Suicide Squad didn't exactly fly off the shelf for ol' Warner Bros. Despite clearly having a lot of effort put into it, the live-service flop suffered from meandering development, lost Warner Bros. $200 million, and wound up with the same player base as Gotham Knights, somehow. It currently has a 24-hour peak of 181 Steam players at the time of writing, and hasn't broken over 1,000 concurrents on the platform in six months.
That's not to mention Multiversus, which came out of its post-beta hiatus and has been… uh, not doing so great, losing an extra $100 million for the company. Oof. $300 million into fumbled-project tears, Warner Bros. has looked very hard in a mirror, done some deep introspection, and thought: Yeah, maybe we should focus up a bit, here.
During a recent financial call, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav revealed plans to zero in on four IPs. Those being DC ("in particular Batman"), Hogwarts Legacy, Mortal Kombat, and Game of Thrones.
"We're through some of the worst—and it hasn't been pretty on the gaming business—but we have four games that are really powerful," Zaslav says, adding: "We're going to go away from trying to launch 10, 12, 15, 20 different games. I think we have a real chance now with focus to have the gaming business be steadier."
Now, granted, one should point out that both Suicide Squad and Multiversus both heavily featured DC characters, but I suppose the hinted-at return to Batman means a shift away from trying to do an extended universe with the thing. Now, you might be thinking, hey Harvey—didn't Batman get shot in the head? Weren't people mad about it? To which I'll remind you that this is comic book worldbuilding, bucko. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has been un-killing the Justice League for a hot minute.
Of course, there'll need to be someone to replace the late Kevin Conroy, a genuinely gargantuan task, considering how iconic Conroy's voice has been to the role. Mind, Roger Craig Smith didn't do a terrible job in Batman: Arkham Origins, so I'm sure he'll be there to pick up the mantle of the dark knight—when he's not voicing Sonic the Hedgehog. Jeez, that's some impressive range.
Otherwise, it'll be a balanced diet of those four IPs from now on: "We are focusing our development efforts on those core franchises, with proven studios to improve our success ratio," Zaslav adds. Which—I mean, yay, though I have to point out that Rocksteady was absolutely a "proven studio" with a strong pedigree and that didn't quite stop Suicide Squad from happening. Here's hoping history won't repeat itself.
