Highlights

  • Hogwarts Legacy has exceeded expectations in terms of its success, maintaining its status as the best-selling game of 2023 despite the release of major titles like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
  • While the game has great potential, it still has room for improvement. Avalanche has laid a strong foundation for future installments with its world, combat, and exploration mechanics, though it should avoid making the leap to the multiplayer genre.
  • Given the current state of big franchise multiplayer games, with The Last of Us' spin-off struggling, it may be wise for Avalanche to focus on a single-player sequel instead and wait to see how the market develops.

It seems fair to say that Hogwarts Legacy has performed much better than anyone could have ever anticipated. While Harry Potter is obviously still an incredibly popular franchise, despite its creator's hateful rhetoric, the levels of success that Hogwarts Legacy is still continuing to see are genuinely astounding, with it managing to maintain its best-selling game of 2023 title since release despite huge games like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom releasing.

While it's seen extreme success, Hogwarts Legacy wasn't a perfect game, even if it was admittedly a great starting point. Though it still has a lot of work to do, Avalanche has laid some great groundwork for the next Hogwarts Legacy game, with its world, combat, and exploration all feeling suitably satisfying. It's only a matter of time before Hogwarts Legacy gets some kind of sequel, and while many fans are desperate for a big multiplayer spin-off, Avalanche should hold off on that for a little while, with the multiplayer spin-off landscape not looking so hot right now.

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Why A Hogwarts Legacy Multiplayer Spin-off May Want to Wait

Big Multiplayer Spin-offs Aren't Doing Too Well Right Now

Thanks to gigantic successes like Fortnite and Apex Legends, live-service has been the latest major trend in the video game ecosphere, and it's one that every big publisher and developer is trying to jump on right now. Though the vast majority of gamers aren't too happy about the sudden focus-shift to live-service in many of their favorite franchises, it does unfortunately make a lot of sense when it comes to games like Call of Duty. If more money can be made by going live-service, then it's almost a guarantee that the franchise is going to at least dabble in some kind of live-service monetization. But just adding live-service to a game doesn't mean it'll be an immediate success.

Over the last year, the live-service bubble seems to have shown its first signs of popping, with smaller-scale games like Knockout City and Rumbleverse both being delisted and shutdown. But that hasn't stopped PlayStation from continuing to move forward with its plan to break into the live-service market, even though it's already showing warning signs.

Last year, it was announced that The Last of Us would be receiving a multiplayer spin-off, likely with live-service elements. The Last of Us multiplayer was presumably set to lead the charge for PlayStation's new live-service phase, but things haven't quite gone to plan. According to a number of leaks, The Last of Us multiplayer is in troubled waters. Bungie apparently was asked to step in and evaluate the game's potential, and it allegedly did not go well, leading to a major delay.

While Hogwarts Legacy has been an incredibly popular game, and it's about to get another big sales boost with its imminent launch on Nintendo Switch, it still might not be enough to be a live-service success. If Hogwarts Legacy was going to have a multiplayer spin-off, then it would be a much safer choice to keep live-service elements out of the game and instead make it a smaller-scale, low player-count multiplayer title, giving just a few friends the ability to play with one another in the Wizarding World. Regardless, the world of big franchise multiplayer spin-offs isn't looking so hot right now, and Avalanche Software and Warner Bros. should just hold off and see how the market settles over the course of the next few years, maybe focusing on a direct single-player Hogwarts Legacy sequel instead.