Warner Bros. Discovery is reportedly considering licensing its various intellectual properties to other game studios.
The situation comes after the company previously considered selling off its smaller assets in an effort to avoid a total breakup. CEO David Zaslav made the consideration while speaking as part of the studio's financial results.
Warner Bros. Discovery's Troubling Situation
As he discussed why he thought Hogwarts Legacy, which was released in 2023, was such a success, he also talked about how it could be a template for future titles.
Zaslav said that one of the reasons that the game was such a hit was that it took players to become a part of its world.
Zaslav said that this was the big piece of where the video games industry is going, moving forward.
He added that they could create another movie, whether it be Batman, Superman, or Harry Potter, but noted that inviting people into a whole new world is something they can still do, according to the Video Games Chronicle.
He also said that Warner Bros. Discovery still has 11 studios as well as a lot of intellectual properties. Zaslav added that there was a lot of interest among others in coming to take advantage of some of the latter for gaming, which is something that they are considering.
While Warner Bros. Discovery has a large number of established intellectual properties, it has experienced significant difficulty in the past few years.
The Mortal Kombat franchise may have been successful but a lot of its other IPs have remained relatively untouched for years.
Zaslav's comments alongside the president of global streaming and games, JB Perrette, were in response to a question about the "strategic value" of games to the studio. This was given the recent "uneven performance" that the company experienced, said IGN.
The Studio's Gaming Revenue
This comes as Warner Bros. Discovery recently reported gaming revenue has dropped by 41% year-over-year due to the significantly disappointing performance of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League this year compared to Hogwarts Legacy last year.
The CEO's statement also comes as the studio's senior management had recently considered selling off smaller assets in an effort to avoid a break-up of the company. This came following a drop of nearly 70% in its stock price since it was formed in 2022.
Zaslav alongside chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels allegedly evaluated "all options" in order to arrest the decline.
However, senior executives who carried out a detailed analysis of the potential consequences of a split determined that fencing off declining TV channels from streaming and studio business was not the best option at the time, according to the Financial Times.
