Netflix exec demeans ‘no value’ Warner Bros. Games as ‘minor’ and the future looks grim
Here’s the thing about compounding corporate takeovers; what was once a huge deal to a lot of people becomes ‘relatively minor in the grand scheme of things’ when the bigger entities get hold of it. It becomes small fry. Stuff that can be leveraged, or built in.
That was evidenced quite well by comments from a Netflix executive who “actually didn’t attribute any value to” Warner Bros. Games when considering the $83 billion plus takeover the streamer wants to make of the wider Warner Bros. business.
The comments – which aren’t likely to go down well with fans of Warner-owned franchises like Hogwarts Legacy, Mortal Kombat and Shadow of Mordor or those developers who worked on the games – were made by Netflix’s co-CEO Gregory Peters.
But fair play to Peters, who has come to realise that some of those titles loved by millions of avid gamers have “done quite well” and they might be incorporable into “what we’re offering”.
“While they definitely have been doing some great work in the game space, we actually didn’t attribute any value to that from the get-go because they’re relatively minor compared to the grand scheme of things,” Peters said in comments reported by PocketGamer.biz
“Now we are super excited because some of those properties that they’ve built, Hogwarts is a great example of that, have been done quite well, and we think that we can incorporate that into what we’re offering. They’ve got great studios and great folks working there. So we think that there’s definitely an opportunity there. But just to be clear, we haven’t built that into our deal model.”
The view from the very top of Netflix doesn’t present a very positive future for Warner Bros. Games. It appears the studios will be used as simple value-added tie-ins with Netflix’s other content, it seems.
It will probably mean the days of big budget AAA games from Warner-owned Studios will cease to be. Yay, end stage capitalism.
Chris Smith
