It is just a bit weird that Hogwarts Legacy, the highest-selling game of 2023, beating out even Call of Duty, received close to no meaningful updates for the entire year of launch. No, it’s not a live game, but with that level of success, you’d expect perhaps something to arrive in some form or another, or at least the official announcement of DLC or a preview of a sequel.
Now, in 2024, that is changing in some capacity. The official Hogwarts Legacy Twitter account had this to say about what’s coming this year, which appears to be actual, meaningful updates, albeit with just one detail so far:
The PlayStation exclusive content they’re referring to is a rather good Haunted Hogsmeade quest, which gives access to a shop and Shopkeeper cosmetics. Guessing that will arrive at the one year anniversary of the game’s launch, as per their Sony deal.
As for the “updates and features for the game,” details for those are “in coming the months” which will reveal what kind of content is coming this year. Again, no indication how major or minor this stuff is, but if they’re bothering to preview it like this, it’s definitely going to be more than just bug fixes. Paid DLC? It’s possible, though I’d say probably unlikely. I think Portkey is probably going full speed ahead for a full sequel at this point.
This comes in the wake of a recent Variety article detailing WB’s new grand video game plans, inspired in part by the massive success of Hogwarts Legacy. But those plans, orchestrated by the infamous David Zaslav, including live games for ongoing revenue, something that is the complete opposite of Hogwarts Legacy, a dedicated single player game with no live content and not even a cash shop. WB is about to launch the extremely live, extremely microtransaction-heavy Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League on Tuesday, but I would frankly be amazed if future Harry Potter games were allowed to be as one-off as Hogwarts Legacy, even if that was a huge part of its appeal. Earnable cosmetics and no battle passes were part of what made it great.
I don’t know, it’s possible this new content for Hogwarts Legacy may be paid as an effort to get more money out of the massive best-seller. I doubt it’s a cash shop or something, but if they can concoct anything resembling DLC at all, I bet they’d easily sell millions of copies for $15 or $20 or whatever it would end up being. But we’ll have to wait potentially months to hear more, it seems.
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