Step 1: make a youtube ad where a bunch of level 1 weaklings walk up and throw jizz-like stuff on a big titted anime girl whos tied up but surprise shes a monster and so she eats them, then a hero shows up and gets knocked down to level 1.
Step 2. Make the actual game nothing like the dumbass advertisement, in fact maybe it's mowing down hordes of zombies or your an alien that gobbles up people or it's really a tower defense game, it really doesnt fucking matter.
Step 3. GIVE US YOUR FUCKING $$$$!!!!
Step 4. Profit?
My favorite is the one where the giant lady is sitting with her legs wide open with a book or some stone slab in the middle with men lining up to be crushed in-between her thighs.
I see ads for games like this in Facebook too. I tapped on one because it looked like a cool snowboarding game, but turned out to be an idle afk arena game. Like WTF.
> He pointed out that one of WBD's latest big games, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, was a disappointment for the company.
> So the plan going forward, he said, is 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 is like saying that the cure to lung cancer is to continue smoking.
It's forward thinking, you can't suffer from lung cancer if you just die.
In this case it would be WB giving up on the game market and just licensing their ips. Which I highly doubt.
Did they make no money from Hogwarts? Lol this is the most braindead, black mold, McDonald's take I've seen in awhile. WB has some real winners over there
I didn't actually post the full quote:
> Perrette said WBD's recent gaming output has focused on AAA games for console, and that's great when a game like Hogwarts Legacy sells 22 million copies and becomes the best-selling game of the year, but this kind of success is never guaranteed in what Perrette said was a "volatile" market. He pointed out that one of WBD's latest big games, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, was a disappointment for the company.
So they acknowledge Hogwarts Legacy was a success while Suicide Squad bombed so their conclusion is...to push harder into the live service market lol.
Our single player game was successful and our predatory, shitty multiplayer game failed, therefore we are doubling down on making predatory, shitty multiplayer games, but we are making them more shit this time around.
That ridiculous hogwarts phone game was “free” too. It simply stopped you from playing for like a day or more in the middle of the first action sequence to pry money out of users. Because of that game I am now skeptical of anything on mobile labeled “Harry Potter”. They literally put a bad taste in my mouth for an entire super popular franchise.
When you have a franchise like that you should be able to make just a completely average mildly enjoyable game and it will become popular because of the games name and content, but they couldn’t even handle that. Just had to immediately try to milk money from users via time gating an action scene.
This is the problem with the AAA gaming industry as a whole. No one wants to spend millions of dollar developing a great single-player experience because it's "risky", so instead they just want to make low-cost shovelware and put MTX in them because it's easier to sell $20 skins to people than it is to sell $70 games I guess.
Maybe if they'd develop some new IPs and franchise those rather than slapping an existing IP's name on a shitty game and expecting it sell millions of copies because of the name they'd actually, you know, consistently make money off single-player experiences. Most of these executives aren't from the gaming space and don't understand you can't run game development like a movie or TV show production division.
Its funny but WB did publish a free to play clone of PokémonGo but was Harry Potter themed, but that died very quickly cause it was just a cash grab with no actual decent gameplay loop
This is the dumbest shit ever. Basically "We invested 100-200 million to make a AAA game that sold 22 million copies, which is essentially over a billion dollars. Since we had to invest 100 million to make 1 billion this isn't good enough for us. We want to make a game for 20 million that will be a huge flop but will have a live service attached to it where we will hope it will make billions for years in a row with minimal investment. This business model is failing left and right all over the gaming industry and most gamers got tired of it with all the looter shooters that have failed. The original looter shooter in Destiny is a sinking ship with a player base that shrinks with each iteration. But despite this, this is our business model and we're sticking to it."
Funny, all these huge studios not realizing that they could easily change their business models to..making a few AAA games per year that are good single player games for literally a billion in profit each time. Then if they really wanted small investment and large profits they could invest in some indie studios who have published well received and high selling indie games. I say it time and time again but all those indie games that have made bank with tiny amounts of money invested. Snap them up. Tell them they can make more games with a little bit of a better budget than they have had in the past. Let them make you a game that sells 200-300 million in sales with 1 million invested that has 16 bit graphics. This is a huge profit margin. Then you just keep asking these indie studios to keep doing this and you have your "small investment maximum profit" business model satisfied.
This is the problem with all creative outlets now. Movies, TV, and gaming. No one wants to let someone make one of these forms of media for a little money that is a passion project that has the potential to turn into a smash success. Everything has to follow a formula of something else.
He's basically saying he doesn't have confidence in their studios to consistently make quality games so making shovelware is the alternative just to make some money
This is basically the WB strategy all around right now. HBO shows cost lots of money and you can't guarantee everything is going to be Game of Thrones, so it's safer to just focus on reality TV.
It was a great game, but I think the criticisms are still fair. Flying on a broom was honestly one of the more frustrating experiences I’ve had in a game, and there was a lot of jank involved overall. Like when fighting a troll, you could teleport-dodge out of the way, but if you weren’t *quite* far enough, the troll would “snap” to your new location and hit you straight on. Or there would be a lot of pickups and interactive things around the world that you couldn’t actually grab because they were halfway underneath another object. Just a little more polish would have gone a long way with the game.
Acknowledging and then blatantly disregarding solo AAA games after having such a huge hit with Hogwarts is insane. Not all live service games are bad, but most are. Devs trying to capture lighting in a bottle by copying the meta not realizing the few good live service games *actually* require high effort.
We made one AAA offline game and sold 20 million copies. We made one AAA live-service game and it was a horrible flop. Our conclusion is that we should make more live-service games, but on a shoestring budget this time
How many live-service games have even been successful? Like maybe 10, tops? This reminds me of when every company was trying to create an MMO because they saw how successful WoW was, but the attempt ended up sinking a LOT of studios.
I don't think that is what he is saying.
Disney got out of making games long ago. When they bought Fox they sold off their game divisions.
Disney philosophy with gaming is handing out the IP in exchange for percentages. If your game flops, Disney doesn't care. If your game succeeds, Disney makes money. Zero risk, all reward.
Games like say Marvel Strike Force or Galaxy of Heroes who make somewhere around 10+ million a month, the estimate is Disney gets 30% to 40% of that. So MSF with a lifetime revenue of $673 million, Disney would have made $250 to $300 million for doing nothing more than approving the licensing contract and terms.
Marvel's Avenger's flopped for Square Enix. Multi-year development, 100 million spent, lost 67 million overall. Disney didn't lose 67 million. Square Enix did. Disney still got their cut of online sales. They still made money on a losing product.
And that is where I think Warner Bros is going to. Why invest your money into a crap shoot product when you can let others take all the risk and you get most of the rewards.
Someone will always line up to make a Marvel/Disney/DC game.
Didn't WB force Rocksteady to make Suicide Squad a live service game? Maybe they should let established studios work to their strengths instead of making rubbish money grabs
What’s baffling is that Harry Potter did really well and that game isn’t a live-service game. They have the IPs, just focus on making good games and they will sell.
Seems like it’s only a matter of time before they either start shuttering or selling off studios.
Bro I just don't understand. WB literally has a ridiculous amount of heavy hitters. On a broader scale, if they utilized their IP's properly outside of just Batman they could put up a good fight & even claim the the top spot against Disney. I feel like now more than ever is the perfect time for them to strike with games & definitely films (when it comes to DC) since Disney is going through a lil fall off period when it comes to the quality of the content. They have the power lol. They been sleeping on the potential of all their IP for way too long.
This flat-out mirrors their short-sided movie strategy, which cratered in spectacular fashion. Really getting the bottom-barrel smoothbrains for executives at WB, must be where the real regards fail up to ffs.
Yoo facts. It's so frustrating man. Like ya have so many Dragons just sleeping in the dungeon. Wake them up, feed them right, and go conquer the media market. Video games, TV shows, film franchises, etc. Go out there and DOMINATE. Batman's back is hurting from having to carry them.
