Warner Bros’ parent company AT&T appears to have taken a dramatic U-turn and decided to take its gaming division off the market. There was speculation that the giant was shopping studios like NetherRealm and Rocksteady around, as it attempted to offload its interactive entertainment business in order to clear some outstanding debt.
However, that no longer appears to be the case. In an email to staff, CEO Jason Kilar explained that while the firm will be undergoing some structural changes, Warner Bros Games “remains part of the Studios and Networks groups”. He added that while the changes may prove “a lot to take in” he’s confident the company will “successfully navigate them”.
While we don’t yet know what the restructuring will mean for upcoming Warner Bros releases, we can at least be assured that they will continue to launch on PlayStation platforms. Previously, there was speculation that Microsoft was mooting purchasing the division, along with the likes of Take-Two, EA, and Activision.
The timing is particularly pertinent, as Rocksteady recently teased its Suicide Squad title, which will be officially announced during a DC Comics event a little later in the month. A fully-fledged Harry Potter RPG is also believed to be in development at Avalanche Software, while NetherRealm is likely to be hard at work on its next big fighter, presumably Injustice 3.
[source pressroom.warnermediagroup.com, via eurogamer.net]
Comments 35
The amount of people who have been saying that MS should buy the division is baffling. Franchises like Mortal Kombat, potentially Batman, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings should never be fully exclusive to a couple of platforms.
And before anyone starts, Spider-Man is a rather special case in the fact Sony have the movie rights which is a massive bargaining chip that they have never had the opportunity to use in the lifespan of PlayStation because Activision had the licence on lockdown. It was only around 2014 that Sony could actually do a deal with Marvel. It's taking an advantage of a couple of assets that it has both the movie rights as leverage and the huge PS4 install base would likely offset any potential lost sales by not being multiplatform. MS don't have that because xbox keeps coming last in console sales and the PC market alone isn't big enough to make up lost sales on both Playstation and Switch.
MS buying WB makes no sense in locking PlayStation & Nintendo gamers out on any level. And that's the bottom line cos late 90's catchphrase said so.
Thats good to hear.the batman Arkham games are amazing games.so now everyone can chill.word up son
@AdamNovice. Well said playa i agree.thank god Microsoft. Cant touch this mc 🔨 hammer wb .word up son
Third parties should remain third parties. I don’t like monopolies and it’s a good thing if less companies are bought by Microsoft and Sony.
@AdamNovice completely agree, and Sony bought the movie rights 2 decades ago before ms ever made a console, because Sony actually makes movies. Years later that purchase came in handy for gaming stuff.
@AdamNovice PC market isn’t big enough? There are 1.3 billion PC gamers out there, the market’s almost as big as Ninty, Sony and Microsoft put together!
@AdamNovice I doubt Marvel Studios sharing the movie rights with Sony Pictures was a factor at all. I think the biggest contributor to that decision was likely that SIE owns Insomniac, who has held the Spider-Man game license since before they were even bought out and turned into a first party studio for Sony, and before the deal to share the movie rights was even struck
Plus Sony Pictures likely has no bearing at all on their game development division
If Sony having the movie rights was a factor for Spider-Man's game appearances at all, I guarantee you that literally every game since the first movie tie in would've been a PlayStation exclusive rather than multiplatform, especially since back then they even owned the TV rights until the 2010, and they technically bought the movie rights even before then in 1999.
Also PC Market isn't big enough? There's like 1.4 billion PC players and counting around the world from 2014 to now
While I prefer playing my games on PlayStation, I don't think Xbox buying them out would've been the worst choice. It could've created some interesting competition between both platforms, hopefully creating more interesting products.
