Warner Bros. says it’s focused on ‘transforming’ its biggest franchises into service games

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has said the company is focused on turning its biggest gaming franchises into live service games.

Speaking during the company’s latest earnings call (via Seeking Alpha), Zaslav discussed plans to transform franchises like “Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, DC, which is mainly Batman today, and Mortal Kombat,” which he sees as individual billion-dollar gaming franchises, into service games.

“Our focus is on transforming our biggest franchises from largely console and PC based with three-four year release schedules to include more always on gameplay through live services, multiplatform and free-to-play extensions with the goal to have more players spending more time on more platforms,” Zaslav said.

“Ultimately, we want to drive engagement and monetization of longer cycles and at higher levels. We have specific capabilities. We are currently under scale and see significant opportunity to generate greater post-purchase revenue.”

Warner Bros. has had a successful 2023 with significant releases such as the Harry Potter RPG, Hogwarts Legacy.

The title was comfortably Europe’s best-selling game in the first half of 2023, selling over 12 million copies in the first two weeks following its PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC release on February 10.

It was released for PS4 and Xbox One on May 5, at which point Warner announced that the game had topped $1 billion in retail sales and sold over 15 million copies.

Last month, it also released Mortal Kombat 1, which enjoyed a strong critical reception and has sold almost three million copies, according to Zaslav.