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Warner Bros. Earnings Up Partly Due To Arkham City And Mortal Kombat

TimeWarner is an enormous corporation with many divisions, and it boosted revenues 8 percent to $29 billion in the 2011 fiscal year. Some of that cheese came straight from Batman and Liu Kang.

In the fourth quarter and full year earnings statement, chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes had a lot to brag about: “In 2011, Time Warner had an ambitious agenda and we accomplished what we set out to do and more. We increased revenues 8%, Adjusted Operating Income 9%, and Adjusted EPS by 20%, which means we more than doubled Adjusted EPS over the past three years."

TimeWarner owns Turner Broadcasting, HBO, movies (the Harry Potter franchise), magazines (Time, Sports Illustrated), and more, but the part we care about is the gaming sector, which is under the "Filmed Entertainment" branch. Since it's lumped in with movies, we don't get an exact picture of the gaming numbers, but the whole division's revenues rose 9 percent to $12.6 billion for the full year.

Warner names "Batman: Arkham City, Mortal Kombat 9 and several LEGO titles" as key gaming franchises contributing to this success. "In 2011, Batman: Arkham City shipped more than 6 million units worldwide and was one of the top 10 best-selling games in North America," the statement boasts.

As far as Q4 specifically, revenues rose 7 percent to $3.9 billion "due mainly to stronger home entertainment and videogame slates and new subscription video-on-demand agreements."

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Comments
  • Noice.

  • Movies suck, games are the future.
  • I hope this will encourage the publisher to fund more ambitious and original projects. The gaming industries needs more big publishers other than EA and Actvision to stimulate more creativity.
  • Reptile, Ermac,Scorpion, Sub Zero, Cyrax, Kabal, Mileena, Kitana, Jax....yes....LUI Kang, not so much.
  • Well, who doesn't love some Batman and over the top violence?

  • The Dark Knight('s Stock) Rises.
  • they deserve this, two great titles

  • So we can expect more Batman from Rocksteady
  • Turns out that if you make awesome games your company makes money.......interesting.
  • Bought both games, loved both games.

    Congrats WB, keep it up!

  • Maybe it's just me but does it seem like Warner Bros interactive is becoming a much bigger publisher now. It also seems from a creative stand point they give a little more liberty to the devlopers the have working on there licenses. last year they had batman, Mortal Kombat, and F.E.A.R 3. this year they have the witcher 2 console port and lolipop chainsaw. and if THQ gets into deeper trouble I have a feeling Warner Bros will buy them up. heck we might see them overthrow EA from being the top publisher if they keep it up.
  • well that's expected

  • nice, the new MK was simply amazing!

  • After the abysmal news about THQs woes recently, it's nice to hear positive stuff like this about a developer. :)

  • Mortal Kombat was my game of the year....still playing it.but, i dont know if i should get it for the vita as i won one from Taco Bell!!!!!!
  • And I helped.

  • Loved Batman: AC!

  • Man i loved both these games, great work wb

  • Good job, Warner Bros.  Keep it up!

  • Well deserved for such great titles.

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