Warner Bros Games has blamed the ‘disappointing’ Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League for its underwhelming Q1 financial results. In fact, CEO David Zaslav blamed the game’s failure for its entire Studios division underperforming, including Warner Bros Pictures, DC, Warner Bros Television Group, Warner Bros Games and New Line Cinema. Zaslav says there was a huge difference between the huge success of Hogwarts Legacy last year and Suicide Squad this year.
Zaslav spoke in a recent financial earnings call, calling out Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League‘s disappointing financial performance as one of the sole reasons why Warner Bros Studios reported such low figures this year. “We have the characters and the stories people love and yearn for everywhere in the world, in every language,” said Zaslav.
Focusing his sights on Suicide Squad, the CEO commented:
“Unfortunately, the studio’s Q1 financials were overshadowed by the tough [comparison] at Games, following the great performance of Hogwarts Legacy last year, and the disappointing release of Suicide Squad in Q1 in our gaming group.”
Warner Bros Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels added that Suicide Squad‘s underwhelming performance led to “a $200 million impact to EBIDTA [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation] during the first quarter.”
Earlier this year, Warner Bros Games doubled down on its plans to push out more live service games in the future. I wonder if the tune has changed following these results, considering the blatant differences between the success of the single-player Hogwarts Legacy last year and Suicide Squad‘s ill-received live service this year.
Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League launched back in February to mostly negative reviews. A couple of weeks ago, Steam numbers showed that the player count for the game had dropped so low, it was bringing in less concurrent players than the dead Marvel’s Avengers. To address the elephant in the room, developer Rocksteady’s future is now uncertain and there’s a good chance that it might face closure or serious cutbacks as a result.
Source: Video Games Chronicle
