For years, LEGO has discovered nice success in teaming up with third-party studios to develop its tie-in sport titles. Nevertheless, evidently collaborations with the likes of TT Video games, 2K and Epic could quickly come to an finish, as a LEGO government has urged that the corporate desires to take issues in-house sooner or later.
In a current interview with the Monetary Occasions, LEGO chief exec Niels Christiansen said that the corporate is trying to construct its digital departments alongside its traditional, bodily manufacturing. “We will undoubtedly say so long as we’re beneath the Lego model we are able to cowl experiences for teenagers of all ages, digital or bodily,” Christiansen informed the outlet, “[Game development in-house] is one thing we’re build up”.
It can mark an fascinating transfer for the corporate, which, regardless of having a presence within the gaming area for the previous twenty years, has at all times outsourced growth to different studios. TT Video games has lengthy helmed the film tie-in collection like LEGO Star Wars, Harry Potter and Indiana Jones, 2K acquired behind the bricky wheel in LEGO 2K Drive and, with a current win, the corporate paired up with Epic Video games in 2023 on the immensely fashionable LEGO Fortnite.
That stated, it makes quite a lot of sense. With LEGO units cropping up for Mario, Animal Crossing, Sonic and Zelda lately, the corporate clearly sees the enchantment of getting in with the gaming crowd, and it isn’t as if the Home of Bricks is strapped for money of late — in its newest monetary report, the corporate posted elevated income of 13% to 74.3 billion DKK (£8.4 billion / $10.8 billion) with shopper gross sales up 12%.
“We’ve made fairly a number of investments sooner or later — I’d virtually somewhat overinvest,” Christiansen informed the Monetary Occasions, “That’s the good thing about being family-owned and long-term”. Again in 2022, LEGO introduced that it was planning to triple its variety of software program engineers to make extra of an affect within the digital area. Two years on, evidently continues to be the case.
What this implies for the way forward for LEGO video games stays to be seen. LEGO Fortnite continues to be an enormous success, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga continues to be promoting like scorching desserts three years after its launch, and we stay none the wiser about that rumoured soccer sport from 2K. You’d assume that it could be a tall order to drag the whole lot in-house instantly, however once we’re speaking about LEGO cash, who is aware of?