If the video game department of Warner Bros. was largely driven by Hogwarts Legacy over the previous fiscal year, WB will not be able to count on the Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League from Rocksteady in order to line their pockets during the current year. In any case, this is what the results published by WB at the end of the first quarter of 2024.
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Suicide Squad: Kill The results from Warner
During the conference dedicated to investors which followed the publication of the aforementioned results, financial director Gunnar Wiedenfels put his cards on the table: “[en ce qui concerne les studios de jeu vidéo] the decline of over $400 million year-over-year in the first quarter was primarily due to the very difficult comparison we faced in gaming with the success of Hogwart's Legacy last year in first quarter, in conjunction with the disappointing release of Suicide Squad last quarter, which had a negative impact, resulting in a $200 million impact on EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization ) during the first trimester.”
The disastrous trajectory of the game based on the DC Comics universe is described as significantly “disappointing” (or “disappointing”) by David Zaslav, president of Warner Bros. Discovery. Sales forecasts were not met, leading to a sharp drop in expected revenues. Warner Bros. CEO Jason Kilar for his part insisted on the fact that the poor performance of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League had largely overshadowed the company's overall financial performance. A significant negative impact of the commercial failure of the game on the financial results of the entire studio, while the financial report still shows “total first quarter revenue of $9,958 million“. A decrease in revenue of 7%, compared to the first quarter of the previous year, but which remains a completely honorable performance.
The financial failure of Suicide Squad comes amid a broader context of shake-up within the company. Indeed, the recent merger of Warner Bros. with Discovery, Inc. has sparked thoughts about the future of Warner Bros.' video game division. and how it will be integrated into the new structure. David Zaslav seems not to lose hope regarding the exploitation of WB licenses, since he declares that “Warner Bros. Discovery's intellectual properties, which include Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Superman and many other parts of the DC Universe, are largely underutilized“. Implying by this that there is reason to turn the greenback press. We will still note that if Rocksteady is not directly incriminated in the failure of the game, we nevertheless remain worried about the The future of the studio, which could experience a fairly violent boomerang (sorry) given the failure of their last production.