Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment may be getting sold off

At least that means Lego Skywalker Saga should still be going ahead then?

I wonder who will eventually end up buying all of these studios, from reading around it sounds like they want to sell them in one complete block rather than a price per studio so whoever it is will need rather big pockets, not just for th initial buying price but the 1000’s of extra staff as well.

This is bad news all around, for both the studios involved and consumers.

90% of WBIE titles are licensed Warner properties. While the studio may continue to license games for a while, I can't see that being a sustainable business model.

I also can't see one of the major studios wanting to purchase 14 (or so) additional studios in such a huge deal. What's in it for them? And even if it did happen, many of them would undoubtedly be shuttered straight away.

I did come up with one solution though – Nintendo should buy them! I know it would be unprecedented, but they'd be adding much needed development capacity instantly. That would also make them less reliant on the Warner licences. Unfortunately, I don't believe they would ever do such a thing.

SerialCeler wrote:This is bad news all around, for both the studios involved and consumers.

90% of WBIE titles are licensed Warner properties. While the studio may continue to license games for a while, I can't see that being a sustainable business model.

I also can't see one of the major studios wanting to purchase 14 (or so) additional studios in such a huge deal. What's in it for them? And even if it did happen, many of them would undoubtedly be shuttered straight away.

I did come up with one solution though – Nintendo should buy them! I know it would be unprecedented, but they'd be adding much needed development capacity instantly. That would also make them less reliant on the Warner licences. Unfortunately, I don't believe they would ever do such a thing.

Can the studio not just continue to license out properties like other movie studios used to? Or is that not possible?

gaminglegend wrote:Can the studio not just continue to license out properties like other movie studios used to? Or is that not possible?

They can, (and I think they will to begin with) but I think the likelihood of them doing that at the same volume and the same enthusiasm when those studios are not in-house will be much reduced - especially when they won’t get anything like the same returns as they would as a publisher.