Warner Bros. Discovery Earnings Reports Reveals ‘Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League’ Caused A 41% Loss In Video Game Revenue
In yet further confirmation that the game was a complete and total misfire in almost every regard, Warner Bros. Discovery’s latest earnings report has revealed that the absolute failure of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League led to their quarterly video game revenue declining by digits.
As detailed by the company in their Q2 2024 earnings report, their overall studio revenues for the quarter compared to the same period the year prior “decreased 4% [excluding drops resulting from changes in foreign currency exchange rates]” due to struggles in their TV, theatrical, and video game studios.”
“TV revenue declined 27%, primarily driven by the timing of initial telecast productions as well as lower licensing sales,” reported WBD. “Theatrical revenue increased 19% ex-FX, primarily due to higher home entertainment revenue from Dune: Part Two, and higher box office carryover due to the performance of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, which was released at the end of March.”
And while these double digit declines are significant, they pale in comparison to the damage done to the company’s financials by the under performance of their video games division, wherein “games revenue declined 41% , primarily driven by the weak performance of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League this year, compared to the strong performance of Hogwarts Legacy in the prior year.”
Speaking to this revenue drop during the company’s accompanying Q2 2024 earnings presentation, WBD CFO Gunnar Wiendenfels again outright admitted that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was a major reason for their financial stumble.
“Now turning to studios, we enjoyed healthy theatrical revenue growth despite underperformance of recent releases, and aided by strong carryover from Q1 releases,” said the exec. “Experiences in consumer product revenues continued to perform nicely, and we remain very upbeat about the opportunity we see in better coordinating processes around managing franchises. Television was down, particularly as we worked through the last of the strike-delayed delivery, which sets us up for a big swing up in the second half. While, as we’ve called out last quarter, games are still struggling against last year’s Hogwarts Legacy comp, and a muted response to Suicide Squad this year.”
Further, when later pressed by Goldman Sachs analyst Michael Ng during the presentation’s Q&A portion as to whether WBD considered their video game operations “as a core part of the portfolio”, WBD CEO and President of Global Streming and Games JB Perrette likewise admitted that Task Force X’s latest mission was an absolute bust.
“Yes,” he began, positively answering Ng’s question. “We know that our franchise is particularly in a world where the gaming industry, launching brand new franchises is getting harder and harder for a number of reasons, including IDFA [Identifier for Advertisers] deprecation and more challenges with marketing and customer acquisition. And that franchises, like the ones that we have, are in high demand and can help in launching games.”
“Now, you still need a great game,” he added, “And the reality is we’ve had the unfortunate, in the short period of 12 months, we went from having the record year that we had in 2023 with Hogwarts Legacy, to unfortunately having the opposite side of that spectrum with Suicide Squad.”
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League‘s latest DLC character, Mrs. Freeze, is now available for purchase for all four of the game’s remaining players.
And if that’s not enough to get them to keep playing, per a tease within the aforementioned DLC pack, they can look forward to Deadshot’s daughter, Zoe Lawton, joining the team in the near future.
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