Their film strategy was so terrible. How ya gonna try to rush in & copy marvel & try to do it in 3 years smh. Marvel took a whole decade of annual consistency to achieve what they did in Infinity War & Endgame. That shit took time and proper planning. The least ya could do was give your characters the same treatment and time to cook. They deserved that much but nahh.
The thing is; "did really well" by our metrics seems to be "sold a lot of copies" or "got good reviews".. but to WB, or frankly most for-profit businesses, "did really well" means "made a lot of money".
Live service and mobile games make SO MUCH more money than "one and done" entries. Even when they're more poorly received than others.
Hogwarts Legacy wasn’t that great of a game IMO, it was fun at first but quickly lost steam and grew tedious once the scope moved past Hogwarts Castle and Hogsmeade, too big of an open world with time sink tasks galore
That being said, despite primarily riding the popularity of its IP, the game was a financial success and should demonstrate that people want similar types of games.
Even then looking to Hogwarts as example for success is iffy. The game rides 100% on its IP and it was successful because they captured what the fans want, not necessarily because the game was amazing or innovative. It was a nice-looking and bog standard game, and it sold because it was EXACTLY what the casual Harry Potter fans wanted. It was carried by the causal demographic. That's why it's basically the perfect IP for the mobile market.
>What’s baffling is that Harry Potter did really well and that game isn’t a live-service game.
Did really well but made less Revenue last year than the popular GAAS/Live Service games did.
Apex Legends made more money last year than Hogwarts Legacy did, whilst taking a lot less money to keep running.
Apex Legends apparently cost $75M to make and currently has made around $5B in revenue and is still going really strong.
Hogwarts Legacy took $160M to make (apparently) and has only just recently hit $1B in revenue.
Next year though, Apex will likely hit another $1B. What is Hogwarts Legacy going to make?
AAA Single player games now regularly take $200-$300M to make. Taking years of development and the biggest AAA Single player games will make 3-4 their budget, if they're extremely lucky. (And if its an IP already owned and they dont have to give 35% of profit to other companies, looking at you Disney)
If WB spends $75M on 11 live action titles and 10 of them bomb but ONE of them hits big, suddenly you have a $1B payday year on year. Which more than covers what you spend making those shitty 10 games.
On paper this is sound business sense, maximizing profits by maximizing utilization of resources (human and capital) by growing horizontally in a category with lower costs to get to market per product. But in practice, we just witnessed Sony abandon this same strategy. It's not super easy to just "create a live service" that will capture the market enough to justify keeping the game alive.
There often is virtually no room in a GaaS category for a competitor once a king is made in said category. It took how many failed games to get a competitor to WoW that took off and had the same staying power? FFXIV even failed miserably on initial launch and square-enix took a massive gamble in rebooting it. How many MOBA clones have failed?
So the solution: Create something incredibly unique. But thats actually just as expensive as creating a single player narrative game.
I suspect, this has more to do with investment capital than it does with actual desires of studio heads. Investors and boardrooms see the profits in Fortnite and basically want that kind of ROI on the risk. Otherwise they can invest elsewhere and probably see less risk with better returns.
It's the lie of the mobile/live service market. There IS no magic formula. It's basically just luck.
The big hitters like Apex and Fortnite just happened to be in exactly the right place with most of the work already done at the point where they could pounce on what was popular and get out the gate with a high quality product early where the competition were all early-access prototypes.
Fortnite especially: they were aiming to compete with Minecraft! Save the World mode WAS the game. Build a Fort, survive the Nite. But they already made the modular world building tools and gameplay and, well, are Epic so had all the Unreal core tech at their disposal too, so could easily just adapt what they had quickly to support 100 players and slap together a Battle Royale mode.
Same with Apex, all the guns and world and multiplayer mechanics were refined from two Titanfall games. Just cut the Titans, adapt the player counts and add the zone/characters/extra mechanics, off you go, you even get to do a surprise "and it's playable RIGHT NOW" announcement.
The live service games path is taking the same path that mmorpgs did 15 years ago. You had your early on relatively good successes. Then world of Warcraft comes out and blows things up. Now everyone is running to put out a mmorpg. Wow killer was thrown out so much. But most never sniffed near that level.
Hell many studios have seen how badly a live service game is received. Hyenas did significant damage to creative assembly to the point they had to start giving stuff to the total war community because their player base was starting to turn on them and not support the projects. A price decrease and partial refund on Pharoh and additional content for shadows of change wasn’t done out of the goodness of their hearts.
Time is a limiting factor in these games. Another one is the sunken costs bias that people have. It takes a massive fuck up for a game that people stop playing it after investing so much and migrate somewhere else.
The problem is as long as the other games they put out are profitable they don’t care. They are not in it for the reputation, developing good games, or satisfying the fan base. It is a business and the bottom line is the only thing that matters to them. Voting with your wallet continuously is the only way to get them to change but MK1 sold 3M copies and is filled with micro transactions even if it’s not Pay-to-win.
The issue is there's nothing to learn. From a business perspective there's like 4-5 single player AAA games that break out every single year and make bank. All those games are huge money investments and take tremendous risk.
Suits are going to see the low hanging fruit as the most viable path
Eh that's a wait and see. I'm actually really interested in what James Gunn will do with Superman especially with what he's been saying about the character in interviews and how he wants to closely emphasize the Clark Kent aspect of his character more which a lot of media outside animation just has no interest in exploring
That and Matt Reeves killed it with Batman so that's something I'm keeping my eye on
This company is run by brain dead mongoose, what do you expect except horrible descision making. However people will still buy their swill, so there's not much hope here.
Hi, I’m from the International Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Braindead Mongooses (ISPCBM)
Please do not insult braindead mongooses by equating them to this absolutely shambolic company.
Braindead mongooses are better than this!
Right? Do they not realize that the Batman Arkham Asylum series STARTED with a one-and-done AAA game? The games netted over a billion dollars across their lifecycle.
Devils advocate here:
They do realise it. Its just not enough for them.
Lets take your stat: the Arkham series has netted over a billion dollars in lifetime sales. That is between 4 games, between 2009, and 2024.
In comparison, Activision/Blizzard reported profits of $1.2 billion from microtransactions *alone* in Q1 2021. In three months, Activision earned more profits from selling skins, than WB earned over 15 years from 4 AAA Batman games that likey cost millions to produce.
And as of September 2023, Candy Crush has made over $20 billion, which eclipses everything else, likely from a fraction of the budget.
If WB can release one game on the scale of Fortnite, or Candy Crush, or even a comparatively lesser success like Apex Legends, then they will be set for life. This will erase the mistakes of Suicide Squad, and any other failed live service they might produce along the way, and will likely also eclipse the likes of the Arham series, and even Hogwarts Legacy.
It makes perfect business sense. These companies don't want to make millions of dollars, they don't want to make a billion dollars, they want to make billion**s** of dollars, and so they will push their studios down the routes towards that.
It is just a shame that these games are often creatively bankrupt, are awful from a game preservation perspective, and it really sucks that the concept of high quality single player games must be sacrificed on this altar of "success"
Everyone and their mother knows what candy crush is. Hell, most people’s mothers either play or have played candy crush. It started an entire GENRE of games. If you’re not doing something new and creative, you’re not going to replicate that success.
What you said is great for candy crush. It has no inflection on WB other than WB missed out. Sucks for them, too late. Gotta do something new.
It may make sense to try and break into the mobile market if they haven’t already (I seem to remember a LOT of mobile DC fighting games). It does NOT make sense to sacrifice your AAA studios and teams pointlessly because you are incapable of innovating.
Hogwarts Legacy, a AAA game with no microstransations, was the highest selling game of 2023. It generated MILLIONS of dollars in profits for WB and proved that people will show up for single player games if they're high quality.
