With Warner Bros’ parent company AT&T looking to offload the gaming division responsible for publishing the Arkham games, Mortal Kombat and upcoming Harry Potter titles, bidders are swarming. Naturally, being able to acquire such a huge publisher has caught the eye of rivals — and Microsoft is reportedly now thinking about a bid of their own.
AT&T, hit by a drop in revenue from the coronavirus, has been looking to offload assets as they service around $US200 billion in debt. One of those is the $US4 billion Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment division, which AT&T acquired back in 2018 when the company merged with Time Warner.
In practical terms, that means one of the biggest third-party publishers is now up for sale. We’re not talking an individual studio, but all of it. For the princely sum of $US4 billion, one buyer could acquire the video game licenses for Harry Potter and Game of Thrones, not to mention the various Middle-earth games, Mortal Kombat, the Scribblenauts series, and the rights to distribute Cyberpunk 2077 in the United States.
The Information reports that two people familiar with Microsoft’s thinking say the deal would sit well alongside Microsoft’s recent studio acquisitions of Ninja Theory, Double Fine, Obsidian and Playground Games. It would certainly help Microsoft in its bid for securing more first-party exclusive titles, something Sony has consistently used to great effect over the current console generation to push PlayStation sales.
Of course, no deal has been announced or done yet. And there are multiple publishers interested in a buyout. AT&T might be able to secure a better deal from Activision, Take-Two or Electronic Arts, all of whom have supposedly expressed interest of their own. And AT&T also might decide not to sell. It’s possible they could opt to offload the division after the launch of the next console generation, which if successful would also drive up the division’s value (particularly off the back of revenues from Cyberpunk 2077, the upcoming Harry Potter RPG, and other games).
Either way, if AT&T does sell, it would be the largest transaction since the THQ fire sale and, more recently, Sony’s nine-figure acquisition of Insomniac Games.
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