Warner Bros Makes Move Into Game Development 25
Thanks to Yahoo for reprinting the press release revealing Warner Bros has created a new videogame division, headed by Monolith co-founder Jason Hall, which "will focus on the creation, development, production and distribution of games that will be marketed to consumers under the Warner Bros. Games brand." This represents a change of attitude for Warner Bros, who previously licensed titles such as Harry Potter and The Matrix for external game development, and GameSpot provides some background for the move, noting that new WBIE boss Jason Hall "...was CEO of Monolith Productions, developer of Tron 2.0 and No One Lives Forever 2... There were previous ties between the two companies, since Monolith is currently developing the Matrix MMORPG, The Matrix Online." Update: 01/15 04:22 GMT by S : Game Informer has an interview with Jason Hall about his new position, in which he hints on "...some interesting developments throughout the course of this year... things like the Harry Potter titles."
Trying again are we... (Score:4, Informative)
They already did... (Score:3, Informative)
Time Warner Interactive was probably best remembered for Rise of the Robots [worldvillage.com] Rise2: Resurection [vidgames.com] (the sequel of the former) and Primal Rage [vidgames.com]...
Of course all of these were fighting games, but they did a few that weren't fighting games...however, their games were infamous for their suckitude...even those games that had fans (like ROTR) were nothing more than eye candy (no real playability)...however, this was honestly close to the end for the origonal Atari...
Re:Glaring Absence (Score:2, Informative)
It's true that Warner Bros. has numerous properties upon which future games could be based. But considering that the studio has already sold off the rights to many of its high-profile franchises--the Harry Potter and the Loony Tunes movies have been sold to EA; the Matrix rights to Atari; the Batman animated series and Matrix massively multiplayer rights to Ubisoft; the Justice League animated series to Midway--it's unclear to me which blockbuster properties remain for Warners' new interactive group to exploit. Here's the URL for the Newsweek piece:
He's Got Games
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3770460/