A week after Warner Bros. admitted that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League failed to meet expectations, the game’s player count seems to have dropped to concerning levels. On Steam, Suicide Squad’s concurrent players are peaking at a few hundred only, and it seems that things aren’t any better on consoles.

Suicide Squad player count doesn’t bode well for its future

As noted by Forbes’ Paul Tassi, less than a month after its release, Suicide Squad saw just 593 concurrent players on Steam a day ago, with the number dropping as low as 287. This is alarming for a live service game that needs a robust player count to justify the cost of keeping servers online.

PlayStation and Xbox do not have a system for revealing concurrent player counts, but Tassi noted that he hasn’t seen Suicide Squad anywhere in Xbox’s top 50 for the past week at least — not a good sign for a game that only just released.

Suicide Squad launched to mostly negative reviews, with its PS5 version settling for 60/100 on Metacritic. Warner Bros. revealed in a recent financial earnings call that the $70 game has “fallen short of our expectations,” resulting in its games business seeing a “tough year-over-year comp in Q1.”

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Fans have their hopes up for Hogwarts Legacy 2 amid official confirmation from WB Games that the 2023 release was the best-selling game worldwide last year. Despite the controversy surrounding it, Hogwarts Legacy beat popular games like Call of Duty, with sales crossing 22 million copies by the end of 2023.

Hogwarts Legacy 2 seems all but confirmed as Warner Bros. teases more Harry Potter

In an exclusive interview with Variety, WB’s David Haddad expressed his delight at Hogwarts Legacy shattering records only held by popular multiplayer games year after year. “It’s not just the units sold that I’m so proud of, it’s just that it delighted the fans so much,” Haddad gushed. “It brought Harry Potter to life in a new way for gamers where they could be themselves in this world, in this story.”

Hadded went on to say that WB is designing the upcoming Quidditch Champions game to “delight” fans, and it’s also working on “a series of other things” that “will let the fans be part of this [Harry Potter] world and stories and characters in deeper and deeper ways.” What these “things” are is anybody’s guess but fans are convinced that a Hogwarts Legacy sequel is one of them.

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Monolith Productions’ upcoming Wonder Woman game could be a live service title, according to a new job listing. The listing appeared just days after publisher Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment reaffirmed it would be transforming its biggest franchises into live service games.

Wonder Woman live service could be part of the Nemesis System

The developer is looking for a person who would preferably have “experience helping maintain a live software product or game”, as spotted by WCCFTech in the job description for the Lead Software Engineer (Gameplay). Wonder Woman was first announced in 2021 as a single-player, open-world, action game but few details have been revealed since then. It’s unknown what form the live service could take, but it could be an expansion of the popular Nemesis System.

The Nemesis System first appeared in Monolith’s Middle-earth games. The system would randomly generate Orc enemies that would react to the player’s actions and create their own career path. In Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, players could then recruit the generated Orc Captains into their squads.

Wonder Woman will also have the Nemesis System according to the job description. This describes a person set to “lead the team responsible for core gameplay systems inherent to Monolith’s proprietary engine, including combat, movement, the Nemesis system, and more.”

The reports come just a week after Warner Bros. said it wanted to “transform” its biggest franchises into live service games. The publisher has seen recent live service success with Mortal Kombat 1, although there have been complaints from players over its emphasis on microtransactions.

Despite plenty of player criticism, there will also be live service features in the upcoming Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League. These will include a Battle Pass and further live service post-launch content, although further details on this will be revealed in later installments of the Suicide Squad Insider video series.

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President and chief executive officer for Warner Bros David Zaslav has revealed that NetherRealm Studio’s Mortal Kombat 1 has amassed almost 3 million copies sold since its launch just under two months ago.

Blood Money

The news was made public as Zaslav spoke during an earnings call for the company’s third quarter for its 2023 fiscal year. Before the game was released in September, the series was revealed to have sold 80 million copies in its history, making it the most successful fighting game franchise of all time.

Recent history has seen the series grow in stature and sales as Mortal Kombat X and Mortal Kombat 11 passed the 10 million mark, while Mortal Kombat 9 had been the previous frontrunner with more than 4 million.

For extra context on how far the series has come, It took Mortal Kombat 9 four months to reach Mortal Kombat 1’s current numbers. It also manages to be a pretty respectable haul considering just how packed the release schedule has been in that time, with the likes of Super Mario Wonder, Alan Wake 2, Spider-Man 2, and more vying for a piece of our wallets.

No wonder Warner Bros. is keen to turn its biggest moneymakers into live service titles.

