Yves Lachance has been promoted to senior vice president of development for Warner Bros Games Montreal, where the studio will work on games based on Game of Thrones and Harry Potter. NetherRealm, headed by vice president of development Shaun Himmerick, will continue to work on Mortal Kombat games. Warner Bros. Games New York, on the other hand, will be headed up by Steven Flenory as vice president of central tech and services, as well as central tech and services. The studio will focus on QA, user research, and customer service.

The trio will work directly under Warner Bros Discovery’s CEO of global streaming and games, J.B. Perrette. Internally, teams working on production and tech will report to Lachance and Himmerick. The publishing division at WB Games will continue to be under Perrette.

“Our company is home to some of the biggest franchises in the world, and we are optimizing our team structure to develop long-term franchise roadmaps to delight players and fans of Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Mortal Kombat and DC games,” Perrette said about the move. “We are very fortunate to have a strong stable of development and technology talent, and Yves, Shaun, and Steven are respected leaders with excellent track records in their areas of expertise. I’m looking forward to working closely with them and the team as we work to make the best games possible for our key franchises.”

Back in March, Warner Bros. had reaffirmed this plans to focus on its big four franchises in a letter to its shareholders. According to the company, it wants WB Games to “refocus our resources and capital on proven IP and games from proven, world-class studios.”

“As we have previously said, 2024 was a disappointing year for our Games business, and we have recently announced a restructuring plan to refocus our resources and capital on proven IP and games from proven, world-class studios,” wrote the company in the letter. “We are focusing our Games business around four tentpole franchises that have each generated over $1 billion in consumer sales in past years: Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Mortal Kombat, and DC – particularly top tier characters like Batman.”

Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav had first spoken about this plan to focus on Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Mortal Kombat, and DC back in November 2024. Talking about the company’s relatively bad year in the gaming market, Zaslav also spoke about how the gaming division at Warner Bros. will bounce back.

“We’re through some of the worst — and it hasn’t been pretty on the gaming business — but we have four games that are really powerful and have a real constituency that loves them, and we’re going to focus on those four primarily,” he said. “We’re going to go away from trying to launch 10, 12, 15, 20 different games. I think we have a real chance now with focus to have the gaming business be steadier.”

“We have four strong and profitable game franchises with loyal, global fans: Hogwarts Legacy, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, and DC, in particular Batman. We are focusing our development efforts on those core franchises, with proven studios to improve our success ratio.”

Early Access Content and Reception

Kingsroad has been in early access since March 26^th with a full release set for May 21^st. 63 days is not a very long early access period, but the developers at Netmarble are confident in the stability of their game. The early access build is nothing to sneeze at content-wise, boasting a whopping 50 chapters within the main story as well as large number of explorable cities and landmarks including King’s Landing, Winterfall, and Highgarden. That said, regardless of how Netmarble feels about the state of the game, player reception hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows. Kingsroad currently sits with a ‘mixed’ rating on Steam across over a thousand players. Most critical reviews cite aggressive pay-to-win monetization as a major hindrance to enjoying the game.

Built in UE5

Epic recently released an interview with the devs of Kingsroad, discussing the methods used to craft the open-world mobile title. So, it’s no secret just how proud the graphics engine leader is in this game. One of the key takeaways from the interview is the world partition technique used to lighten the performance load of the open world. This is done by only loading in zones within proximity of the player. Draw distances are pretty impressive as well, with HLOD being employed to keep the 700 foot wall and other towering landmarks detailed from most vantage points.

Open-World Exploration

While we don’t know the complete surface size of the game’s map, we do know the early access areas are quite large. Opening up the map reveals all of Westeros with the Kingsroad dividing the center. A majority of the early access areas are in the North, including large zones around Castle Black just south of The Wall. Areas are so large that horse mounts are available early on in the game to traverse around with. Like other open world RPGs, the environment is filled with crafting ingredients, shops, treasure chests, quests, and world bosses. If you’re looking for a bunch of open world activities to lose yourself in, this has plenty.

Crafting and Loot

The most ubiquitous of these activities is, of course, ingredient gathering. Kingsroad has a healthy amount of crafting materials that can be plucked from the environment and some are quest rewards and daily bonuses too. Materials have a rarity tier to them, which determines the quality of items you craft. Some of the more common items that can be made from crafting are potions like HP tinctures, but elemental arrows, bolts, and throwing daggers can be crafted as well. Inventory is limited in the game, so frequently crafting and selling items is well advised.

