Mike Verdu will join Netflix as vice president of game development, reporting to Chief Operating Officer Greg Peters, the company said on Wednesday. Verdu was previously Facebook’s vice president in charge of working with developers to bring games and other content to Oculus virtual-reality headsets.
The idea is to offer video games on Netflix’s streaming platform within the next year, according to a person familiar with the situation. The games will appear alongside current fare as a new programming genre – similar to what Netflix did with documentaries or stand-up specials. The company doesn’t currently plan to charge extra for the content, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private.
Lucas Shaw & Mark Gurman
Hmm, an intriguing initiative from Netflix – who in the meantime clarified it will focus on mobile games initially – but I am unsure how successful it might be. The broad idea is to keep subscribers on Netflix, as opposed to them spending time elsewhere, creating more engagement and brand loyalty. On the flip side though, developing games is complicated, requiring considerable time and money, and has very little overlap with film production, apart from leveraging existing intellectual property and maybe reusing actors to voice game characters. This would generate a large new cost center in Netflix’ financials, with little extra revenue to offset it.
The use case seems strange as well, to me at least. I personally only watch TV shows on larger screens, either on a tablet while traveling or on my TV via a Chromecast at home. This is a time to relax and unwind for me, whereas gaming feels more engaged, demanding more attention and concentration. I’m certainly not in the target audience for mobile games, as I rarely play on my phone – I don’t even think I have any games installed on my smartphone.
In the end, developing games feels like a distraction for Netflix, at a time when they should probably be focusing on their shows. Subscriber growth has slowed in recent months, and in Canada and the US Netflix lost 430,000 subscribers in the second quarter. Some of this decline may be attributed to the increased streaming competition in the US, as most new services launch there exclusively, but the content offered by Netflix seems to be slipping in quality as well. I have noticed recently how they keep making shorter and shorter series, or release only half a season, leaving the story awkwardly dangling. This was the case with Lupin (ten episodes spilt into two parts), Pacific Rim: The Black (seven episodes), and Jupiter’s Legacy (apparently canceled after its semi-season). Netflix seems uninterested in producing quality, complete stories anymore. I doubt that existing customers will stick around for games if the TV series are not worth watching.
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