@SincereMan Actually Insomniac themselves wanted to develop Spider-Man and it was Sony who inquired them about the opportunity to develop it and treat it like a first party SIE title. Insomniac finished development on their first Spider-Man game before Sony even acquired their studio so that couldn't have been part of any talks with Sony and Marvel
Plus the Spider-Man deal based on the emails that were leaked following the Sony hack mentioned nothing about Spider-Man games. The talks were only about Marvel Studios suggesting integrating the character into the MCU while Sony Pictures retained ownership of the character. Nothing about video games was mentioned, and the deal wasn't even struck until early 2015 when the first Spider-Man Insomniac title was already in development. By that point Sony still only owned the movie rights and were simply publishing the game for Insomniac. They only fully gained control of his game rights after acquiring Insomniac in its entirety as they still possessed the Spider-Man game license during that time, which is why Miles Morales is being published under the PlayStation Studios banner.
@nessisonett The PC gaming market is many times bigger than the console gaming market, at 1.3 billion. But that isn't an indicator of anything, because a person owning a PC capable of gaming doesn't make them a definitive customer for buying games. If you buy a console, you're going to buy games. This is a near absolute certainty or you wouldn't buy the console, as it's almost exclusively a gaming device. Literally hundreds of millions, easily arguably over a billion, PC users don't play games. Considering sales data for PC being less than (or generally at best, similar to) sales of some of the individual consoles with most multiplatform gaming titles, it's fairly apparent that, say, 100 million PS4 players is a bigger actual market share of game sales than the 1.3 billion PC owners. Even a game like The Witcher 3, which was a PC exclusive franchise up until 3 and had massive incentives to continue on PC for long time fans (with big save data carry over potential), it sold fairly comparable numbers between PC and PS4, rather than what math could indicate would be 13 times as many with its massive install base of PC users.
There have been hundreds of stories of games like Shovel Knight or other big indie titles selling 8 times as many copies on Switch in a month, when they had 20-50 million users, as they did in years on PC. So.. yeah. Clearly the 1.3 billion number has no real meaning.
Fine - now get that Midway/Atari arcade classic collection going!!
Of course this would of been an total different headline if was Sony whom was going to buy.
Well, for better or for worse, its bettee this way.
Basically what Warner valued their games division for themselves isn’t worth what other companies want to pay.
The IP is appealing, but having to pay a fee to hire thousands of workers isn’t.
@TheFrenchiestFry @nessisonett the PC market is indeed massive, but they buy games in much smaller numbers in proportion to consoles, plus many of them are accustomed to getting games on deep discounts. It's not as profitable as the 1.3 billion userbase would suggest, unless you're making a game like Dota/LoL, CS:GO, FF14, etc.
Great. If Ms bought them I would have accepted it (even if I'd rather not because I game on playstation) but what's the more annoying is the hypocrisy and the press pushing the narrative that Ms is more pro consumer than Sony. Come on. Sony bought Indomniac that they were associated with for ages. Ms bought studios left and right and the press have been cheering it.
Edit.
Heck Ms was the one trying to buy WB, not Sony
Translation of Corporate speak:
We massively over valued our underperforming gaming division and unfortunately no other corporation was dumb enough to pony up $4bn US to buy a company market valued at just under half of that without the IP. So now I'm going to be forced to make half of our staff redundant so I can continue to enjoy inflated wages, share options and bonuses. Sorry I'm not sorry plebs.
On to the non-sale of WB Games... AT&T are in serious trouble. They need cash quick to stave off impending doom. Perhaps the vultures are just circling until they get desperate enough. Make no mistake, everything AT&T owns is for sale, including the toilet paper. However, no one will buy their games division without the IP, what's the point? If you like their games studios just make their staff an offer to set up a new one under your banner. Happens all the time, look at EA and Respawn.
Whilst pleased to hear its not in M$ hands for now, honestly think the only reason its not EA/Activision/M$ would be more to do with them baulking at the 4 bill. price.
M$ bought minecraft for that but own Minecraft/Mojang 100%.
Here AT&T wanted that+wanted royalties on LOTR, DC, Harry Potter etc. And could they sub license LOTR/Harry Potter like that-they license them off their creator/ estate. Bit pricey for only MK ownership & relying on license agreements for the rest?