PlayStation Lifestyle’s Michael Leri reviewed the game back in September, handing it an 8/10. In his review, he wrote, ”Mortal Kombat 1 has some of the most liberating combat mechanics NetherRealm has ever made, but some of the peripheral features fall a little short of what the studio has achieved prior.”

NetherRealm has a host of guest characters joining the game, including John Cena’s Peacemaker, and J.K. Simmons’ Omni-Man from Invincible.

Mortal Kombat 1 is available now on PS4 and PS5.

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Warner Bros. (WB) has said that it wants to “transform” its biggest franchises into live service games that aren’t limited to console and PC. In a recent earnings call, WB Discovery CEO David Zaslav that the company wants to attract more players across more platforms.

WB Games is happy with Mortal Kombat 1 sales amid criticisms of excessive monetization

Zaslav told investors that WB’s live service efforts are paying off, with Mortal Kombat 1 selling three million copies since launch in mid-September. The game has come under fire repeatedly for its excessive microtransactions, which include expensive premium fatalities.

“Our focus is on transforming our biggest franchises from largely console and PC based with three-four year release schedules to include more always-on gameplay through live services, multiplatform, and free-to-play extensions with the goal to have more players spending more time on more platforms,” Zaslav said (transcript via SeekingAlpha). “Ultimately, we want to drive engagement and monetization of longer cycles and at higher levels.”

WB said that it has a treasure trove of billion-dollar gaming properties, including Harry Potter and Batman, and it wants to utilize them to its advantage. “We are currently under scale and see significant opportunity to generate greater post purchase revenue,” Zaslav concluded.

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The Last of Us Season 2 will officially enter production next year, HBO CEO Casey Bloys confirmed during a recent press conference on Thursday.

According to Bloys (via Variety), the highly anticipated next season of the live-action adaptation will begin production in early 2024, but he didn’t give any indication of when the show might debut. Variety notes that the second series of the series wasn’t on the network’s 2024 slate presentation, meaning that it might not arrive until 2025 at the earliest.

Variety has reported that HBO CEO Casey Bloys spoke at a press conference this morning and revealed that The Last of Us Season 2 will be entering production in early 2024. He noted that the WGA strike and the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike delayed the production of the second season, which the outlet states was not on the network’s 2024 slate presentation. This means the upcoming season will likely arrive, at the earliest, in 2025.

What is The Last of Us about?

“The live-action series takes place 20 years after modern civilization has been destroyed,” reads the synopsis. “Joel and Ellie, a pair connected through the harshness of the world they live in, are forced to endure brutal circumstances and ruthless killers on a trek across a post-pandemic America.”

The Last of Us currently stars Pedro Pascal as Joel, Bella Ramsey as Ellie, Gabriel Luna as Tommy Miller, and Rutina Wesley as Maria. Season 2 is expected to be based on Naughty Dog’s acclaimed video game sequel The Last of Us Part II, which will feature a significant time jump introducing a now grown-up Ellie.

Season 1 also featured Nico Parker, Anna Torv, Melanie Lynskey, Murray Bartlett, Nick Offerman, and Storm Reid. It also included guest-star appearances from the original video game’s actors Jeffrey Pierce, Merle Dandridge, Troy Baker, and Ashley Johnson as new characters.

The series is executive produced and co-written by Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin and original game writer Neil Druckmann, who is also serving as one of the directors. It is a co-production with Sony Pictures Television in association with PlayStation Productions. Executive producers are Carolyn Strauss, Naughty Dog President Evan Wells, and PlayStation Productions’ Asad Qizilbash and Carter Swan.

Season 1 is now available for streaming on Max.

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After months of anticipation, HBO’s The Last of Us live-action series was a massive success for Warner Bros. Discovery. The company has revealed that The Last of Us Season 1 viewership set records across the board.

What was The Last of Us Season 1’s viewership?

The news came via Warner Bros. Discovery’s investors call for Q1 of 2023. In it, the company confirmed that The Last of Us averaged almost 32 million viewers per episode in the United States. Further, it became the most-watched show in the history of HBO Max in Europe and Latin America.

The streaming platform as a whole — due in part to The Last of Us‘ success — also grew to 97.6 million in March. That’s up 1.6 million from December.

Check out The Last of Us Season 1 viewership info below:

The Last of Us starred Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as Joel and Ellie, respectively, and was praised for its handling of the video game material. Currently, a second season is in the works, with no official release information available as of now.

Along with Pascal and Ramsey, The Last of Us also featured Gabriel Luna (Terminator: Dark Fate) as Tommy Miller, Nico Parker (Dumbo) as Joel’s daughter Sarah, and Anna Torv (Mindhunter) as Tess. Merle Dandridge (The Flight Attendant) reprises her role from the video games as Marlene – the leader of a resistance group known as the Fireflies. It also features Jeffrey Pierce (Bosch) as Perry, Murray Bartlett (The White Lotus) as Frank, Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation) as Bill, and Storm Reid (Euphoria) as Riley.