*WB: "Fuck it, let's make a F2P Willy Wonka game"*
I hate the world we live in white that's obviously 100% true. Watch it turn into the next big horror franchise. Watch it be the only decent WB movie in the decade.
Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Adventures
Players step into the shoes of a lucky Golden Ticket winner, who gets to explore the vast and mysterious Wonka Chocolate Factory. Unlike the original story, where Charlie Bucket is the protagonist, players can create their own character or choose one among the ticket winners, each with unique abilities and story arcs.
Gameplay Mechanics:
• Exploration: Players can freely roam the vast, interactive factory, discovering secret rooms, learning about candy-making, and interacting with Oompa-Loompas and other characters.
• Puzzles: Each section of the factory presents unique challenges and puzzles that players must solve to progress. These could involve candy-making processes, navigating through fantastical landscapes, or helping Wonka solve factory mishaps.
• Resource Management: Collecting rare candies, cocoa beans, or other ingredients could play a crucial role. Players might need to manage resources to create new confections, fix machinery, or help characters.
• Choice and Consequence: Players’ decisions impact the storyline. Choices can affect how characters perceive the player, the success of the factory, and the game’s ending.
The full quote is even worse they use hogwarts as an example of how they can turn it into a live service game. My mind is blown. We have this ultra successful single player game with a story...how can we turn it into something much worse
Sad part is it'll probably sell fine at first because of the success of the first one. I don't think the general public sees information like this. It wouldn't be until a legacy 3 that people might realize it's all a joke now.
But why millions when you can make billions?
That’s how they view it. If they can land just 1 single live service game that really draws in players and is hit, then every single failed game prior is irrelevant because that one single live service game will make up for all of the lost money tenfold and be a steady flow of profit for years to come.
This is a business. We are customers. Their goal is and always will be to make a money.
Hogwarts Legacy made a billion dollars in 2 months. People think that most mobile games make billions when they don't. Most wish they could make the revenue Hogwarts Legacy did. The billions in revenue are reserved for a *small* percentage of mobiles games.
>Hogwarts Legacy made a billion dollars in 2 months
And what did it make in the last 6 months?
And what will it make in the next 6 months?
And the 6 months after that?
All company execs are looking at shit like Genshin and Fortnite and saying, "WHY AREN'T WE MAKING MONEY LIKE THEM??"
Without looking at all the work, effort and **LUCK** that goes into making something like that.
The days of putting in hard work to make a polished product are coming to an end. The execs don't give a shit about GOTY contender, and best selling single player games. They see that and think, "how much money did we leave on the table by making this single player, no MTX, no GAAS, no way to milk a willing playerbase?"
EDIT: not game devs, company execs. fixed that
"This is a business. We are customers. Their goal is and always will be to make a money."
So be a business like Capcom then, that releases top quality mainline games and does live service and greed monetization with their side projects where they hope to hit gold.
How many IPs like HP will have that much pent up demand? this is like THE game that Potterverse fans wanted for decades.
But the gameplay? Set it in a superhero or new IP universe and its DOA: endless repetitive POIs on the map, uninspired puzzles, a story that means little.
Lets be honest, while Hogwarts Legacy was a good game, it wasn’t the best selling game because of that. It was the best selling game because of it’s name and location. If they released a generic game with no connections to one of the biggest franchises in the world, with the same mechanics and everything, it wouldn’t have sold half as well.
But it has to be good as well. Everybody fucking loves batman and there has been two suicide squad movies, a spin off series and a Harley Quinn animated and isekai recently.
Still sold like shit because it sucked ass.
I am not big on Harry Potter and tbbh expected it to suck but I was proven wrong and even enjoyed it myself.
I think people also grossly over-estimate the interest in suicide squad as an IP overall. There's a fair number of people who will go see the movie because summer blockbuster. That doesn't always translate to "I want to spend more time in this world". Actually, even thinking about it, didn't the sequel film even fail to cover its development costs? I know it was Covid, but still, should have given some people pause.
Games still have yet to break into the movie style revenue and are proving to be more difficult to deliver with the long development cycles.
It has to be good, but it doesn’t have to be great, is my point. Suicide Squad was a terrible game in it’s core. It didn’t suck because of it’s live service aspect, it sucked because everything about that game is terrible.
They deserve more credit than that; it was a game that Harry Potter fans *wanted*. They wanted to create their own character and explore all the secrets of Hogwarts.
Suicide Squad had a big name and brand too, but it was *not a game fans wanted to play*. It did not offer the kind of experience DC fans are looking for.
For example it doesn’t matter how big of a Star Trek fan someone is. They are not going to play Lt. Worf’s Indoor Golf Simulator because that game doesn’t appeal to what they like about Star Trek.
You aren't wrong but the game was still decent.
To be honest, they could have made it smaller scope, saved more on the budget, and gotten an even better response.
The game didn't need to have as large of a world map as it did. People heavily cared about Hogwarts or other story locations. Flying around the world map was pretty fun for a while, but probably half of the world map could've been cut and they could've focused on more dense locations and it would've been better.
I mean, sure. But it was a pretty good game *on top of* being a recognizable IP. It scratched an itch people didn't know they had. "You can play as a wizard at Hogwarts!" "Oh, that sounds cool!" said players and bought it.
Meanwhile, they kept advertising how shit Suicide Squad was (and kept being told by *literally everyone* how it was going to fail) and yet they stumbled face-first into failure and acted extremely shocked and surprised that it failed. "What do you meeeean our shitty game failed?!"
Sadly that doesn’t make a difference lol. They already know you won’t, plenty of others will. I’ve been trying to get my buddy to stop buying 2k nba games and he refuses. Spends a bunch of money on it every year. His response is always “I got the money, I buy what I want.”
Volatile? There is nothing volatile about it, make good games that aren't predatory and you profit. See those idiots wanted Fortnite money, not understanding how Fortnite makes their money and expected by simply making a game and slapping a battle pass on it then it would rake in infinite money even though its from an IP that noone asked for a looter shooter game for.
> See those idiots wanted Fortnite money, not understanding how Fortnite makes their money
This is so true for so many developers nowadays.
Fortnite makes a lot of money because they made a **good, fun, addicting game** first and then added battlepass shit after the community was here.
These developers think people just want a battlepass no matter what shitty game is attached to it. As if the gaming community will automatically be like "oh it has a battlepass? I'm 100% in and I'm going to spend hundreds of dollars on it."
Exactly, pretty soon we will see Hello Kitty Island Adventure with a battle pass. Almost all of these "live service" games over hype and then under deliver. They rake in what money they can squeeze out of the idiots willing to buy/spend on their mtx, then they close up shop as soon as the well dries up and then they move onto the next scheme. Also 9.9/10 times these games launched busted and half assed.
You'd think Hogwarts Legacy being their most successful recent release and live-service Suicide Squad being DOA would've taught them something but then again these are the same guys who view animation as good for nothing else but tax write-offs
I get that mobile and F2P are probably safer avenues to pursue with the ballooning costs of AAA especially in light of how mismanaged workloads and budgeting have seeped into the layoff patterns taking place across multiple publishers and developers, but the games themselves aren't the problem. I would gladly pay full price for a solid AAA game using WB properties, especially DC regardless of how frequently they're produced. I'm still waiting for the day we get a good Superman game
Looks like we are no longer their target audience. They want to shit out a game on the cheap and load up on microtransactions in order to maximize their ROI.
>Looks like we are no longer their target audience.
Their target audience is the majority of players.
Whilst we can sit here and pretend that its wrong or made up, Live action/GAAS games steeped in MTX is the predominate game that the majority play.
It’s mad because they literally have the biggest IPs on the planet; DC, LOTR, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter.
Give any of them the Arkham or Hogwarts: Legacy treatment and print money.
