Final yr Netflix put up a billboard on Los Angeles’s Sundown Boulevard to poke enjoyable at itself. It learn: “Wait, Netflix Has Video games?” The corporate is working laborious to clear up any confusion. It’s deepening its push into the videogame trade, making the most of the studios it has acquired prior to now two years to create extra titles based mostly on fashionable Netflix films and TV exhibits. WSJ: Although Netflix has to date centered on cellular video games — which enchantment to informal avid gamers and will be downloaded on a smartphone or pill — it’s taking steps to broaden into higher-end video games that may be streamed from TVs or PCs. That strategy would put it up towards giants similar to Sony and Microsoft, which simply closed its $75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and would deliver some vital technical challenges.
Over the following a number of months, Netflix subscribers will have the ability to play video games on their cellular gadgets based mostly on hits similar to Korean thriller “Squid Sport” and supernatural comedy “Wednesday,” based on individuals conversant in the state of affairs. Equally, Netflix is discussing video games based mostly on “Extraction,” its Sherlock Holmes collection and its “Black Mirror” collection, the individuals stated. At the same time as Netflix creates homegrown titles, it should proceed to license the well-known video games, from “Bloons TD 6” to “Traditional Solitaire,” that at the moment make up its catalog. It has mentioned plans to launch a sport inside the fashionable action-adventure collection “Grand Theft Auto” from Take-Two Interactive Software program via a licensing deal, among the individuals stated. The technique rips a web page from the streaming big’s playbook in Hollywood, the place it constructed an viewers based mostly on reruns from different studios — similar to “Pals,” “The Workplace” and “Breaking Unhealthy” — whereas gearing up equipment to churn out originals like “Home of Playing cards” and “Stranger Issues.”