Thursday, July 15th 2021
Netflix Wants to Throw Its Hat Into the Gaming Market, Hires VP of Game Development
Netflix seems to be closer to coalescing its gaming vision, as the company just hired former EA and Oculus exec Mike Verdu as Vice President of game development. Netflix aims to offer not only streaming video content, but also a gaming pass subscription that ties into its monthly subscription philosophy. Bloomberg says that Netflix might add game streaming to its library as soon as next year - just as if they were another content category, and at no extra charge, which would make sense from a market penetration perspective.
Netflix is still in the hiring process for its gaming team, even though the company prefers to list job openings without employing the word "gaming", choosing instead to market it as "interactive experiences". It remains to be seen what will come from these efforts; another games developer with deep pockets such as Netflix would surely be welcome into this space, especially considering the breadth of Netflix-developed IPs. However, as we've seen with Google's gaming development efforts, deep pockets don't solve all the problems related to delivering compelling gaming experiences. But who would say no to a good Stranger Things interactive experience?
Source:
The Verge
Netflix is still in the hiring process for its gaming team, even though the company prefers to list job openings without employing the word "gaming", choosing instead to market it as "interactive experiences". It remains to be seen what will come from these efforts; another games developer with deep pockets such as Netflix would surely be welcome into this space, especially considering the breadth of Netflix-developed IPs. However, as we've seen with Google's gaming development efforts, deep pockets don't solve all the problems related to delivering compelling gaming experiences. But who would say no to a good Stranger Things interactive experience?
23 Comments on Netflix Wants to Throw Its Hat Into the Gaming Market, Hires VP of Game Development
Im not quite sure if he understands modern gaming market or the trends to be fully useful in his new position but maybe im overlooking something?? (Hes produced games but not designed them)
I also dont know what he was doing at FB or what the 'VP of Content' even means or entails. He could have been just sitting around eating cheese and drinking wine for his entire time at FB
No doubt someone will know more.
I imagine the games will be much the same. And yeah, not interested in game streaming anyway.
Edit: And I also loved Rainbow. Great band! Before and even somewhat after Dio.
(It's a joke, people...)
*Goes back to playing "Rock Simulator"
Why don't they focus on not cancelling shows after 1 season.
Stay in your lane.
I love paying $60 for games with half the content and then being asked to pay $250 for the rest of the game in $5 chunks!!!
They've already had success with a universal all-you-can-eat paywall ( and could more-easily gain titles, if they don't force you to port too Linux like Stadia), but they will only have PC games.
Then start with simple side-scroller games, relying on the basic 4-way D-pad most modern TV remotes have and a button to fire. Nothing too latency sensitive.
Then make like Amazon with a brand new Netflix Controller (or just work out a deal with the OEM behind Amazon's game controller, just tweaked for Netflix servers instead), and start releasing games that are a bit more latency sensitive, and ramp up from there, with the same general performance tiering as Stadia (Low Quality Graphics for crappy internet speeds up to HD Graphics for Gigabit+ users)
A few months back I called them to ask them to permanently delete my account after my elderly dad clicked the Netflix icon on a Shield TV I setup for him, and reactivated my account without needing to verify any info related to the account.
On another note: Cloud gaming is the death of videogames (even though most suck these days anyway). All it does is gives corporations more leverage and control.
Rainbow rocks yeah, great bandIt's still cool in some places of the we world, especially those that hit netflix around 2017. They need a couple more years to realize