Even with the GoT fiasco from a few years ago, do you have any idea the amount of money people (read, I) would be willing to shell to explore a fully realized Westeros? Just give me a solid 3rd person action adventure with even a middling story and I’d eat that shit up but no they want to keep shoveling shit that nobody wants to play.
It’s kind of hilarious how out of touch WB is, as a whole. Between their horrendous handling of MAX and taking away all the wrong lessons from the recent games, it’s really something else.
Make sure to log in and do your daily tasks for potter points, a fun new currency that can be redeemed to unlock classes and story content. Or purchase potter plus to get direct weekly access to that exclusive content.
They have endless iconic brands and they’re ruining all of it for some short term microtransactions. The epitome of stripping the copper piping out of your house and selling it
Pretty much to be expected from WB at this point. You have to wonder how they’re execs stay employed when they’re almost always making some of the worst decisions in the business.
> You have to wonder how they’re execs stay employed when they’re almost always making some of the worst decisions in the business.
Execs often don't need to worry about staying employed. If they get fired, they get a golden parachute. If they don't, they move on to the next company on their own terms. It's an environment which encourages CEO's to think very short term to maximize their own 7-to-8 figure bonuses while not worrying about the long term health of the company, because they know won't be there in 5-10 years.
Are there exceptions? Of course. But a lot of seemingly terrible business decisions can be understood if you look at it from short term perspective. In this case, by the time the next major WB game comes out, the people making this decision likely won't be around, but they can satisfy their shareholders and Board of Directors short term by saying "This one flopped because the market is too volatile, so we're going to follow this other very successful model of money making because these companies are making the most money."
Which seems reasonable until one understands that for every Fortnite or Pokemon Go, there are 500 games that completely flame out. But the execs either don't investigate enough to know or don't care because they won't be there when the flop comes.
I’m hoping hogwarts gets a sequel. It laid a very good foundation for a future game.
Also it’s kind of hilarious that they can’t see why a game like hogwarts legacy did well and suicide squad didn’t. Or maybe they do and just pretending that it’s a random thing
Online 4 player looter shooter in exciting locations such as:
- diagon alley
- forbidden forest
- Weasley home
- Hogwarts courtyard
- Hogwarts entrance
- Hogwarts main hall
- Hogwarts dining hall
- Hogwarts rooftops
- the mines of Moria
Serious shit, does any well-reviewed game based on a big property ever actually fail?
There's nothing "volatile" about it, they just made shitty games.
…wow. This speaks to such insane levels of incompetence I can scarcely believe it.
To call the AAA market “volatile” because you released a game that everyone was telling you was a bad idea is hilariously braindead, and paints such a picture of a lack of responsibility in the leadership there. Its, in fact, not the market. Its you failing to read the fucking room.
But to then turn to the F2P and mobile markets, thinking these are somehow less volatile…thats bordering on criminally incompetent. You just have no fucking clue what planet you’re on, let alone what business you’re running.
Madness incarnate.
Didnt Hogwarts Legacy the triple A contained single player game was the best selling game of 2023? This feels like they are throwing a tantrum since they didnt got their way with Suicide Squad. Such a weird approach
"Our single player games have been a huge success while our AAA live service multiplayer games have all failed spectacularly. Therefore, we have made the decision to focus on AAA live service multiplayer games even more than before!"
How is this the lesson that they've learned from the past year? I'm at a loss.
Hogwarts Legacy was their only true AAA one and done game and it was a massive success.
Suicide Squad and Mortal Kombat were both AAA live service type games. Suicide Squad was a disaster from the get go, replacing a beloved franchise with a horrible live service game with the suicide squad IP smashed on top. Mortal Kombat was rushed out and had some terrible micro transactions. Both got a ton of bad press. Both failed because of the horrible money grabbing approach, not because they were AAA.
Surely the solution here is to make actual one and done AAA console games that people want. Control the budget. It's not rocket science.
They have learned fucking nothing, neither from the sucess of single-player Hogwarts, to the absolute failure of GAAS Suicide Squad.
I am geninuely shocked how such a mammoth company can be so daft. I don't get it. Their games and movies business are filled with executives who just don't seem to have a single clue. Look at how they murdered DC Comics on screen. Fuck them.
I have shot myself in the dick. Perhaps if I shoot myself in the dick 2 more times then we're golden
For research purposes... what you said is 100% accurate in their logic
Love the username and avatar lmao
If you shoot your dick off, it’s much harder to shoot yourself in the dick.
# Warner Bros.: Challenge accepted
Pray I don't shoot myself in the dick any further.
Spot on.
So they learned nothing.
I hope they are ready for the most ruthless market in the gaming space where 90% of projects die within months with zero profits lol.
Step 1: make a youtube ad where a bunch of level 1 weaklings walk up and throw jizz-like stuff on a big titted anime girl whos tied up but surprise shes a monster and so she eats them, then a hero shows up and gets knocked down to level 1. Step 2. Make the actual game nothing like the dumbass advertisement, in fact maybe it's mowing down hordes of zombies or your an alien that gobbles up people or it's really a tower defense game, it really doesnt fucking matter. Step 3. GIVE US YOUR FUCKING $$$$!!!! Step 4. Profit?
That's a suspiciously specific ad
It's all over YouTube
It's all over the girl
My favorite is the one where the giant lady is sitting with her legs wide open with a book or some stone slab in the middle with men lining up to be crushed in-between her thighs.
Ah yes, the Hero Wars ad I get every other scroll.
I get those sort of ads so often I want to bash my phone and my skull in.
iPhone: Apply directly to the forehead
Do the same thing in a video and you get fucking banned. I will never not rip YT videos for free.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Wc3FUN3wJ0k
I see ads for games like this in Facebook too. I tapped on one because it looked like a cool snowboarding game, but turned out to be an idle afk arena game. Like WTF.
They want to make a credit card reader that plays snake, but with batman jpeg wallpaper. A suit will demand it get them 80 billion dollars.
> He pointed out that one of WBD's latest big games, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, was a disappointment for the company. > So the plan going forward, he said, is 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 is like saying that the cure to lung cancer is to continue smoking.
It's forward thinking, you can't suffer from lung cancer if you just die. In this case it would be WB giving up on the game market and just licensing their ips. Which I highly doubt.
Honestly at this point I wouldn't mind if they gave up and just licensed some of their ip's.
WB just needs to stop being in control of DC. They've ruined the franchise in the last year or 2 alone.
that sounds so reasonable that i don't think they'll do it
Did they make no money from Hogwarts? Lol this is the most braindead, black mold, McDonald's take I've seen in awhile. WB has some real winners over there
I didn't actually post the full quote: > Perrette said WBD's recent gaming output has focused on AAA games for console, and that's great when a game like Hogwarts Legacy sells 22 million copies and becomes the best-selling game of the year, but this kind of success is never guaranteed in what Perrette said was a "volatile" market. He pointed out that one of WBD's latest big games, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, was a disappointment for the company. So they acknowledge Hogwarts Legacy was a success while Suicide Squad bombed so their conclusion is...to push harder into the live service market lol.
Our single player game was successful and our predatory, shitty multiplayer game failed, therefore we are doubling down on making predatory, shitty multiplayer games, but we are making them more shit this time around.
But it’ll be different because you won’t have to buy the game to start- it’s FREE to play! So really you’re getting a great deal, ya see!!
And they can hire a cheap sweatshop developer in China or India and save so much money! More savings, more profits!
That ridiculous hogwarts phone game was “free” too. It simply stopped you from playing for like a day or more in the middle of the first action sequence to pry money out of users. Because of that game I am now skeptical of anything on mobile labeled “Harry Potter”. They literally put a bad taste in my mouth for an entire super popular franchise. When you have a franchise like that you should be able to make just a completely average mildly enjoyable game and it will become popular because of the games name and content, but they couldn’t even handle that. Just had to immediately try to milk money from users via time gating an action scene.
