Warner Bros. announced on Friday that it would be expanding its game division, Warner Bros. Interactive Studios to cover free-to-play, mobile, social, and browser-based games. The new mobile studio, named WB Games San Francisco, will expand the already well-performing Interactive Entertainment division of Warner Bros, and will handle the publishing of all mobile games released by Warner Bros.
The new studio will be housed in the same building with Warner’s Flixster unit. Former Glu Mobile president and CEO Greg Ballard has been appointed senior vice president to the new Digital Game Division (you can see a list of Glu games for android devices here if you want to check out this guy’s credits).
The home of Flixster and WB Games San Francisco. Home sweet home.
“The Bay Area is the home of social and mobile gaming, and WB Games San Francisco is Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment’s opportunity to expand our game development capabilities into the epicenter of the digital world,” Ballard explained in a statement. “San Francisco is a hotbed of local talent and convenient access to major partners, and this will help us achieve our goal to bring our top entertainment and gaming brands, as well as original IP, to multiple mobile, social and emerging platforms.”
“We are extremely pleased to add WB Games San Francisco to our global portfolio of studios and publishing capabilities,” said Martin Tremblay, the president of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. “As our company has grown over the years, it has been a high priority to attract and cultivate creativity and innovation in top markets for game development around the world.”
There’s certainly an outstanding market for the collaboration of movie studios and game developers. Given that most Americans are becoming gamers through social and web-based video games, this very well might launch a trend in movie studios to create specific divisions to oversee the development of casual games.
