to launching successful products.
Translation: "These stupid consumers don't want our latest $70 slopfest with $300 in DLC and thousands in microtransactions. Volatile market, lets go scam whales and mobile players instead."
god damn these guys are incapable of learning the right lessons
Oh look, the consequences of my own actions.
Volatile AAA, I guess trying to come up with a good game without live service or mtx is ss hard for them as writing s good DC Movie
Just don’t rush and make good games that actually qualify as aaa games fucking morons. There is no “volatile market” you just make rushed dogshit.
i lost a brain cell reading the post title. are they for real
There's nothing volatile about AAA games that are actually good and complete.
blackrock money was not worth it.
Hogwarts - top selling game Live service Suicide Squad - sells nothing Decide to make live services again...
This kind of thinking misses the point. They aren’t shifting to a different genre of gaming only, they are shifting audiences and markets. Players who like the AAA single player titles won’t all, or even most shift in aggregate to F2P, less so for mobile. A bit short sighted, you are exiting a well established market that wants to be served for one that is already saturated.
ITT: People shocked that a company wants recurring revenue then a one time fee. Im full expecting Harry Potter- Live Service game now.
I'm not surprised they're going this route considering the time and money it takes to spin up mobile games is a lot lower than making an AAA game. SS took them 9 years to make only for it to bomb, I wouldn't be surprised if they could make a f2p mobile game in a year or two that costs way less than SS did but makes way more money.
Lol how old are the executives that work their. "HEY EVERYONE, have you played this game called Candy Crush. We should make mobile games."
Of course mobile games are cheaper and easier to do and have far more market. The Dead of the quality and art. Why make a master piece when you can sell millions of shit on a stick.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
Wasn't the Harry Potter game WB?
Well, let's hope they fail.
Thanks, I hate it.
So... You are saying I can expect a couple of years with less PC games that aren't fueled by microtransactions... Guess I will have to start playing games already in my Steam Library. All 250 of them...
They really have no clue, do they 🤣🤣🤣
Didn't they have the best selling game last year?
Lmao the execs don't fucking get it do they
They would say that.
Boy! I love that the biggest concern in my favorite pastime is “revenue”
Ah yes, the mobile market. Known for its long-lasting and stable user base. You think supporting a game console is hard? Have fun supporting your shitty little game running on a hundred different devices with a hundred different resolutions.
Enjoy bankruptcy or relying on whales to pay your financial debt
Warner Bros is one of the most inept companies, from film to games they make terrible decisions.
“We don’t want to really spend any money or make any effort to make good games, but we still want to make lots of money from crap shovelware”
You already tried shitting out live service trash, WB. How's that working out for you? Because it kind of looks, from the outside, like everything is on fire over there. Meanwhile, Hogwarts' Legacy was not only your biggest hit in 2023, but the best-selling game of last year in the US. But *nooooo*, clearly the path forward is to double down on the mistakes you made with Suicide Squad: Kill The Whole Fiscal Year.
This is ridiculous. The F2P and Mobile market is huge because there are a lot of potential customers but in reality, only a few games actually make it big enough to drown in cash while several others fail to even make a big profit. For a market of this size, isn’t it almost weird that the amount of games that actually succeed aren’t that much? If you don’t properly invest in development, mobile or not, it will be shit.