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1571900cookie-checkNetflix CEO Has No Plans On Entering The Games Industry
Industry News
2019/11

Netflix CEO Has No Plans On Entering The Games Industry

It looks like, as of now, Netflix isn’t interested in invading the games industry in that publishing and developing intellectual properties won’t happen anytime soon on the company’s end. This information comes from CNBC’s coverage of CEO Reed Hastings at the New York Times DealBook conference.

I’m sure you are aware of articles and the like going up this June from other publication sites like bloomberg.com, examining Netflix taking steps toward multimedia by turning shows and movies into video games, no?

If so, Netflix isn’t actually publishing or developing any of those games but rather licensing characters and other things to studios to work on as per Bloomberg:

“Stranger Things 3: The Game, a title based on the popular teen series, will come out on July 4, the same day the third season of the show debuts. Netflix has also licensed “The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance” — a prequel series to the 1980s Jim Henson film — for a game that will debut later this year. The company isn’t developing or producing the video games itself, opting instead to license the characters to outside studios.”

With all of that said, during the New York Times DealBook conference, an audience member wanted to break the ice and find out if Netflix will join Apple and other services in the games industry. Here is Hastings’ response to the query in regards to entering the interactive medium:

“No, I mean, we’re only focused on doing incredible series and films and unscripted [work].”

But lo, the CEO continues and offers more insight into the situation:

“There are a lot of other things people do to entertain themselves, including Fortnite. And the original quote was that we compete with Fortnite more than we compete with HBO. Fortnite gets a lot more hours of viewing. Ultimately it’s about competing for those hours of viewing. But we don’t compete with Fortnite better by doing something like that because we’re not very good at that.

If you want to hear the exchanging of words between the audience member and Hastings for yourself, then you can watch the following half an hour-long video that starts at the 26-minute mark:

From here on out, Netflix plans on producing more “quality” movies and TV shows for people to watch, instead of entering the space known as video games, which if I had to be honest, I hope Netflix stays as far away from producing indie or mainstream video games.

In other words, that’s one less new publisher or developer injecting more political propaganda into the games industry… for now.

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