Warner Bros May Be Going Head-To-Head With Steam and Origin Soon
The publisher behind the Batman: Arkham, Mortal Kombat, and Injustice series may be taking a big step into the realm of digital distribution, if recently unearthed documents are to be believed.
The Escapist has found a series of applications for trademark filed in August for "WB Play," though it is unclear exactly what WB Play is supposed to be. According to The Escapist these filings mention things like "online retail store services," "audio and video broadcasting services," "entertainment service," and more interestingly of all, "downloadable virtual goods."
Here's the fine print on the downloadable virtual goods application, as seen here at the official government trademark website: "Downloadable virtual goods; downloadable electronic strategy and instructional guides for computer and video games; computer game software; video game software; audio and video recordings in the fields of computer and video games; downloadable multimedia files containing artwork, text, audio, video, games, and Internet Web links relating to computer and video."
With all of these trademarks combined, it definitely seems like Warner Bros is gearing up for some kind of digital storefront, but we're not convinced that it will be entirely focused on their video games. The WB is one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world, with all kinds of television shows, movies, and music that could also be added to this service if indeed it's real. Think about it: we could finally have a place to relive all of the old Looney Tunes episodes without having to endlessly search for them online. That would be neat.
Another interesting wrinkle in all of this is the upcoming Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, which launches Sept. 30. A logo for WB Play appears on the game's main website, signaling that this new whatever-it-is might be closer to launch than we think. Why else would WB attach it to one of its biggest holiday titles if we weren't going to see it coming soon?
We wouldn't be surprised if this was a new digital storefront for all things WB, but we also wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be a subscription-based service with EA Access with similar perks, only offering the entire library of Warner Bros entertainment content. If WB were to offer something like that on game consoles, that included games, movies and television, EA Access would have instant and serious competition. We'll have to see what WB Play is all about before we make any assumptions, but things could get pretty interesting on the digital front soon.