Netflix revealed new details about its video game service in a letter to shareholders before its July 20 earnings call.
The letter, which was obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, says that the streamer is in the “early stages of further expanding into games” and that it will be “primarily focused on games for mobile devices” in the early days of the endeavor. Netflix subscribers will be able to play the games at no extra cost.
“We view gaming as another new content category for us, similar to our expansion into original films, animation and unscripted TV,” the shareholder letter continued. “We’re excited as ever about our movies and TV series offering, and we expect a long runway of increasing investment and growth across all of our existing content categories, but since we are nearly a decade into our push into original programming, we think the time is right to learn more about how our members value games.”
The company’s goal for the games is twofold. It will create standalone and original games with the potential to be spun out into TV series and movies and develop games based on already existing Netflix IP. One of those IPs could be Bridgerton, which is reportedly getting a video game and a fan convention. Like it does with movies and TV, Netflix also has plans to license games to increase the volume of its gaming library.
“It’s a multiyear effort. We’re going to start relatively small. We’ll learn, we’ll grow,” Greg Peters, Netflix COO and chief product officer, said. “Our subscription model yields some opportunities to focus on a set of game experiences that are currently underserved by the sort of dominant monetization models in games. We don’t have to think about ads, we don’t have to think about in-game purchases or other monetization, we don’t have to think about per-title purchases. Really, we can do what we’ve been doing on the movie and series side, which is just hyper, laser focused on delivering the most entertaining game experiences that we can.”
Netflix’s gaming division will be led by Mike Verdu, Facebook’s former vice president of virtual and augmented reality content. His previous roles also include senior vice president of EA Mobile and chief creative officer at both Kabam and Zynga.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
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