Might have to wait & see if they lower the price after a restructure.
@AdamNovice
There is a pattern, definitely an agenda, trying to make PlayStation look like the big bad wolf and xbox consumer friendly and beautifully transparent.
I haven't seen much outrage from the press about Ms trying to buy WB. I haven't much outrage about Spencer still now pretending the Series S doesnt exist. Xbox is beautiful and transparent is what we get and the gullible mass is running with it.
Interesting. This came after that Rocksteady’s SS tease. Maybe they saw a huge interest and engagement for it and decided to not go for sale.
@TheFrenchiestFry Marvel approached Sony, then Sony approached Insomniac Games and asked if they wanted to work on a Marvel property, not necessarily Spider-man.
Here's the article (source IGN): https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2018/09/insomniacs_boss_wasnt_initially_that_fussed_about_making_a_marvel_game
I'm guessing they put the possibility of a sale to see what they would get back, and saw it wasn't the monumental overpay they likely wanted.
Thank God. There probably my second favorite publisher behind Sony. It would have been a dreary gaming world to me with trash like EA, and Ubisoft being the only gaming choices besides Sony.
@SincereMan All I was trying to say is that seriously doubt Sony's ownership over the film rights and partnership with Marvel Studios had anything to do with this deal
Especially since that deal was struck well after Insomniac began developing the PS4 game
@JJ2 Don't forget Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 being Switch exclusive. Nor the indies that end up in Switch timed exclusives or the nonsense of DQXI with Square...most gaming sites never said a word about it- but Spiderman skin in live service Avengers or FF7 remake is evil!
Thank god for this.
@Robocod Nintendo literally published MUA3 so obviously it was going to be an exclusive to the Switch and we already knew FFVII Remake was going to be a timed exclusive since it was constantly advertised as such and is even mentioned on the game's box
Dragon Quest XI S also started development as the Switch version of the vanilla game and was redone as a definitive version once they realized they couldn't make the mandate to simultaneously launch it on all systems due to UE4 not having proper Switch support at that point
None of those scenarios can be compared to Spider-Man at all. Square had the choice to keep console parity and they chose not to.
@JJ2 maybe because Microsoft actually cares about consumers instead of Sony? If they bought it they would have likey kept it multiplatform like they are with most of there games that's coming out. Sony and Microsoft is not our friends but one of them is showing that they care a bit more
@Envy If they were that "pro consumer" they would have got rid of the Xbox live sun requirement to play online games years ago or actually making all their games available on Multiplatform instead of the drip feeding approach they've been doing for awhile now. It's the classic case of MS having their cake and eating it.
@Envy
I really liked Microsoft...in the 80s and 90s. A few things questionable but all in all I liked them.
Believe what you want and I'm not going into console wars arguments. It's great if you think they care about consumers. I think Sony actually cares about their customers more. I.E the people who buy PlayStation products.
👍
@Envy
Oh yes about the Series S console they ve been hiding. I think a consumer friendly approach would have been to tell people straight away at the same time as the X reveal instead of completely lying by ommission but that's my point of view.
The hypocrisy from comments on this site is shocking. I’m a PlayStation fan as the next person (owned every console). The same people saying it’s “anti -consumer “ are the same people cheering for SONY’s THIRD PARTY DEALS I.e gta 6. I didn’t see anyone here saying it’s anti consumer but people saying Sony is trying to make their platform the best place to play. So Microsoft doesn’t want to make their platform the best place by being interested in Warner bros or other studios ??. Come on guys. Knock it off.
@suikoden 😂
@Lifestranding
I haven't seen anyone saying Ms is 'anti consumer'. (Or maybe sarcastically in response?) On the contrary it's a meaningless buzzword (probably from marketing propaganda) that many people have been parroting against Sony. I agree, its hypocritical to call either of them 'anti consumer's.
That's a relief, I was honestly worried for awhile there.
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