The “Battle of New Orleans” in the WB bidding war
Ok, so the sub-headline is for my history buffs out there — as the Battle of New Orleans was fought after the War of 1812 had already ended. Comparatively, the bidding war for Warner Bros. had seemingly ended, and the fate of the company was thought to be sealed. However, Paramount is still fighting the battle with their aggressive offers despite a deal being made with Netflix. The company had reportedly “commenced an all-cash tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Warner Bros. Discovery for $30 per share in cash, a deal it says equates to an enterprise value of $108.4 billion.” Unless Paramount becomes successful in its takeover, Netflix currently has a grip on all Warner properties.
WB Games treated as an afterthought?
Now that Netflix has made this deal with Warner Bros., one of the many concerns that people had is how the streaming giant would also manage the subsidiaries under the WB umbrella. The precious gold for Netflix is the movie and TV properties, but Warners also has a slew of video game studios like TT Games (the LEGO game makers), Rocksteady Studios (the Batman: Arkham series) NetherRealm Studios (Mortal Kombat) and others whose fate is currently in the air. According to The Hollywood Reporter, despite the video game branch being a moneymaker and IP-generator for Hollywood, they are not among the top three assets that Netflix will be dedicating attention to.
Joost van Dreunen, a video games professor at the NYU Stern School of Business and the author of One Up: Creativity, Competition, and the Global Business of Video Games, told THR that he is “not super whelmed” by the idea of Netflix managing the gaming branch of the company. Netflix did enter the gaming world in 2021 with some casual mobile originals based on their own IP, but van Dreunen says it was “just a referral engine.” It was seemingly pushed aside, as van Dreunen states, “They had this grand ambition … this was going to be transformative.” He also says Netflix’s gaming effort “feels like the result of the initial efforts not quite turning around. It’s not for lack of talent or lack of IP or lack of effort — [it’s] just not a natural fit.”
The professor is holding out for hope, but also feeling jaded, saying, “While I still believe that they’re going to come up with something reasonable, they have kind of pushed the little games pots to the back of the stove.” He continued, “I read the (acquisition) pitch deck, and they mentioned the word ‘games’ exactly twice and [the plan] is never described.”
