The head of Warner Bros. Discovery’s gaming division, J.B. Perrette, said at a Morgan Stanley conference that the company would be moving away from AAA development and focusing on live service, free-to-play, and mobile titles.
Originally reported by GameSpot, this would shift focus from WB’s recent mindset for games, which has revolved around AAA experiences. The main reason for this, Perrette said, was the volatile nature of AAA games, citing the underperformance of the recent Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League as a case of the studio putting a large amount of resources into a game to disappointing results.
“We’re doubling down on games as an area where we think there is a lot more growth opportunity that we can tap into with the IP that we have and some of the capabilities we have on the studio where we’re uniquely positioned as both a publisher and a developer of games,” Perrette said in a shining example of executive speech.
He said that the company wants to focus on bringing their core IPs to mobile and free-to-play experiences, while also continuing to create live service games that people will invest in over a long period of time. While they will not stop creating AAA single-player games entirely, those games will aim to keep players spending money on them for a long period of time.
“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.
Though Hogwarts Legacy, a game that delivered a complete experience with no live service elements, performed much better than Kill the Justice League and sold over 22 million units, Perrette said that this sort of success could not always be guaranteed.
He stressed the importance of the company’s brands, and said that they had a strategic investment plan that would pay off over the next few years. He also said that virtual reality and “virtual worlds” would become much more important in the future.