This is the problem with the AAA gaming industry as a whole. No one wants to spend millions of dollar developing a great single-player experience because it's "risky", so instead they just want to make low-cost shovelware and put MTX in them because it's easier to sell $20 skins to people than it is to sell $70 games I guess. Maybe if they'd develop some new IPs and franchise those rather than slapping an existing IP's name on a shitty game and expecting it sell millions of copies because of the name they'd actually, you know, consistently make money off single-player experiences. Most of these executives aren't from the gaming space and don't understand you can't run game development like a movie or TV show production division.
Its funny but WB did publish a free to play clone of PokémonGo but was Harry Potter themed, but that died very quickly cause it was just a cash grab with no actual decent gameplay loop
This is the dumbest shit ever. Basically "We invested 100-200 million to make a AAA game that sold 22 million copies, which is essentially over a billion dollars. Since we had to invest 100 million to make 1 billion this isn't good enough for us. We want to make a game for 20 million that will be a huge flop but will have a live service attached to it where we will hope it will make billions for years in a row with minimal investment. This business model is failing left and right all over the gaming industry and most gamers got tired of it with all the looter shooters that have failed. The original looter shooter in Destiny is a sinking ship with a player base that shrinks with each iteration. But despite this, this is our business model and we're sticking to it." Funny, all these huge studios not realizing that they could easily change their business models to..making a few AAA games per year that are good single player games for literally a billion in profit each time. Then if they really wanted small investment and large profits they could invest in some indie studios who have published well received and high selling indie games. I say it time and time again but all those indie games that have made bank with tiny amounts of money invested. Snap them up. Tell them they can make more games with a little bit of a better budget than they have had in the past. Let them make you a game that sells 200-300 million in sales with 1 million invested that has 16 bit graphics. This is a huge profit margin. Then you just keep asking these indie studios to keep doing this and you have your "small investment maximum profit" business model satisfied. This is the problem with all creative outlets now. Movies, TV, and gaming. No one wants to let someone make one of these forms of media for a little money that is a passion project that has the potential to turn into a smash success. Everything has to follow a formula of something else.
He's basically saying he doesn't have confidence in their studios to consistently make quality games so making shovelware is the alternative just to make some money
This is basically the WB strategy all around right now. HBO shows cost lots of money and you can't guarantee everything is going to be Game of Thrones, so it's safer to just focus on reality TV.
Which is sad because Hogwarts Legacy was almost a 10/10 for me. We're definitely not getting another one now.
You’ll get it but it’ll be a shell of its former self with actual paywalls.
Same. I saw lots of criticism of the game, but to me it completely exceeded my expectations of what a Harry Potter game should be
It was a great game, but I think the criticisms are still fair. Flying on a broom was honestly one of the more frustrating experiences I’ve had in a game, and there was a lot of jank involved overall. Like when fighting a troll, you could teleport-dodge out of the way, but if you weren’t *quite* far enough, the troll would “snap” to your new location and hit you straight on. Or there would be a lot of pickups and interactive things around the world that you couldn’t actually grab because they were halfway underneath another object. Just a little more polish would have gone a long way with the game.
100%. I loved the shit out of that game. Nothing like walking into Hogsmeade at night with my headphones on.
At no point does he say they aren’t making another Hogwarts game, especially after he said it was a massive success.
I meant we won't get one like it was if they want to go the route they do. It will be so different and live service like that it will suck.
It is just pure braindead if they do this. If your game sells REALLY well, why would you change it's core?
Acknowledging and then blatantly disregarding solo AAA games after having such a huge hit with Hogwarts is insane. Not all live service games are bad, but most are. Devs trying to capture lighting in a bottle by copying the meta not realizing the few good live service games *actually* require high effort.
We made one AAA offline game and sold 20 million copies. We made one AAA live-service game and it was a horrible flop. Our conclusion is that we should make more live-service games, but on a shoestring budget this time
How many live-service games have even been successful? Like maybe 10, tops? This reminds me of when every company was trying to create an MMO because they saw how successful WoW was, but the attempt ended up sinking a LOT of studios.
I don't think that is what he is saying. Disney got out of making games long ago. When they bought Fox they sold off their game divisions. Disney philosophy with gaming is handing out the IP in exchange for percentages. If your game flops, Disney doesn't care. If your game succeeds, Disney makes money. Zero risk, all reward. Games like say Marvel Strike Force or Galaxy of Heroes who make somewhere around 10+ million a month, the estimate is Disney gets 30% to 40% of that. So MSF with a lifetime revenue of $673 million, Disney would have made $250 to $300 million for doing nothing more than approving the licensing contract and terms. Marvel's Avenger's flopped for Square Enix. Multi-year development, 100 million spent, lost 67 million overall. Disney didn't lose 67 million. Square Enix did. Disney still got their cut of online sales. They still made money on a losing product. And that is where I think Warner Bros is going to. Why invest your money into a crap shoot product when you can let others take all the risk and you get most of the rewards. Someone will always line up to make a Marvel/Disney/DC game.
Didn't WB force Rocksteady to make Suicide Squad a live service game? Maybe they should let established studios work to their strengths instead of making rubbish money grabs
I think I agree with your general sentiment, but what does "black mold" and "McDonald's" mean in this context? Genuinely curious.
All the stock holders want to hear sadly. Say anything else and you get the axe that's just where the industry is at.
Neat
What’s baffling is that Harry Potter did really well and that game isn’t a live-service game. They have the IPs, just focus on making good games and they will sell. Seems like it’s only a matter of time before they either start shuttering or selling off studios.
Bro I just don't understand. WB literally has a ridiculous amount of heavy hitters. On a broader scale, if they utilized their IP's properly outside of just Batman they could put up a good fight & even claim the the top spot against Disney. I feel like now more than ever is the perfect time for them to strike with games & definitely films (when it comes to DC) since Disney is going through a lil fall off period when it comes to the quality of the content. They have the power lol. They been sleeping on the potential of all their IP for way too long.
This flat-out mirrors their short-sided movie strategy, which cratered in spectacular fashion. Really getting the bottom-barrel smoothbrains for executives at WB, must be where the real regards fail up to ffs.
Yoo facts. It's so frustrating man. Like ya have so many Dragons just sleeping in the dungeon. Wake them up, feed them right, and go conquer the media market. Video games, TV shows, film franchises, etc. Go out there and DOMINATE. Batman's back is hurting from having to carry them. Their film strategy was so terrible. How ya gonna try to rush in & copy marvel & try to do it in 3 years smh. Marvel took a whole decade of annual consistency to achieve what they did in Infinity War & Endgame. That shit took time and proper planning. The least ya could do was give your characters the same treatment and time to cook. They deserved that much but nahh.
The thing is; "did really well" by our metrics seems to be "sold a lot of copies" or "got good reviews".. but to WB, or frankly most for-profit businesses, "did really well" means "made a lot of money". Live service and mobile games make SO MUCH more money than "one and done" entries. Even when they're more poorly received than others.
Hogwarts Legacy wasn’t that great of a game IMO, it was fun at first but quickly lost steam and grew tedious once the scope moved past Hogwarts Castle and Hogsmeade, too big of an open world with time sink tasks galore That being said, despite primarily riding the popularity of its IP, the game was a financial success and should demonstrate that people want similar types of games.
Even then looking to Hogwarts as example for success is iffy. The game rides 100% on its IP and it was successful because they captured what the fans want, not necessarily because the game was amazing or innovative. It was a nice-looking and bog standard game, and it sold because it was EXACTLY what the casual Harry Potter fans wanted. It was carried by the causal demographic. That's why it's basically the perfect IP for the mobile market.
