Next in line for our interest on earning report season related to the gaming industry is actually Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of Warner Bros. and the umbrella of Discovery Channel and this includes Warner Media and WB Games.

For the gaming segment, WBD reported that WB Games and Hogwarts Legacy was one of the main highlights of Q1 2023 where the game could sell 12 million copies up to the end of March, which is a pretty big thing to say.

Especially that in numbers that translate to $1 billion earned.

Warner Bros. Discovery acknowledged that the game could have performed even better but economics, as the marketing season of the game made a 6% impact of operational spending.

About more availability of Hogwarts Legacy, specially on past gen, the VP of streaming and games of the company, JB Perrette, said this on the investor conference call:

“We see that as probably a much bigger install base and a fan base that, as relates to the franchise of Harry Potter, which obviously appeals to a very big audience globally, and in markets like Japan where Nintendo has a big footprint and Harry Potter skews very strongly in terms of popularity, we see a much bigger upside probably from that release, certainly than the Gen 8 [release]”

As a conglomerate, Warner Bros. Discovery reported revenue of $10.07 billion minus 5% compared to last year and a net loss of $1.06 billion and while the loss looks bad, actually Q1 had a streaming section to be profitable for the first time.

The U.S. direct-to-consumer segment turned a profit of $50 million for the quarter, a $704 million year-over-year improvement on a pro forma combined basis. Internationally, streaming still lost money though, but this indeed is good news when WBD is about to merge HBO Max and Discovery+ in a single one-to-rule-them-all streaming service called Max.