WB Games Vows To Double Down On Live Service Games During Earnings Call

WB Games wants to delve deeper into games-as-a-service, and CEO David Zaslav said that the focus would be on more live service games going forward during today's earnings call.

The following quote comes from a transcript of today's earnings call via Seeking Alpha.

"Our focus is on transforming our biggest franchises from largely console and PC based with three-four year release schedules to include more always on gameplay through live services, multiplatform and free-to-play extensions with the goal to have more players spending more time on more platforms. Ultimately we want to drive engagement and monetization of longer cycles and at higher levels. We have put specific capabilities. We are currently under scale and see significant opportunity to generate greater post purchase revenue."

WB Games had a big hit on their hands this year with Hogwarts Legacy, and during the earnings call, it was revealed that players have put over 700 million hours into the game, but Hogwarts Legacy isn't a live service game, so they of course think they can monetize those 700 million hours.

We, of course, have seen the constant failure of live service games over the past few years, and even WB Games has seen failure in this market with the shutdown of Multiversus (though they say it's coming back in 2024).

Once again, we the consumers ask developers and publishers to simply make good games. That's the secret sauce they always seem to be missing or flat-out avoiding. You would think Hogwarts Legacy would be a lesson to that, but alas, it seems they think exactly the opposite.