Definitely, 2022 is the year of consolidation in the video game sector with all these stories of takeovers. This very morning, we learned that Square Enix had sold its Western studios to the giant Embracer Groupfor a whopping $300 million (in other words, peanuts for Embracer), and the other lingering rumor over the weekend was about the studios case. WB Games. The very serious Imran Khanan often-reliable Fanbyte reporter, reported that Warner Bros Discovery could part ways with several of its game studios soon.
A flea market of studios at Warner Bros?
Couldn’t get enough confirmation to actually write a post about it, but hearing a decent bit of chatter this week about WB Discovery shopping their game development studios around.
— Imran Khan (@imranzomg) April 29, 2022
First of all, it should be noted that the journalist indicates that several sources report this to him, such as Jeff Gerstmann of Giant Bomb, but that nothing is official or acted for the moment.
Imran Khan then speaks of the fact that the new large group Warner Bros Discovery would seek to separate from several development studios, without specifying which ones, and that the potential interested parties for such studio takeovers would be Microsoft, Sony, Tencent, PUBG Corp, EA or even Take-Two. It should be noted that there is nothing to indicate that all these studios would necessarily go to the same placejust as it is necessary to be aware that all the licenses would not necessarily be included in the lot.
The attractiveness of WB Games is largely due to the strong licenses in the catalog, such as DC Comics, Harry Potter or even Mortal Kombat. The journalist indicates that licenses would also be affected by the sale, but we inevitably have a little trouble seeing Warner Bros Discovery completely separate itself from Batman video game rights for example, or Harry Potter.
On the other hand, if the group really seeks to lower its production costs on the games side, one could logically think that in the future, these licenses could be loaned to certain studios and publishers, as Lucasfilm Games does with Star Wars.
The case of Mortal Kombat is more questionable, of course, and we know that NetherRealm is a studio that could interest many people, starting with the behemoths Sony and Microsoft, even if a new acquisition seems complicated for the latter as long as that of Activision-Blizzard is not completed. TT Games is also one of the studios that could be the most coveted, thanks to his latest success on the LEGO license.
It’s all hallway noise for now. While this isn’t the first time we’ve heard of such rumors, they now take on a whole new dimension as the Warner Bros Discovery merger is now complete, with a change of direction on the horizon.