Hogwarts Legacy 2 officially announced by Warner Bros. but there’s a catch

Warner Bros. insists that video games are still a big part of its business, as it confirms that a ‘second instalment’ of Harry Potter game Hogwarts Legacy is on the way.

Although it has been hinted at several times by Warner Bros. you don’t need any inside sources to know a sequel to 2023’s Hogwarts Legacy was always a given. The action role-player sold over 40 million copies and its success was clearly a surprise for Warner, who were at that point convinced live service games were the future – not single-player games with no microtransactions.

Although it’s still unclear how the purchase by Paramount Skydance (if it goes through) will affect Warner’s games business the success of Hogwarts Legacy is enough for the company to finally confirm that the sequel does actually exist.

Little information was offered, and there’s no trailer or even a logo, but in a letter to shareholders, Warner stated that, ‘We expect games to more meaningfully contribute to segment profitability going forward as our pipeline expands, including the second instalment of Hogwarts Legacy.’

As you can see, the catch is that there was no mention of a release date or even a name, although the implication seems to be that it will be a direct sequel to the first game. Considering that was set in the 1890s, there’s a lot of wriggle room for time jumps, so it’s impossible to say what setting they’ll go for in the end.

Previously, the idea was that you play as a custom character, and not Harry Potter or any of the modern day characters, but there’s no guarantee that will be the case for the second game. Although it would be a surprise if it suddenly became a quasi-adaptation of the book series, especially with the new TV show coming up.

There’s no other official information to go on, so the only other sensible assumption is that the developer is still probably Avalanche Software, since they haven’t been shut down and they’re not known to be working on anything else at the moment.

Although their quality standards have always been good, Warner Bros. has never been the most prolific publisher around, but in the last few years they’ve released even less new games than usual and have instead talked about sticking solely to their four pillars of Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, DC Comics, and Game Of Thrones.

They still haven’t got around to releasing a big budget console game based on Game Of Thrones, they haven’t release a decent non-Lego Batman game in over a decade, and the last Mortal Kombat game underperformed – none of which is good news when you’re about to be bought by a giant corporation that has never expressed any interest in the video games industry.

Gaming only gets one paragraph in the shareholder letter, stating that, ‘Games remains an important growth lever as we work toward our long-term studios segment goals. During the second quarter, we released Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight – the highest rated Lego game ever – and Game of Thrones: Dragonfire, our second mobile game from the Game of Thrones universe. These releases marked the first launches under our refocused strategy centred around four key $1 billion+ franchises with disciplined investment behind fewer, higher conviction titles.’

It’s a little worrying that Mortal Kombat wasn’t mentioned at all, but then it didn’t have a game out in this financial year, so hopefully there is another one on the way – even if NetherRealm’s next title turns out to be Injustice 3 or some other DC Comic fighting game.

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