Warner Bros. Shares New Insight To License Its IPs To Other Developers/Publishers

Recently, chatter surrounding Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment has focused on branded headlines for the publisher – the firm could be selling off its talent to other companies. In the past, we witnessed this with former parent company AT&T, however, the firm decided against the idea at the time. But with new owner Discovery, that concept has returned to the table, The Financial Times reports.

So far, the apparent direction from Warner Bros. Discovery on its intent with gaming is live-service. Previously, it was reported that free-to-play endeavors were the core focus moving forward according to CEO David Zaslav. Additionally, this would shape so much so that it would even overshadow the currently successful business model that AAA releases are offering with its 2023 release Hogwarts Legacy.

According to executives at Warner Bros. Discovery, licensing IPs appear to be one concept it is possibly entertaining for the future. Already, we saw this with Disney for Lucasfilms projects across multiple platforms & publishers. During its earnings call this week, Warner Bros. Discovery elaborates further on this sentiment, thanks IGN for transcribing.

One of the strategic advantages of owning all our IP is, as the world has changed, it used to be you launch a movie or you launch a TV series, then you do a game. But one of the reasons that Hogwarts Legacy was so successful and the #1 game last year, you went to Hogwarts Legacy and you entered the game and you were able to become part of that world. That ultimately I think is a big piece of where this industry is going.

That we’ll create a movie, whether it’s Batman or Superman or Harry Potter, and maybe there’ll be a TV show, but the ability to go in that world and have that experience of spending time with all the characters is something that we still own. We have 11 studios here, and we have a lot of IP.

And there’s also a lot of interest among others in coming to take advantage of some of that IP for gaming, which we’re looking at. Because as JB said, we need to get bigger, and the IP that we own and the value that it has in the gaming space is something we’re looking to take advantage of.

David Zaslav, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO

“We look at the evolution of the storytelling in interactive entertainment as a space and say it’s one of the unique areas in media that is growing, both growing in terms of time spent, growing in terms of engagement, and growing in terms of revenue. And so we still see this as a huge opportunity for us. We know that our franchises, particularly in a world where the gaming industry-launching brand new franchises is getting harder and harder for a number of reasons, including IDFA deprecation and more challenges with marketing and customer acquisition. 

“And that franchises like the ones that we have are in high demand, and can help in launching games. You still need a great game, and the reality is, we’ve had the unfortunate- in a short period of 12 months, we went from having the record year in 2023 with Hogwarts Legacy to unfortunately having the opposite side of that spectrum with Suicide Squad. And it is still hit-driven nature of some of that business, but one of the areas we are particularly leaning into, which is about half of the $200 billion games business, is the free-to-play space,” president of global streaming and games JB Perrette added.

“So we continue to be strong believers in the game space, we want to continue to see and figure out how we lean into it and get bigger in that space, and we’ll certainly tell you more about it as time goes on.” Are you in favor of Warner Bros. licensing its IPs or no?