On the one hand, seems like a complimentary good to their anime content. On the other, seems like branching into a hard business. Offering cloud services ala aws would probably be easier.
Any particular reason for CD Projekt? I don’t think they would be a good fit for Netflix as they focus on one large game at a time, which wouldn’t be great for a subscription model. They also don’t have anything to do with VR AFAIK, and are currently in hot water thanks to CP2077. Perhaps multiple smaller indie studios and developers could be bought to make games with Netflix IP.
They're probably referring to GOG, which is owned by CD Projekt. Purchasing CD Projekt would give Netflix the distribution rights of the GOG catalogue.
It's deceptively tricky to build out this kind of strategy. IP builds product awareness, but it doesn't lead to a sustained gaming audience, which needs something more akin to a platform strategy per franchise(a Madden, Mario, Guitar Hero, GTA, etc.) - you don't want to just make a "Stranger Things" game, because even if it's a deeply realized experience, it doesn't loop into another franchise in the way that, say, playing a Queen song on Guitar Hero will lead you towards seeking out the game's recommendation for other songs; neither will it have the kind of premise that is as self-contained and enabling for player projection as a GTA.
Netflix has become known for optimizing content against the algorithm's feedback and not really letting a show run to a natural conclusion before killing it. This is going to be troublesome if applied directly to gaming, since it won't create platform reinvestment.
Until I see more announcements I'm going to guess that this will turn out like Amazon Game Studio - lots of investment without results.
That isn't an automatic indication of them having any real success. See Instagram's attempts to become Tick Tock. Their failures would be pathetic if I mourned their decline.
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[ 1.3 ms ] story [ 26.8 ms ] threadEdit: non paywall https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/07/netflix-will-start-pu...
I don't know why anyone would want that. I love my one-purchase DRM-free games. I hate the concept of streaming games.
Video games (which compete both in IP _and_ gameplay) seems like a much riskier proposition, relatively speaking.
Netflix has become known for optimizing content against the algorithm's feedback and not really letting a show run to a natural conclusion before killing it. This is going to be troublesome if applied directly to gaming, since it won't create platform reinvestment.
Until I see more announcements I'm going to guess that this will turn out like Amazon Game Studio - lots of investment without results.