Is Netflix Making An Aggressive Step Into The Video Game Business? There was certainly some talk about the company’s latest earnings call to support all the smoke that has risen in Hollywood.
Asked directly by Fidelity Management & Research moderator Nidhi Gupta, founder and co-CEO Reed Hastings said that “in a way, we’re playing a little bit with Bandersnatch now and we have some very basic interactive stuff.”
But it was Greg Peters, COO and Chief Product Officer, who added more smoke to the fire as he spoke with a smile about the multi-billion dollar video game industry.
“We are in the process of creating these amazing, deep universes and compelling characters and people are going to love those universes and want to delve deeper and get to know the characters better. We’re trying to think of all the different ways we can increase those connection points and deepen that fandom, and games are certainly a really interesting part of that. Whether it’s gamifying some of the linear storytelling we do like interacting with Bandersnatch and we’ll continue and we launched games ourselves as part of our licensing and merchandising efforts and we’re happy with what we’ve seen. There is no doubt that games will become an important form of entertainment and an important modality to deepen that fan experience, so we will continue, ”he said.
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CFO Spencer Neumann added that the company has “dabbled” in games. “We’re a company that keeps learning and so far the learning has been good, so we’re happy with how it’s played out and out and hopefully we’ll keep learning,” he said.
Netflix has focused on video games with the launch of games around shows like Stranger Things, so it’s entirely possible that it will contribute to this in the future instead of going all out to try and compete with the likes of Microsoft and Sony on the Xbox or Playstation.
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But Hastings suggested that the company doesn’t expect it to have a great “second act” like Amazon did by moving to web services and physical shopping, but expects to move forward with licensing and merchandising. “We want to expand,” he said. “We have a lot to do in terms of different types of entertainment.”
“I don’t think there will be a second company, in the sense of AWS and Amazon Shopping, I bet we’ll end up with one, hopefully gigantic, highly defensible profit pool and then continue to improve the service for our members, through out to expand in category. I wouldn’t be looking for a large secondary profit pool. “