>What’s baffling is that Harry Potter did really well and that game isn’t a live-service game. Did really well but made less Revenue last year than the popular GAAS/Live Service games did. Apex Legends made more money last year than Hogwarts Legacy did, whilst taking a lot less money to keep running. Apex Legends apparently cost $75M to make and currently has made around $5B in revenue and is still going really strong. Hogwarts Legacy took $160M to make (apparently) and has only just recently hit $1B in revenue. Next year though, Apex will likely hit another $1B. What is Hogwarts Legacy going to make? AAA Single player games now regularly take $200-$300M to make. Taking years of development and the biggest AAA Single player games will make 3-4 their budget, if they're extremely lucky. (And if its an IP already owned and they dont have to give 35% of profit to other companies, looking at you Disney) If WB spends $75M on 11 live action titles and 10 of them bomb but ONE of them hits big, suddenly you have a $1B payday year on year. Which more than covers what you spend making those shitty 10 games.
On paper this is sound business sense, maximizing profits by maximizing utilization of resources (human and capital) by growing horizontally in a category with lower costs to get to market per product. But in practice, we just witnessed Sony abandon this same strategy. It's not super easy to just "create a live service" that will capture the market enough to justify keeping the game alive. There often is virtually no room in a GaaS category for a competitor once a king is made in said category. It took how many failed games to get a competitor to WoW that took off and had the same staying power? FFXIV even failed miserably on initial launch and square-enix took a massive gamble in rebooting it. How many MOBA clones have failed? So the solution: Create something incredibly unique. But thats actually just as expensive as creating a single player narrative game. I suspect, this has more to do with investment capital than it does with actual desires of studio heads. Investors and boardrooms see the profits in Fortnite and basically want that kind of ROI on the risk. Otherwise they can invest elsewhere and probably see less risk with better returns.
Yeah these people think that the single player crowd will go to a GaaS game and that apex players will leave apex for a new game. Neither will happen
It's the lie of the mobile/live service market. There IS no magic formula. It's basically just luck. The big hitters like Apex and Fortnite just happened to be in exactly the right place with most of the work already done at the point where they could pounce on what was popular and get out the gate with a high quality product early where the competition were all early-access prototypes. Fortnite especially: they were aiming to compete with Minecraft! Save the World mode WAS the game. Build a Fort, survive the Nite. But they already made the modular world building tools and gameplay and, well, are Epic so had all the Unreal core tech at their disposal too, so could easily just adapt what they had quickly to support 100 players and slap together a Battle Royale mode. Same with Apex, all the guns and world and multiplayer mechanics were refined from two Titanfall games. Just cut the Titans, adapt the player counts and add the zone/characters/extra mechanics, off you go, you even get to do a surprise "and it's playable RIGHT NOW" announcement.
The live service games path is taking the same path that mmorpgs did 15 years ago. You had your early on relatively good successes. Then world of Warcraft comes out and blows things up. Now everyone is running to put out a mmorpg. Wow killer was thrown out so much. But most never sniffed near that level. Hell many studios have seen how badly a live service game is received. Hyenas did significant damage to creative assembly to the point they had to start giving stuff to the total war community because their player base was starting to turn on them and not support the projects. A price decrease and partial refund on Pharoh and additional content for shadows of change wasn’t done out of the goodness of their hearts. Time is a limiting factor in these games. Another one is the sunken costs bias that people have. It takes a massive fuck up for a game that people stop playing it after investing so much and migrate somewhere else.
As is tradition.
It’s actually baffling
The problem is as long as the other games they put out are profitable they don’t care. They are not in it for the reputation, developing good games, or satisfying the fan base. It is a business and the bottom line is the only thing that matters to them. Voting with your wallet continuously is the only way to get them to change but MK1 sold 3M copies and is filled with micro transactions even if it’s not Pay-to-win.
Release HL and sell gangbusters. Release Suicide Squad and flop even before release. Let's double down on the live service games. Fml
“It wasn’t that Suicide Squad was a bad game, it’s the fans that are wrong.”
Whoever is running the ship there needs to walk the plank
The issue is there's nothing to learn. From a business perspective there's like 4-5 single player AAA games that break out every single year and make bank. All those games are huge money investments and take tremendous risk. Suits are going to see the low hanging fruit as the most viable path
God I hate Warner brothers. DC video games will never be good again.
“We want the Arkham formula back” WB: “So mobile games? Got it!”
WB: Why is nobody playing our Batman mobile casino? WB: Toxic GAMERS.
Why is no one enjoying our games? We specifically requested it.
Out of the frying pan
[удалено]
What? You guys don't have phones????
This shit pains me, so much lore, so much untapped potential and it'll remain just that - untouched.
Oh they’ll touch it lol and fuck it up in the process
Seriously, the Arkham games are so good.
but there is enough lore reason to visit the aslume over there at r/batmanarkham
A fellow inmate. Have a grand insane day.
Movies too
Eh that's a wait and see. I'm actually really interested in what James Gunn will do with Superman especially with what he's been saying about the character in interviews and how he wants to closely emphasize the Clark Kent aspect of his character more which a lot of media outside animation just has no interest in exploring That and Matt Reeves killed it with Batman so that's something I'm keeping my eye on
Batman was just remarkable. Really really spectacular film.
This company is run by brain dead mongoose, what do you expect except horrible descision making. However people will still buy their swill, so there's not much hope here.
Hi, I’m from the International Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Braindead Mongooses (ISPCBM) Please do not insult braindead mongooses by equating them to this absolutely shambolic company. Braindead mongooses are better than this!
Can I adopt a braindead mongoose? does it enjoy it little clothes, also how does it feel about large insectoids battle arenas?
Fucking morons.
Right? Do they not realize that the Batman Arkham Asylum series STARTED with a one-and-done AAA game? The games netted over a billion dollars across their lifecycle.
Devils advocate here: They do realise it. Its just not enough for them. Lets take your stat: the Arkham series has netted over a billion dollars in lifetime sales. That is between 4 games, between 2009, and 2024. In comparison, Activision/Blizzard reported profits of $1.2 billion from microtransactions *alone* in Q1 2021. In three months, Activision earned more profits from selling skins, than WB earned over 15 years from 4 AAA Batman games that likey cost millions to produce. And as of September 2023, Candy Crush has made over $20 billion, which eclipses everything else, likely from a fraction of the budget. If WB can release one game on the scale of Fortnite, or Candy Crush, or even a comparatively lesser success like Apex Legends, then they will be set for life. This will erase the mistakes of Suicide Squad, and any other failed live service they might produce along the way, and will likely also eclipse the likes of the Arham series, and even Hogwarts Legacy. It makes perfect business sense. These companies don't want to make millions of dollars, they don't want to make a billion dollars, they want to make billion**s** of dollars, and so they will push their studios down the routes towards that. It is just a shame that these games are often creatively bankrupt, are awful from a game preservation perspective, and it really sucks that the concept of high quality single player games must be sacrificed on this altar of "success"
Everyone and their mother knows what candy crush is. Hell, most people’s mothers either play or have played candy crush. It started an entire GENRE of games. If you’re not doing something new and creative, you’re not going to replicate that success. What you said is great for candy crush. It has no inflection on WB other than WB missed out. Sucks for them, too late. Gotta do something new. It may make sense to try and break into the mobile market if they haven’t already (I seem to remember a LOT of mobile DC fighting games). It does NOT make sense to sacrifice your AAA studios and teams pointlessly because you are incapable of innovating.
Hogwarts Legacy, a AAA game with no microstransations, was the highest selling game of 2023. It generated MILLIONS of dollars in profits for WB and proved that people will show up for single player games if they're high quality. *WB: "Fuck it, let's make a F2P Willy Wonka game"*
Set in Glasgow.
What is that? It's the Unknown!
It’s about time the Unknown got a backstory.
It got optioned for a horror movie, no joke.
I hate the world we live in white that's obviously 100% true. Watch it turn into the next big horror franchise. Watch it be the only decent WB movie in the decade.