Quests

If it’s the story you’ve come to experience, Kingsroad has a very lengthy main quest. You start out as a heir (shocker) to house Tyre in the North and eventually become entangled in the political escapades the series has been known for. There’s a lot of classic Game of Thrones lore found throughout this game’s quests, with the main character’s journey coming to a head with the ultimate showdown between the Nightswatch and White Walkers. The game is set during the later half of the show’s season 4, so it’ll be interesting to see if the story can fill in some of the holes that season ended on. The hundreds of side quests, faction quests, and artifact quests compliment the main story with faction disputes, hunts, and helping popular characters out from the show. Kingsroad is a very story-heavy game, with 10-long talking sessions and cutscenes being somewhat common.

Fun Action Combat

Since this is an action RPG, the player has full range of movement and manual attack inputs during combat. Dodging, countering, and guarding all come into play here, with enemies also performing the same range of defensive moves depending on their intelligence. Oh, and you can even animation-cancel, which is always one of the key hallmarks of a good action RPG for me. Each class has unique attacks that are set on a timer, so don’t go in expecting a thoughtless button masher. There’s a basic attack, heavy attack, and various skill attacks to choose from with the three classes determining more unique abilities.

Classes

Yes, even the full release of the game is locked to just three classes. Hopefully the limited range of classes is enough to sustain the game for a while. Sellsword is the middle of the line warrior class balancing defense with offense. This is likely the class to choose if you’re planning to use a hybrid swordsman/archer. The Knight is the defensive tank build meant to establish an array of defensive buffs. Knights get the heaviest weapons in the game and excel in heavy attacks. I’m hearing a lot of good things about the Assassin class thanks to their agile DPS output. Flipping around with daggers like a ninja is no doubt going to be the choice for those wanting to really get in close with stealth kills.

Boss Fights

There are plenty of unique boss fights in the game to test a player’s endurance and skill (and maybe bank account but we’ll get into that later). These battles will especially test one’s mastery of cooldowns and inventory management as the pressure to heal and apply antidotes becomes a necessity. The bosses with multiple group enemies require target lock usage more than the larger bosses. If you want a cool Monster Hunter Wilds-like experience, hunt down some of the World Bosses for some jolly cooperation against Westeros’ dragons and the like.

Altar of Memories

And that’s where this dedicated mode comes in. The Altar of Memories mode is where players can join others in raid type boss battles. Teams of up to four players battle through dungeons, where special traps are used to immobilize large bosses like the Ironbeak Griffin and giant ice spiders.

Skills

Skills grant players the more interesting attacks and abilities in the game. Only a set number of Active Skills can be equipped, and they’re typically unique to the a particular class. Skills like the Riposte Stance and Shoulder Charge require Rage (which accumulates by attacking) to perform. Meanwhile, Basic Skills enhance ordinary basic attacks and cooldowns. Levelling up Active and Basic Skills requires Skill Points, which are attained mostly through quests and levelling up your character level.

Trait Trees

Of course, being the RPG that it is, Skills aren’t the only way to progress a character. Traits confer a variety of passive stat increases along with unique abilities. Attack, Defense, and Support are the three Trait trees, and if you’re like me, you’ll be heading straight to the Parry ability located within the Defense tree.

Estate Management ‘minigame’

Being the heir to one of the houses comes with some responsibilities. And in this case, one of those is rebuilding an estate filled with various services and buildings. Building materials and currency are needed to upgrade aspects of the Estate, so there’s a potential for some grind, especially given the free to play live service nature of the game. Estate buildings range from workshops that sell equipment to Stables which sell and store horses.

Daily Activity Caps

So yeah, back to why the game has a mixed rating on Steam. While basic story progression isn’t exactly gated behind any paywall, it can be restricted based on the Recharge Point system. When RP runs out, the player must either spend virtual currencies to buy more or wait until the next day.  The way the developers have addressed RP concerns is not exactly comforting either. Netmarble reassures that the “team is actively discussing balance adjustments to increase the daily amount of RP provided.” So, RP limitations are still a thing with the full release; wonderful. Additionally, there’s timed missions, which just further adds a sense of FOMO in a game where there really shouldn’t be any.

Monetization

Well, this is a mobile live service game after all, so maybe FOMO and monetization is expected. In-game currency can be used to fast travel and share equipment across different characters on the same account. There’s also a lot of cosmetics to purchase within the game’s various menus.

Platforms and Pricing

But at least the game is free to play, right? Well, it will be when it officially launches. To play during the early access period, you have to shell out $24.99 for the standard edition, which grants an additional outfit. Game of Thrones Kingsroad comes out of early access with its official launch on May 21^st on PC, Android, and IOS.

The company describes its games business as “a strategic differentiator” since studios under the WB Games banner can tap into the various IPs owned by the company to make games. It also says that the gaming market is “one of the fastest growing media segments”, thanks to its “over three billion global gamers.”

