Warner: MultiVersus has severely underperformed

Things certainly haven't gone Warner Bros' way over the past two years. While they've had success with Hogwarts Legacy and Mortal Kombat 1, they've underperformed with Gotham Knights, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions - and now it turns out that MultiVersus has also flopped badly.

IGN reports that CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels admits the game has caused losses of nearly $100 million, and in connection with the latest quarterly report he said:

"We took another $100 million plus impairment due to the underperforming releases, primarily MultiVersus this quarter, bringing total writedown year-to-date to over $300 million in our games business, a key factor in this year's studio profit decline."

Going forward, Warner's gaming division will focus primarily on four series, specifically Hogwarts Legacy, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones and DC (particularly Batman). On reflection, it doesn't feel like it's the series that have been their biggest problem, but that they've delivered live service titles that no one has asked for with insufficient quality.

Their more traditional titles that can be enjoyed offline like Hogwarts Legacy and Mortal Kombat 1 have fared better, but there is a real concern that Warner will miss this connection and want to make Hogwarts Legacy 2 a multiplayer title. As recently as March, they even declared that they wanted to focus more on free-to-play, mobile games and live service.