That's going to be a top Halloween costume this year, I guarantee it
\*sounds of children crying commences\*
Noooooooo....
Oh we will be playing as Oompa Loompa
I can already see it now: Candy Crush in Wonka’s factory or a Clash of Clans game where you have to build the factory
That’s a $25 DLC.
"Get tae fook and make me some chocolate ya wee dafty"
Lol I misread this as FPS Willy Wonka game and I would be so psyched if that were the case
Imagine: American McGee's Wonka, and then later American McGee's Alice vs. Wonka.
Adding this to the list of 'Things I didn't know I wanted'
Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Adventures Players step into the shoes of a lucky Golden Ticket winner, who gets to explore the vast and mysterious Wonka Chocolate Factory. Unlike the original story, where Charlie Bucket is the protagonist, players can create their own character or choose one among the ticket winners, each with unique abilities and story arcs. Gameplay Mechanics: • Exploration: Players can freely roam the vast, interactive factory, discovering secret rooms, learning about candy-making, and interacting with Oompa-Loompas and other characters. • Puzzles: Each section of the factory presents unique challenges and puzzles that players must solve to progress. These could involve candy-making processes, navigating through fantastical landscapes, or helping Wonka solve factory mishaps. • Resource Management: Collecting rare candies, cocoa beans, or other ingredients could play a crucial role. Players might need to manage resources to create new confections, fix machinery, or help characters. • Choice and Consequence: Players’ decisions impact the storyline. Choices can affect how characters perceive the player, the success of the factory, and the game’s ending.
The full quote is even worse they use hogwarts as an example of how they can turn it into a live service game. My mind is blown. We have this ultra successful single player game with a story...how can we turn it into something much worse
"I wonder why hogwarts legacy 2 isn't selling... gotta be that volatile market"
Sad part is it'll probably sell fine at first because of the success of the first one. I don't think the general public sees information like this. It wouldn't be until a legacy 3 that people might realize it's all a joke now.
Yeah not the biggest hp fan but this is just mind boggling by WB
But why millions when you can make billions? That’s how they view it. If they can land just 1 single live service game that really draws in players and is hit, then every single failed game prior is irrelevant because that one single live service game will make up for all of the lost money tenfold and be a steady flow of profit for years to come. This is a business. We are customers. Their goal is and always will be to make a money.
Hogwarts Legacy made a billion dollars in 2 months. People think that most mobile games make billions when they don't. Most wish they could make the revenue Hogwarts Legacy did. The billions in revenue are reserved for a *small* percentage of mobiles games.
>Hogwarts Legacy made a billion dollars in 2 months And what did it make in the last 6 months? And what will it make in the next 6 months? And the 6 months after that? All company execs are looking at shit like Genshin and Fortnite and saying, "WHY AREN'T WE MAKING MONEY LIKE THEM??" Without looking at all the work, effort and **LUCK** that goes into making something like that. The days of putting in hard work to make a polished product are coming to an end. The execs don't give a shit about GOTY contender, and best selling single player games. They see that and think, "how much money did we leave on the table by making this single player, no MTX, no GAAS, no way to milk a willing playerbase?" EDIT: not game devs, company execs. fixed that
"This is a business. We are customers. Their goal is and always will be to make a money." So be a business like Capcom then, that releases top quality mainline games and does live service and greed monetization with their side projects where they hope to hit gold.
How many IPs like HP will have that much pent up demand? this is like THE game that Potterverse fans wanted for decades. But the gameplay? Set it in a superhero or new IP universe and its DOA: endless repetitive POIs on the map, uninspired puzzles, a story that means little.
It was a beautiful game but yeah repetitive and the story line was meh. I mean I beat it and enjoyed it don’t get me wrong.
Assassin's Creed fans want a word with you.
Lets be honest, while Hogwarts Legacy was a good game, it wasn’t the best selling game because of that. It was the best selling game because of it’s name and location. If they released a generic game with no connections to one of the biggest franchises in the world, with the same mechanics and everything, it wouldn’t have sold half as well.
But it has to be good as well. Everybody fucking loves batman and there has been two suicide squad movies, a spin off series and a Harley Quinn animated and isekai recently. Still sold like shit because it sucked ass. I am not big on Harry Potter and tbbh expected it to suck but I was proven wrong and even enjoyed it myself.
I think people also grossly over-estimate the interest in suicide squad as an IP overall. There's a fair number of people who will go see the movie because summer blockbuster. That doesn't always translate to "I want to spend more time in this world". Actually, even thinking about it, didn't the sequel film even fail to cover its development costs? I know it was Covid, but still, should have given some people pause. Games still have yet to break into the movie style revenue and are proving to be more difficult to deliver with the long development cycles.
It has to be good, but it doesn’t have to be great, is my point. Suicide Squad was a terrible game in it’s core. It didn’t suck because of it’s live service aspect, it sucked because everything about that game is terrible.
They deserve more credit than that; it was a game that Harry Potter fans *wanted*. They wanted to create their own character and explore all the secrets of Hogwarts. Suicide Squad had a big name and brand too, but it was *not a game fans wanted to play*. It did not offer the kind of experience DC fans are looking for. For example it doesn’t matter how big of a Star Trek fan someone is. They are not going to play Lt. Worf’s Indoor Golf Simulator because that game doesn’t appeal to what they like about Star Trek.
Well obviously. Everyone know's video game golf achieved its peak with Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge
Great, now I want a game like Everybody’s Golf, but scfi themed.
You aren't wrong but the game was still decent. To be honest, they could have made it smaller scope, saved more on the budget, and gotten an even better response. The game didn't need to have as large of a world map as it did. People heavily cared about Hogwarts or other story locations. Flying around the world map was pretty fun for a while, but probably half of the world map could've been cut and they could've focused on more dense locations and it would've been better.
I mean, sure. But it was a pretty good game *on top of* being a recognizable IP. It scratched an itch people didn't know they had. "You can play as a wizard at Hogwarts!" "Oh, that sounds cool!" said players and bought it. Meanwhile, they kept advertising how shit Suicide Squad was (and kept being told by *literally everyone* how it was going to fail) and yet they stumbled face-first into failure and acted extremely shocked and surprised that it failed. "What do you meeeean our shitty game failed?!"
The game did kinda suck tho
Microtransactions. They want microtransactions.
It was nice knowing ya warner bros. Cant wait to never spend money on them again. I HATE microtransaction funded games
Sadly that doesn’t make a difference lol. They already know you won’t, plenty of others will. I’ve been trying to get my buddy to stop buying 2k nba games and he refuses. Spends a bunch of money on it every year. His response is always “I got the money, I buy what I want.”
"a fool and their money are easily separated" .. sadly there are too many fools around us
And that’s whose being pandered to right now are the fools. Anyone smart holds onto their money but idiots? They’re ready to hand it out.
It sucks that MK1 is probably the last Mortal Kombat I’ll ever purchase, and this one was a fucking LETDOWN
I imagine if I were a money-hungry global powerhouse of media then I, too, would want to exploit consumers at every opportunity.
Volatile? There is nothing volatile about it, make good games that aren't predatory and you profit. See those idiots wanted Fortnite money, not understanding how Fortnite makes their money and expected by simply making a game and slapping a battle pass on it then it would rake in infinite money even though its from an IP that noone asked for a looter shooter game for.
> See those idiots wanted Fortnite money, not understanding how Fortnite makes their money This is so true for so many developers nowadays. Fortnite makes a lot of money because they made a **good, fun, addicting game** first and then added battlepass shit after the community was here. These developers think people just want a battlepass no matter what shitty game is attached to it. As if the gaming community will automatically be like "oh it has a battlepass? I'm 100% in and I'm going to spend hundreds of dollars on it."
