DC Studios

After reading both articles there is some hand waving (in the Bloomberg article) when it comes to Wonder Woman.

Monolith Productions, based in Kirkland, Washington, was once a darling of Warner Bros.’ gaming group thanks to the hit 2014 game Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. A sequel released in 2017 did well yet failed to surpass the first title. Afterward, the studio began working on a brand new franchise that would experiment with procedural storytelling.

But executives at Warner Bros. weren’t particularly interested in creating new characters and universes from scratch, according to people familiar with the discussions. They suggested to Monolith’s crew that they should attach the project to one of the company’s many established franchises, such as Game of Thrones or something in the DC Comics portfolio. The developers, who had won critical acclaim with Shadow of Mordor’s unique Nemesis narrative system, in which fallen enemies could come back to life with memory of the protagonist’s actions, struggled to graft another, existing franchise onto their nascent ideas.

Shadows of Mordor is basically an original story set in Middle Earth. Both Game of Thrones and DC Comics have a huge amount of background and lore to pull from. You could fit almost any original story into one of those two worlds. It's clear whatever was being developed didn't fit Wonder Woman, but that was the mandate.

In fact later in the article they talk about trying to force Joker or Flash into a different game, only to stop caring as soon as The Flash film bombed at the box office.

I think a game featuring Wonder Woman can shine as soon as someone makes a good game about Wonder Woman. You don't need to time it with anything else. Yes, it helps to have other IP already popular, but it isn't a hard requirement. Sometimes you get to strike gold and make new IP.

I think what's weighing these games down is something highlighted in the first article, the people in charge don't play games and don't understand the industry. Games should be fun. I hate to trot out the "but not all games can compare to it game" but look at Baldur's Gate III. They took an existing IP, they invested the time, they made a game they care about, and it's easily one of the best games ever made. But then you look at Hasbro and Larian's reaction to Hasbro post-release. It's obvious Baldur's Gate IV is going to suck. It's going to be slopped out by mandate in a few years and just suck. Nobody would have said it's time for Baldur's Gate to shine before it's release, but shine it did.