“The live-action series takes place 20 years after modern civilization has been destroyed,” reads the synopsis. “Joel and Ellie, a pair connected through the harshness of the world they live in, are forced to endure brutal circumstances and ruthless killers on a trek across a post-pandemic America.”

The series is executive produced and co-written by Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin and original game writer Neil Druckmann, who also served as one of the directors. It is a co-production with Sony Pictures Television in association with PlayStation Productions.

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During a recent earnings call, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav hinted at the possibility of future Superman and Game of Thrones video games.

Will there be a Superman or Game of Thrones video game?

The First Quarter 2023 earnings call, which took place earlier on Friday, saw Zaslav briefly mention the company’s gaming business. He specifically talked about the benefit of Warner Bros. owning all of its own rights, and how that could help them create anything they want.

“We may be the only media company that owns–whether it be the DC universe, Harry Potter, all the content that we own, Game of Thrones–that’s for us to deploy. I think that’s particularly important strategically,” Zaslav said (via TweakTown).

Zaslav also brought up the future James Gunn film Superman: Legacy and talked about how they have the ability to create more than just movies to allow people to continue exploring that world.

“When we launch a product on Max or HBO, and when we have a game, that game belongs to us, but now there’s this in-betweener,” said Zaslav. “It may be in the next couple of years that we launch a Superman movie and…people spend more time, and there’s more economics of people just hanging out in the Superman world and universe.”

While the comments were not full confirmation of any of Warner Bros. Discovery’s plans, it does seem like they are keeping an eye on the gaming industry as a whole. Last year, co-CEO of DC Studios James Gunn noted that he does plan for video games to exist that will be connected to the new era of the DC Universe, although it’s unclear just what games that might be for now.

The character of Superman is no stranger to video games, with the Man of Steel having had countless games pop up throughout the 1990s and 2000s. However, his only standalone game was 2006’s Superman Returns, a tie-in game for the film of the same name. Since then, he’s appeared in a variety of other games, most notably the Injustice fighting game series, as well as in the fighting game MultiVersus and various Lego-based comic book games.

Despite its popularity, Game of Thrones hasn’t had too many high-profile video game adaptations. The most notable is Telltale Games’ episodic game that was released in 2014, and since then, a handful of mobile games have made their way out.

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WB Games has revealed Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions, a new standalone, competitive multiplayer game that’s currently open for playtest registration. Like Hogwarts Legacy before it, the game will be published under the Portkey Games label. It has been in development for several years by Unbroken Studios and will be releasing on PC and consoles, though it has not been confirmed whether the game will be arrive on both PS5 and PS4.

Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions requires an always online connection

If you’re interested in participating in current and future playtests of Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions, you can register here at the official website. Given that it seems to be a multiplayer-only game, it’s not too surprising that it will require an internet connection to play. This suggests that it will come with an offline mode in case you want to play Quidditch in practice mode.

Besides Quidditch, the game will also engage players in “other broomstick adventures alongside friends in a competitive, multiplayer setting,” so it looks like there will be activities on the side. Players can also create and customize their own characters.

No release date for Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions has been announced. It’s also unclear if there will be some integration between this game and Hogwarts Legacy (though it may be more likely that it’s paired with the hinted sequel). At the very least, this standalone game explains why quidditch wasn’t in Hogwarts Legacy.

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The Spider-Man 2 release date could have been one of the reasons behind the significant Suicide Squad delay announced yesterday, April 13. This speculation comes from Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, who not only revealed that Spider-Man 2 would apparently release in September 2023, but agreed that Suicide Squad may have been pushed out of the holiday season this year to avoid competing with other game releases.

There are likely many reasons for the Suicide Squad delay

Schreier responded to a fan who thought this extensive delay could have been due to a game with a November or December release date, given that February 2024 is a particularly interesting month for Suicide Squad to be pushed to. In a tweet, Schreier speculates that “Spider-Man 2 in September could be factor, too.”

As we reported yesterday, Rocksteady Studios delayed Suicide Squad nine months from its May 2023 release window to the new release date of February 2, 2024. The developer stated that this “tough but necessary decision” has been made in order to polish the game.

That said, it’s presumed that another reason for the delay is due to the relatively poor to mixed reactions to Suicide Squad, particularly during the PlayStation State of Play back in February this year. There’s even a rumor from Window Central’s Jaz Corden that Rocksteady is working to remove the always online component of the game.

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