“As we have previously said, 2024 was a disappointing year for our Games business and we have recently announced a restructuring plan to refocus our resources and capital on proven IP and games from proven, world-class studios,” said the studio in the letter. “We are focusing our Games business around four tentpole franchises that have each generated over $1 billion in consumer sales in past years: Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Mortal Kombat, and DC – particularly top tier characters like Batman.”

Hogwarts Legacy was one of the big video game releases name-dropped in the letter. Thanks to the open-world game’s massive success, Warner Bros. has described it as one of only three of its franchises in the last 15 years to have become one of the year’s best-selling games.

“Just two years ago, our Games team broke through with Hogwarts Legacy and created a completely new gaming franchise that was the best-selling game of the year – a result that only three other franchises in the last 15 years have achieved,” the letter continues.

“That gives us confidence that with our re-focused strategy, we can get back to producing high-quality games built for long-term consumer engagement, which we expect to propel our Games division back to profit in 2025 and emerge as a more significant contributor to growth in the years ahead.”

The letter reiterates what Warner Bros. Discover CEO David Zaslav told shareholders back in November 2024. Acknowledging the company’s stumbles in the gaming business, Zaslav said that studios under the WB Games banner would focus on its four major IPs.

“We have four strong and profitable game franchises with loyal, global fans: Hogwarts Legacy, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, and DC, in particular Batman,” said Zaslav. “We are focusing our development efforts on those core franchises, with proven studios to improve our success ratio.”

More recently, in a bid to refocus its efforts, Warner Bros. closed down a trio of studios: Monolith Productions, Player First Games, and WB Games San Diego. Along with the closure of the studios, the company also cancelled the long-in-development video game adaptation of Wonder Woman.

“This is a strategic change in direction and not a reflection of these teams or the talent within them,” said the studio.

For more on the current state of Warner Bros. Games, here are our thoughts on what has been happening with the company.

Bloomberg’s recent report offered some updates while seemingly confirming the 2022 action RPG’s original live service model. Those plans were reportedly dropped halfway through development as the studio “struggled to make progress.” Though it wanted to develop a “1.5” iteration of Gotham Knights, the higher-ups were apparently not having it and relegated the studio to assisting other projects.

WB Games Montreal would subsequently pitch other projects, including John Constantine (which WB Games were noncommittal on) and the Flash (the latter not happening due to the 2023 film flopping). There have since been resignations among leadership due to “frustration with their corporate bosses,” according to sources. It’s helping with Wonder Woman, as reported last year and pitching a new title based on George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. Whether it’s approved or not remains to be seen.

For more details on Gotham Knights, check out our review here. WB Games Montreal also assisted Rocksteady with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which saw its end of support last month.

Caught by IGN, during the company’s recent quarterly earnings call, Warner Bros. Discover CEO David Zaslav acknowledged the aforementioned stumbles, before stating that the company intends to reduce its output going forward, while also zeroing in on four “really powerful” franchises with significant fanbases in Hogwarts Legacy, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, and DC- Batman in particular, as per Zaslav.

“We’re through some of the worst — and it hasn’t been pretty on the gaming business — but we have four games that are really powerful and have a real constituency that love them, and we’re going to focus on those four primarily,” he said. “We’re going to go away from trying to launch 10, 12, 15, 20 different games. I think we have a real chance now with focus to have the gaming business be steadier.

“We have four strong and profitable game franchises with loyal, global fans: Hogwarts Legacy, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, and DC, in particular Batman. We are focusing our development efforts on those core franchises, with proven studios to improve our success ratio.”

With Batman: Arkham developer Rocksteady Studios having been behind Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Zaslav singling out Batman and mentioning “proven studios” is certainly interesting, especially amidst reports that Rocksteady is looking to revert to single-player games, and that the studio has started working on a new Batman game.

Meanwhile, it was recently officially confirmed that a sequel to Hogwarts Legacy is in development, while previous reports have claimed that a Hogwarts Legacy Definitive Edition is also in the works, and due out sometime in 2025 with 10-15 hours of new content.

Speaking during Warner Bros. Discover’s recent quarterly earnings call, when asked about the company’s gaming business and future, CEO David Zaslav revealed that the company will be looking to license out some of its IP to other, external development studios- which means internal Warner Bros. studios might not necessarily be the ones developing games on WB IP going forward.

“We have 11 studios here, and we have a lot of IP,” Zaslav said (transcription via IGN). “And there’s also a lot of interest among others in coming to take advantage of some of that IP for gaming, which we’re looking at. Because as JB [Perrette, president of global streaming and games] said, we need to get bigger, and the IP that we own and the value that it has in the gaming space is something we’re looking to take advantage of.”

