The success of free-to-play cross-platform games did not go unnoticed by Warner Bros., which had previously experimented with shareware monetization mainly in mobile. Now the company is preparing its response to Fortnite and Genshin Imact.
Gotham Knights
Such a conclusion can be made by reading the description of a number of vacancies that Warner Bros. published on its website on February 11-12.
Some of them report that specialists are being recruited to work on a new shareware AAA game.
Development is underway at WB Games San Diego. As noted in the company itself, this is a young division (it was founded in 2019), which specializes in cross-platform free-play games of the next generation about “cult characters”.
Among the open specialties: the lead designer of the combat system (among other things, will have to work on the capabilities of various characters and how they move), product manager, product director, producer and many others.
For Warner Bros. such an initiative is remarkable in itself. Previously, its gaming division mainly earned on premium products and DLC for them. The most striking example here is Mortal Kombat 11, to which more than two dozen paid add—ons have been released.
The exception was the mobile market, where the company has always successfully worked with frituplay. Now Warner Bros. he earns about $ 15 million a month in this area, according to the analytical service AppMagic. Most of the cash accounts for the 4X strategy Game of Thrones: Conquest, but fighting games also show themselves well.
The distribution of the free-duplex model to a cross-platform, the willingness to make a big AAA game on the Unreal Engine with such monetization is a bold and important decision for Warner Bros. And it is clearly inspired by the successes of Fortnite, PUBG, Call of Duty: Warzone and, perhaps, additionally fueled by the excellent box office Genshin Impact.
Another thing is that now she is not the only one who is going to catch up with the pioneers of cross-platform frituplay. Recently, Ubisoft announced similar ambitions. “In fiscal year 2022, we will continue our evolutionary transition from a model focused on the release of AAA games to a system in which AAA releases are combined with new premium and freeplay projects on different platforms,” said Frederick Duguet, the company’s CFO.