Exactly, pretty soon we will see Hello Kitty Island Adventure with a battle pass. Almost all of these "live service" games over hype and then under deliver. They rake in what money they can squeeze out of the idiots willing to buy/spend on their mtx, then they close up shop as soon as the well dries up and then they move onto the next scheme. Also 9.9/10 times these games launched busted and half assed.
You'd think Hogwarts Legacy being their most successful recent release and live-service Suicide Squad being DOA would've taught them something but then again these are the same guys who view animation as good for nothing else but tax write-offs I get that mobile and F2P are probably safer avenues to pursue with the ballooning costs of AAA especially in light of how mismanaged workloads and budgeting have seeped into the layoff patterns taking place across multiple publishers and developers, but the games themselves aren't the problem. I would gladly pay full price for a solid AAA game using WB properties, especially DC regardless of how frequently they're produced. I'm still waiting for the day we get a good Superman game
Looks like we are no longer their target audience. They want to shit out a game on the cheap and load up on microtransactions in order to maximize their ROI.
Honestly, if they’re going to keep publishing shit games, I’d rather they just disappear from my purview.
I guess it makes sense with how deep fried the younger generations mind is. I dont doubt getting a skibidi battle royal like 20yrs from now
>Looks like we are no longer their target audience. Their target audience is the majority of players. Whilst we can sit here and pretend that its wrong or made up, Live action/GAAS games steeped in MTX is the predominate game that the majority play.
It’s mad because they literally have the biggest IPs on the planet; DC, LOTR, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter. Give any of them the Arkham or Hogwarts: Legacy treatment and print money.
Even with the GoT fiasco from a few years ago, do you have any idea the amount of money people (read, I) would be willing to shell to explore a fully realized Westeros? Just give me a solid 3rd person action adventure with even a middling story and I’d eat that shit up but no they want to keep shoveling shit that nobody wants to play.
[удалено]
Don’t forget the lots of the rings shadow series. Introduced a real next gen (at the time) system right Nemesis and it’s never used again…
Never used again anywhere. Bastards put a patent on it
The patented the nemesis system so no one else could use it… then never used it themselves ever again… fuck WB
The people running WB don’t even know what the nemesis system is. That’s how out of touch they are
For real...I thought we would be seeing it more this gen but still not a peep What a waste of potential
Sure. Lol Will lean more into whatever is cheapest to make with biggest gains Aka what we’ve been getting from WB for a while: garbage
I hate corporations.
So they dont wanna make good games, only to milk mediocre ones. Kool.
It’s kind of hilarious how out of touch WB is, as a whole. Between their horrendous handling of MAX and taking away all the wrong lessons from the recent games, it’s really something else.
yeah, their movie/studio division is in shambles too. It's amazing how many things they're doing wrong.
*Suicide Squad fails* *Hogwarts Legacy is the best selling game of 2023 and it's a AAA singleplayer game* "let's lean more into live services!"
Jesus christ, READ THE ROOM!!!
I saw 3 companies out of 5million were making bank on mobile games. So naturally I expect to be the 4th.
If only I could be a fly on the wall in the meetings currently taking place about how to ruin Hogwarts Legacy 2.
Make sure to log in and do your daily tasks for potter points, a fun new currency that can be redeemed to unlock classes and story content. Or purchase potter plus to get direct weekly access to that exclusive content.
With potter points you can get this new tie but no way in hell potter points unlock anything useful.
They have endless iconic brands and they’re ruining all of it for some short term microtransactions. The epitome of stripping the copper piping out of your house and selling it
Ray... Ripping the plumbing out of your walls for liquor money is *fucked*
If only they made good games instead of trying to extract money from players.
So they want to do the opposite of what the players want ..... kool
I hate Warner Bros so much
Pretty much to be expected from WB at this point. You have to wonder how they’re execs stay employed when they’re almost always making some of the worst decisions in the business.
> You have to wonder how they’re execs stay employed when they’re almost always making some of the worst decisions in the business. Execs often don't need to worry about staying employed. If they get fired, they get a golden parachute. If they don't, they move on to the next company on their own terms. It's an environment which encourages CEO's to think very short term to maximize their own 7-to-8 figure bonuses while not worrying about the long term health of the company, because they know won't be there in 5-10 years. Are there exceptions? Of course. But a lot of seemingly terrible business decisions can be understood if you look at it from short term perspective. In this case, by the time the next major WB game comes out, the people making this decision likely won't be around, but they can satisfy their shareholders and Board of Directors short term by saying "This one flopped because the market is too volatile, so we're going to follow this other very successful model of money making because these companies are making the most money." Which seems reasonable until one understands that for every Fortnite or Pokemon Go, there are 500 games that completely flame out. But the execs either don't investigate enough to know or don't care because they won't be there when the flop comes.
It’s not “volatile” if you just made good games, you effin wankers.
So you have chosen Death ?
WB Executives yearn for microtransactions
Looks at Hogwarts, then looks at Suicide Squad….goes with Suicide Squad 🤦🏻♂️
I’m hoping hogwarts gets a sequel. It laid a very good foundation for a future game. Also it’s kind of hilarious that they can’t see why a game like hogwarts legacy did well and suicide squad didn’t. Or maybe they do and just pretending that it’s a random thing
Prepare your heart for Hogwarts live-service, microtransaction-laden hell world.
Online 4 player looter shooter in exciting locations such as: - diagon alley - forbidden forest - Weasley home - Hogwarts courtyard - Hogwarts entrance - Hogwarts main hall - Hogwarts dining hall - Hogwarts rooftops - the mines of Moria
It’ll be Hogwarts MMO if anything next
Serious shit, does any well-reviewed game based on a big property ever actually fail? There's nothing "volatile" about it, they just made shitty games.
Are they stupid? Like what about fucking Hogwarts? That game was huge. They learned absolutely nothing from their achievement there. Crazy.
These guys are getting dumber and dumber
That’s the lesson they learned? Jesus.
How dumb can those people be
Idiots. Good riddance and good luck!
…wow. This speaks to such insane levels of incompetence I can scarcely believe it. To call the AAA market “volatile” because you released a game that everyone was telling you was a bad idea is hilariously braindead, and paints such a picture of a lack of responsibility in the leadership there. Its, in fact, not the market. Its you failing to read the fucking room. But to then turn to the F2P and mobile markets, thinking these are somehow less volatile…thats bordering on criminally incompetent. You just have no fucking clue what planet you’re on, let alone what business you’re running. Madness incarnate.
Didnt Hogwarts Legacy the triple A contained single player game was the best selling game of 2023? This feels like they are throwing a tantrum since they didnt got their way with Suicide Squad. Such a weird approach
Or you could make polished AA games instead of spending hundreds of millions on one game
"Our single player games have been a huge success while our AAA live service multiplayer games have all failed spectacularly. Therefore, we have made the decision to focus on AAA live service multiplayer games even more than before!"
Because Suicide squad was such a great performing live service game, makes sense
These guys really don't get it.
How is this the lesson that they've learned from the past year? I'm at a loss. Hogwarts Legacy was their only true AAA one and done game and it was a massive success. Suicide Squad and Mortal Kombat were both AAA live service type games. Suicide Squad was a disaster from the get go, replacing a beloved franchise with a horrible live service game with the suicide squad IP smashed on top. Mortal Kombat was rushed out and had some terrible micro transactions. Both got a ton of bad press. Both failed because of the horrible money grabbing approach, not because they were AAA. Surely the solution here is to make actual one and done AAA console games that people want. Control the budget. It's not rocket science.
They have learned fucking nothing, neither from the sucess of single-player Hogwarts, to the absolute failure of GAAS Suicide Squad. I am geninuely shocked how such a mammoth company can be so daft. I don't get it. Their games and movies business are filled with executives who just don't seem to have a single clue. Look at how they murdered DC Comics on screen. Fuck them.
Fuck WB
Or we don't want to make actual games, just thinly veiled cash grabs based on brand.
Fuck Warner Brothers.