The Stadia and Luna teams can’t like this news.
Netflix is in the “early stages of further expanding into games,” the company said in a shareholder letter released ahead of its earnings call on Tuesday. There’s no list of titles revealed yet, but the lineup will be “primarily focused on games for mobile devices,” the letter said.
It sounds like Netflix is treating the addition of games to its streaming service as a new product offering for existing subscribers, meaning it’s not going to carry any additional fees — at least at the start. Though, of course, anything that adds value to the overall service can also be used to justify future price hikes.
The letter goes on to note, per The Hollywood Reporter: “We view gaming as another new content category for us, similar to our expansion into original films, animation and unscripted TV. 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.”
Expect more news to be shared in due time, and likely as soon as the Tuesday investor call. But the announcement comes only days after reports surfaced that Netflix hired Mike Verdu, a former executive at Electronic Arts (and Facebook as well), in a “VP of Game Development” role.
