{"id":266160,"date":"2025-03-25T07:59:20","date_gmt":"2025-03-25T07:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/25\/wb-san-diego-was-reportedly-working-on-mario-kart-like-racer-before-closure\/"},"modified":"2025-03-25T07:59:20","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T07:59:20","slug":"wb-san-diego-was-reportedly-working-on-mario-kart-like-racer-before-closure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/25\/wb-san-diego-was-reportedly-working-on-mario-kart-like-racer-before-closure\/","title":{"rendered":"WB San Diego Was Reportedly Working on Mario Kart-Like Racer Before Closure"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.gadgets360cdn.com\/large\/warner_bros_discovery_reuters_1681371581798.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"WB San Diego Was Reportedly Working on Mario Kart-Like Racer Before Closure\" title=\"WB San Diego Was Reportedly Working on Mario Kart-Like Racer Before Closure\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><a class=\"sp_lnk2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gadgets360.com\/tags\/warner-bros\">Warner Bros.<\/a> was reportedly working on a <a class=\"sp_lnk2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gadgets360.com\/tags\/mario-kart\">Mario Kart<\/a>-like racing title that would bring together characters from the company&#8217;s wide portfolio of IPs, including Adventure Time, Scooby Doo, Tom Jerry and more. The kart racer was in the works at <a class=\"sp_lnk2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gadgets360.com\/tags\/warner-bros-san-diego\">Warner Bros. Games San Diego<\/a>, which was shut down alongside two other in-house studios in February. Warner Bros. never announced the game, which is said to have gone through several iterations, from a free-to-play multiplatform title to a paid-for PC only release.<\/p>\n<h2>WB San Diego Was Working on a Mario Kart-Like Racer<\/h2>\n<p>The information comes from Colin Moriarty, who claimed on his Sacred Symbols <a class=\"sp_lnk2\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/ZVn3EqoVcao?t=7215\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">podcast<\/a> Monday that a former WB San Diego staffer reached out to him to talk about the unannounced project. The kart racer in development at the studio was codenamed \u201cMoonlight\u201d and could have potentially been titled \u201cWB Racers\u201d and \u201cXDR,\u201d or cross-drift racers, the source told Moriarty.<\/p>\n<p>Just like Mario Kart&#8217;s roster of <a class=\"sp_lnk2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gadgets360.com\/tags\/nintendo\">Nintendo<\/a> characters, the game would have featured Warner Bros IP, including Adventure Time, Tom and Jerry and more. Moriarty claimed he saw gameplay footage from the racer and said it was \u201cheavily inspired\u201d by Mario Kart. He described a game as a \u201cdrift racer running on Unreal Engine 5, with stylised graphics and fine vehicle control.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The WB San Diego staffer told Moriarty that the project lacked \u201cintention\u201d and \u201ccoherent approach\u201d and went through several changes through the course of its development. Project Moonlight reportedly kicked off as an online-only free-to-play title for <a class=\"sp_lnk2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gadgets360.com\/tags\/playstation\">PlayStation<\/a>, <a class=\"sp_lnk2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gadgets360.com\/tags\/xbox\">Xbox<\/a>, Nintendo Switch and mobile platforms. Towards the end of the development cycle, however, Switch and mobile ports were abandoned in favour of a <a class=\"sp_lnk2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gadgets360.com\/tags\/pc\">PC<\/a> version. Later, the kart racer reportedly became a paid-for PC only release, with console versions put on hold.<\/p>\n<p>The game was reportedly greenlit during the pandemic and would&#8217;ve released via <a class=\"sp_lnk2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gadgets360.com\/tags\/steam\">Steam<\/a> Early Access. According to the source, WB San Diego staffed over 100 developers during the game&#8217;s development cycle, which \u201cstarted to come apart this past fall.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Despite all the work on the game, it was never launched. The source said there was \u201cquite a bit of animosity internally,\u201d with WB San Diego staffers feeling it was unfair that Player First Games, another Warner Bros. Games studio, got to launch <a class=\"sp_lnk2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gadgets360.com\/multiversus-106934\">MultiVersus<\/a> twice, but the kart racer did not see the light of day.<\/p>\n<p>Last month, both WB San Diego and Player First Games, along with Monolith Productions, were <a class=\"sp_lnk2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gadgets360.com\/games\/news\/warner-bros-shuts-down-three-studios-monolith-productions-player-first-cancels-wonder-woman-7806390\">shuttered<\/a> after Warner Bros.&#8217; gaming division bled $300 million (roughly Rs. 2,627 crore) in losses in 2024. The company also cancelled the in-development Wonder Woman game and said it intended to refocus on its \u201cbigger franchises\u201d like Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and Batman, after a string of underperforming launches.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gadgets360.com\/games\/news\/warner-bros-san-diego-working-on-mario-kart-racer-moonlight-wb-ip-report-8005495#rss-gadgets-news\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Warner Bros. was reportedly working on a Mario Kart-like racing title that would bring together characters from the company&#8217;s wide portfolio of IPs, including Adventure Time, Scooby Doo, Tom Jerry and more. The kart racer was in the works at Warner Bros. Games San Diego, which was shut down alongside two other in-house studios in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.gadgets360cdn.com\/large\/warner_bros_discovery_reuters_1681371581798.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[607],"tags":[17942,42547,204702,23473,204701,12339,98172,6128,18971,12340,31449,192121,204699,31450,204700,5864],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266160"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":266162,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266160\/revisions\/266162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}