Warner Bros. Discovery has revealed that its free-to-play fighting game MultiVersus has underperformed, along with the rest of its video game division, as it announced two new characters coming to the character crossover brawler on Thursday.
As reported by IGN, MultiVersus has contributed another $100 million to the already $200 million write-down from earlier this year after Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which launched to poor reviews, sold less than the company expected. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav confirmed in a recent earnings call that the games division has been “substantially underperforming.” However, he added that the company has four brands that it’ll focus on: Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, and DC (Batman in particular got a shoutout).
Warner Bros. Discovery only released one new game in the most recent financial quarter — Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions — but it’s been supporting games like Mortal Kombat 1 and MultiVersus, along with reportedly developing a Hogwarts Legacy director’s cut. The single-player Harry Potter simulator was the top-selling game of 2023, so the company wants to lean further into that IP, with a sequel set to align with the upcoming Harry Potter HBO series.
“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,” Zaslav 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.”
The earnings call comes on the same day that the company announced more characters for MultiVersus‘ upcoming fourth season, which will launch on November 12. Midnight Misfits will feature Adventure Time‘s Marceline and Raven from DC. Raven will be available at the start of the season, while Marceline will come to the game at a later date. The season ends on January 21, 2025.
MultiVersus is also getting a new arena mode that’ll have players match up in teams of two and hop in a match with a total of eight teams. There will also be two new maps.
Despite the results, Warner Bros. Discovery doesn’t seem to be letting up on MultiVersus any time soon. It falls into its focus on established IP (in that it features multiple IPs), and the company also recently acquired developer Player First Games to work more closely on the fighting game.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.