Comments on: Warner Brothers enters the gaming business, buys a share in Eidos

By: Casey A.

Casey A. — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 18:47:46 +0000

Yeah, games with licenses usually try too hard…*cough* Family Guy for Xbox, anyone?

But still, there’s something so creepy-awesome about Sneak King that it’s totally worth the four dollars to be brainwashed by Burger King.

By: mathmagic

mathmagic — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 15:41:13 +0000

Making games and movies pure for the money has never been good + I don’t like games that are derived from televisionprograms and stuff.

By: stonerocker

stonerocker — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 01:42:00 +0000

As far as I’m concerned, all this means is a slew of second rate games that will be mass produced with names like batman on them in the hopes that the name of it will sell copies. This doesn’t mean good games, this means those games that people will buy on impulse because they liked batman and then they’ll play it once and leave it to collect dust on the shelf.
Or people will just ignore the games, since they won’t be worth the price tag when they come out.

By: D-Fuse

D-Fuse — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 01:23:54 +0000

Doesn’t Adult Swim have the Space Ghost license now? Anyways, I want to see Hanna Barbara Smash Brothers so I can settle the eternal battle between the Jetsons and the Flintstones. Fred’s caveman clubbing FTW!

By: rickdun

rickdun — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 23:28:53 +0000

See, this is a smart thing. The impetus behind this decision is pure business. People that pay for your license will never make great games. With the exception of Goldeneye of course. “Why should i make your brand name more viable? I’d make more money with creative and successful ideas on my own private I.P.”

“Why make another Jedi game when I can do the same game without paying licensing fees? Kotor 3? I’ll just call it Mass Effect.” Gamers dont want to be jedis. They want to use jedi powers. You can’t make a game sell well by slapping Angelina Jolie on the cover. Well,unless it’s unsavory and involves a 10:1 male to female ratio.

You can still have good games but don’t expect new inventive things from companies that license your characters.

However, if you own part of a gaming company, you’re practically bought your way into the company. The majority of the profit is diluted but that means more money for the game designers; they’ll WANT to put their A-game ideas into it. This is the cheapest and fastest way to get Triple AAA games for Warner Bros. Of course, Warner Bros. will need to buy into another company soon after the first next gen Batman game, just to keep up with the dev time needed. I’d squat Atari and the like, the cheap second tier producers, for future Warner Bros type buyouts.