Despite being founded in 2019, Warner Bros. San Diego never got to release a game before it was unceremoniously shuttered by Warner Brothers just last month, along with several other studios, including Monolith Games. Now, though, we seemingly know what the studio was working on: a kart racer that would have used Warner Bros. many IP.
The news comes by way of former IGN writer Colin Moriarty who now runs a successful podcast business. Speaking on his flagship show Sacred Symbols, which is behind a Patron paywall, Moriarty revealed that a former WB San Diego employee reached out to him following the podcast discussing the closure of the studio. Moriarty apparently exchanged emails with the source and, after confirming his or her validity, took part in a video call with the source.
“WB San Diego was deep in development on a kart racer which was codenamed Moonlight, which also went by a duo of potentially final titles: WB Racers and XDR, or X-Drift Racers,” said Moriarty, reading from a script he had written earlier.
“Like now defunct studio Player First’s work on Multiversus, Project Moonlight’s roster of kart drivers would come from Warner’s wide array of IP, including Adventure Time, Tom & Jerry, Scooby-Do and more.”
Moriarty was not just told about the game, but was in fact able to see actual gameplay, stating that he could “safely say this title was heavily inspired by Mario Kart, a drift racer running on Unreal Engine 5 with stylised graphics and fine vehicle control.”
“The game was originally conceived very early in the life of WB San Diego and according to the source there was very little intention and a lack of coherent approach throughout development,” Colin revealed. “For instance, it began life as a free-to-play online only multiplayer racer that would support Xbox, PlayStation, Switch and even mobile. However, towards the end of its development, the Switch and mobile platforms were dropped completely, and a PC iteration was greenlit. Then, the remaining console versions were put on ice so that all energies could be put into a PC only release with the hope that if the game was successful there they could get back to the console ports. The monetization model was also changed, going from free-to-play to a paid-for title which would be first available to purchase via Steam Early Access.”
According to Colin, “development was fairly rudderless with little oversight from the outside” and had a “development cycle that really came apart this past fall.”
The project was also described as having “a high burn rate” due the studio being in Southern California and employing over 100 people.
Finally, the source noted that there was some animosity within the studio as they felt it unfair that Multiversus developer Player First Games had essentially got to go twice by releasing Multiversus, then pulling it and releasing it again later, while WB San Diego hadn’t even got to release a single project.
While I personally don’t have much confidence in Warner Bros. as a whole and have no idea if WB San Diego would have delivered a quality product, the idea of a new kart racer is one I find very appealing. I love the genre, and Warner Bros. has access to a lot of IP that could have made it very fun. Shaggy racing against Batman, while Ned Stark blasts past? Yeah, sounds like a decent time.
What do you guys thing? Would you have liked to have seen a WB kart racer?