REACTION - Warner Bros. pivoting to live service shows no lessons were learned from Suicide Squad
Picard face palm to the max.
By Jonathan Garrett
06/03/24
Incompetence does not discriminate, and appears to strike anyone with a vague lack of common sense. Warner Bros. today have demonstrated a fascinating absence of self awareness by claiming that “one and done” console games aren’t going to work for their broader strategy, and that live service should be the tentpole of their approach.
The critical and commercial failure of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League should have been all the evidence they needed to realise this is a non starter for them. You’d think that the 20+ million copies sold for Hogwarts Legacy might have given them a lightbulb moment; even though it’s a licensed title, it was still the first in a potential franchise that had barnstorming success out the gate.
With EA claiming that established IP are the only way forward, and now this, the AAA development space is in a volatile position right now with little certainty of what lies ahead. There isn’t an easy answer, but if development costs and game pricing continues to balloon, it’s likely critical mass will be reached and a collapse is all but inevitable.
TARPS?
At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.
