Media Executives Covet Games, but Are Ill-Suited to Run Them
Warner Bros. Discovery should consider spinning off its TV business and merging the rest of the company, including its studios, with a gaming powerhouse like Electronic Arts.
Rosen is the author of Medium Shift, tracking the transformations underway in the media business.
Warner Bros. Discovery executives talked up their gaming business as a growth opportunity in a recent call with investors. That makes sense. In 2023, gaming and Hollywood increasingly overlapped in the zeitgeist: The second-highest-grossing movie of the year is “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” based on a videogame. “Friday Night at Freddy’s,” a horror movie based on the popular videogame franchise, recently became the highest grossing movie from Blumhouse Productions, the producer of “Get Out.”
Other media executives are thinking similarly: Some at Disney reportedly want to buy games giant Electronic Arts. Netflix now offers more than 80 exclusive mobile games and is developing a major-publisher-type console game. Next week, it will bring mobile versions of three games in the Grand Theft Auto franchise to its mobile app.