Suicide Squad flop leads to 41% drop in Warner Bros. game revenue

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Warner Bros. Discovery’s gaming revenue fell 41 percent year over year due to “weak performance” from Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.

The decline is part of an overall four percent decline in studio revenue (video games, TV, movies), the company revealed in its latest quarterly earnings report.

Warner Bros. Discovery has yet to provide exact sales figures for Rocksteady's Suicide Squad game, though the company's CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said in an earnings call in February that the game was “below our expectations.” It was later revealed that the company had incurred a $200 million loss on the game.

Let's Play Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League – IS IT A QUINNER OR A SINNER?Watch on YouTube

Of course, a major reason for this decline is the immense success of Hogwarts Legacy last year. It was one of the best-selling games of 2023, and as of January 2024, it had sold over 24 million copies. Many releases would pale in comparison.

Yet Suicide Squad's performance seems particularly poor. In June, reports emerged of a tumultuous development due to a toxic culture of perfectionism and an ever-changing vision. The game was delayed multiple times after a notoriously disappointing performance at PlayStation's State of Play showcase in February 2023.

During the earnings conference call, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav and president of global streaming and gaming JB Perrette were asked about the “uneven performance” of the gaming industry.

Perrette stressed the importance of free-to-play games, while Zaslav highlighted the possibility of licensing the company's various franchises to other video game companies (thanks IGN).

“We know that our franchises, especially in a world where the gaming industry is launching new franchises, are becoming increasingly challenging for a variety of reasons, including the abandonment of IDFA and increased challenges with marketing and customer acquisition,” Perrette said.

“And that franchises like the ones we have are in high demand and can help launch games. You still need a great game and the reality is we've had bad luck: in a short 12 months, we went from having a record year in 2023 with Hogwarts Legacy to unfortunately being on the opposite end of that spectrum with Suicide Squad. And it's still the success-driven nature of some of that business, but one of the areas we're particularly focused on, which is about half of the $200 billion game business, is the free-to-play space.”

That, Perrette said, led the company to acquire MultiVersus developer Player First, because “strengthening our capabilities” in free-to-play games would provide “more balance to our games business than the inevitable cyclicality of multiple console releases.”

Zaslav added: “We have eleven studios here and we have a lot of IP. And there's also a lot of interest among others in coming in and leveraging 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 have and the value that it has in the gaming space is something that we're trying to take advantage of.”

Rocksteady recently released the second season of Suicide Squad, starring Mrs. Freeze, though it’s unclear whether that has led to an increase in player numbers.

Warner Bros.’ next big console game will be its Wonder Woman project, developed by Monolith Productions with support from WB Games Montréal. Warner Bros. has confirmed that it is not a live-service game.

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