Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment topped first half of the year in video game sales, thanks in part to popular games like Batman: Arkham Knight.
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment is taking the video game industry by storm, topping all-comers in the first half of the year in sales. It seems the company’s willingness to allow its developers to think outside the box and color outside of traditional lines is driving brisk title sales while keeping gamers coming back for more.
Warner Bros. Interactive’s recipe for success has enabled it to become the top-selling video game producer in the United States for the first half of 2015. Sales of games such as Mortal Kombat X and Batman: Arkham Knight pushed revenue to more than $500 million in the second quarter, tripling previous figures.
It’s been a slow, but steady climb for the video game company, Bloomberg noted. Its industry share was a paltry 4% back in 2012. As of Aug. 15, 2015, however, the numbers skyrocketed, giving the 11-year-old Burbank, Calif.-based firm a healthy sales lead over all competitors in the U.S. market.
Breaking Out of the Industry Mold
While movie and TV producers have a lackluster record when it comes to the video game industry, Warner Bros. has managed to break out of the mold. Where Viacom lost more than $260 million on Rock Band and Disney suffered through reported losses of $1.7 billion from its interactive unit, Warner Bros. Interactive has witnessed tremendous success with titles that resonate with players.
The reason behind that success is simple David Haddad, the company’s leader, told Bloomberg: Warner Bros. relies on its seven video-game studios to make their own decisions about what games to push forward and which ones to pass up on. They’re also not required to stick to movie scripts when developing their games and storylines.
While last year’s Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor serves as a case in point for the company’s willingness to depart from well-known scripts, the new release of Lego Dimensions really pushes the boundaries, analysts says.
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Expect the Unexpected
Warner Bros. Interactive has gained a reputation for pushing the envelope in regard to the gaming experience. Rather than immerse gamers in the same story they already know, Warner Bros. delivers a wholly new experience that has ties to the known, but diverges in a direction that makes its games surprising and unexpected.
The most recent example for the studio is the Sept. 27 release of Lego Dimensions. The game cuts through traditional boundaries by including characters not only from the Warner Bros. stable, but also those from rival studios like Fox and Universal.
“It’s all about surprising combinations,” Jon Burton, Lego Dimensions’ designer, was quoted by Bloomberg as saying.
Drawing on the reasoning that people enjoy cameos, the new Lego adventure invites gamers to take a journey through 14 different themed lands to stop the evil Lord Vortech.
Gamers will find they can play and array of different mini-figures, including those from such franchises as The Lego Movie, The Lord of the Rings, Back to the Future and even Fox’s The Simpsons. Items in the game also cut across the worlds allowing players to travel The Yellow Brick Road or arrive to a battle in the famed DeLorean Time machine.
“Get ready to break the rules, because the only rule with Lego Dimensions is that there are no rules,” the game’s website explains. That explainer, it seems, also puts brings the video game company’s recipe for success into focus.
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