The list of IP that WB has access to is mouthwatering, to say the very least, with heavy-hitters such as Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Batman, Superman, and many others included. The prospect of those properties being licensed out to developers across the industry – similar to the approach Marvel and Disney have taken in recent years – would certainly be an intriguing one.

We’ve already spoken about a number of franchises that would be better off with other developers, and now, we’re going to take a look at ten more.  We’re going to talk about who we think that developer should be, and also about why we think they would do a better job than the people who’re currently working on the franchise in question.

Just like last time, we would like to remind you that this list is purely hypothetical- entries you see in this feature are not predictions, theories or speculation. They’re simply hypotheses of why these franchises could possibly be better off in the hands of these other developers.

With that out of the way, let’s get right into it. If you disagree with any of our picks, or have suggestions of your own, sound off in the comments section below.

MEGA MAN 

Why It Isn’t Working So Well

Mega Man was once one of the most popular franchises in the industry, and to be fair, it retains much of that popularity to this day. But that is in spite of Capcom, rather than because of them. The series has been on a hiatus for a number of years, despite fervent demands by the fans for a new game. Capcom have announced and cancelled several new Mega Man projects since, and the series remains inexplicably absent from the market. It’s not as if Capcom are no longer capable of making Mega Man anymore – after all, remember Mega Man 9 and 10, the last games in the franchise we got? Those were pretty good – it’s just that they are unwilling. And frankly, after seeing how they’ve handled some of their other classic franchises over the last few years, such as Street Fighter, we’re having serious doubts about their capability to make a good new one too..

How It Could Be Better

WITH NINTENDO

Mega Man and Nintendo almost seems like a match made in heaven. Nintendo have shown throughout the years that they know how to respect and evolve classic franchises while retaining what made them beloved in the first place, and that is exactly what Mega Man needs right now. Looking at action-platformers such as the 2D Metroid games, it becomes exceedingly clear that Nintendo would be more than comfortable with handling the kind of game design and moment-to-moment gameplay that a typical Mega Man experience aspires to. Seeing how Nintendo handled Mega Man in Super Smash Bros. on the Wii U and the 3DS is also very encouraging, and shows that they do respect the franchise the way it needs to be respected.

We reported recently that Microsoft was teasing something related to the hugely popular Game of Thrones TV series. Well, those hoping for a new dream game will be disappointed, but if you’re looking for a new Xbox One and love Game of Thrones, there may still be something for you. Microsoft will give out two Xbox One S All Digital Editions, both with unique themes based on the show.

You can see the two Xbox One designs below. One is based around the Night King, and the other themed on House Targaryen. For the Night King console, go to the official reveal post on Facebook and like it. For the House Targaryen version go the official Xbox Twitter, retweet the reveal post and add #GamerThrones and #Sweepstakes. The console will come with Minecraft, Sea of Thieves, and Forza Horizon 3.

Only one version of each console will be given out, meaning that only two people can stand as winners when the contest ends on May 22^nd. You can see full details here.

Game of Thrones has become one of the biggest television phenomena since probably HBO’s previous TV-defining series, The Sopranos. A massive amount of people are hanging on to their seats each week as the series ticks down to its final episode. On the gaming side of things, it looks like Microsoft may be teasing something to do with the series and Xbox.

Yesterday, a rather odd message appeared on the official Xbox Facebook and Twitter (you can see the Twitter message below), saying, “And now your wait begins. Stay tuned.” Along with the message is a video that very clearly shows the Night King’s glyph, and the emblem of House Targaryen. Whether this is in relation to a game or some other promotion, such as a special edition console (Microsoft has been doing a lot of those lately) is anyone’s guess, but clearly something is being teased.

Despite being a massive hit for TV and merchandise, Game of Thrones has mostly been absent from video games. Most people probably remember the Telltale game, and there’s also been a slew of mobile titles over the past few years. The TV series came at a time when tie-in console titles were mostly out of fashion, though, so we haven’t seen a lot of major video game adaptations for it.

We’ll keep you updated on whether this tease will change that or not.

And now your wait begins.
Stay tuned. pic.twitter.com/gfnM1vtAEO

— Xbox (@Xbox) May 6, 2019

Hello Games – No Man’s Sky

Why not start off with arguably one of the most hated developers of the last few years? Hello Games released No Man’s Sky to tremendous fanfare but was immediately drowned in controversy for the lack of certain features like multiplayer. From there, the studio kept its head down, facing death threats and constant anger, before re-emerging with the Foundation update. This was followed by Pathfinder and Atlas Rises, both substantial updates that were also free. Finally, the developer brought full-on multiplayer with the NEXT update along with numerous improvements to base-building, exploration and so on. Community events are also on the cards and more free updates will be coming in the future.