In July 2021, Netflix announced that it was expanding its platform into the video game market, with a plan to focus on mobile games at first. Just one month later, Netflix trialed the service in some parts of Europe, offering subscribers a handful of solid mobile titles to play for no extra charge. Though just five games were available at launch, it was a nice free addition to the service and proved that there was some real potential behind this idea. Flash forward a good few months and Netflix Games seems to be setting itself up for a big announcement.
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All The Studios Netflix Has Acquired
Over the last six months, Netflix has acquired three separate game studios, the first being Night School Studio. Acquired in September 2021, this developer is likely best known for its title Oxenfree, a graphic adventure that received favorable reviews upon its release in 2016.
Aside from Oxenfree, Night School Studio hasn’t done too much. The developer has some experience in the mobile game market, with two adventure titles releasing in 2016 and 2020, the first of which being Mr. Robot:1.51exfiltrati0n, a game based on the Mr. Robot show that was published by Telltale Games. The developer’s second adventure game, Next Stop Nowhere, is a colorful sci-fi title that received some pretty mixed reviews.
One of Night School’s most recent releases, Afterparty, reviewed pretty well across the board. Set in Hell, Afterparty puts players in the shoes of best-friend duo Milo and Lola as they try to out-drink Satan and escape from the underworld. According to some reviewers, the game offers some sharp and witty dialogue while also sticking to some pretty mature themes of morality and mortality.
As of 2022, Night School Studio is hard at work on its next title, Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals, a standalone sequel to the first game. It’s currently unknown whether Oxenfree 2 will be heading to Netflix or not.
Netflix’s second acquisition, Next Games, came just a few weeks ago on March 1, 2022. This developer has made three mobile titles over the last seven years, with two of those being Walking Dead tie-in games. The developer’s first title, The Walking Dead: No Man’s Land, was a fairly simple base-builder, while The Walking Dead: Our World is a barebones first-person shooter. The developer’s latest game, Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales, shows that the team is more than capable of working with Netflix’s IPs.
Boss Fight Entertainment is the latest studio to be acquired by Netflix, occurring just last week. Though the developer has only put out two games so far, one of them being a collectible dungeon crawler called Dungeon Boss and the other being a casino game titled MyVEGAS Bingo, this developer comprises some true talent, with employees that have previously worked at Ensemble Studios and Zynga Dallas.
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Netflix Seems To Building Towards Something
With three game studio acquisitions in just six months, it seems as though Netflix may be making a major move sometime soon. Netflix has stated that gaming was going to be the next big phase for the company, and with these acquisitions, it seems like it was telling the truth.
After the announcement of the Boss Fight acquisition, Amir Rahimi, Netflix Games’ Vice President gave a few small hints at where this platform is heading in the near-future. In his statement, Rahimi said that Netflix is “still in the early days of building great game experiences,” and that through “hiring top talent, and acquisitions,” the streaming service plans on creating a “world-class games studio.”
However, with Netflix being determined not to include any ads or in-app purchases in its games, it seems likely that the price of a Netflix subscription may be increased even further the more that the company puts resources into its gaming division. While it isn’t known how much these developers were acquired for, it’s not likely to be cheap, and the company will want to make a return on its investment sooner rather later.
Netflix has already expressed interest in creating video games based on its own IPs, and with a few Stranger Things titles already being released, it seems pretty probable that Netflix will want to keep exploring this avenue, especially as these Stranger Things games have done quite well. When it comes to original content that could be turned into great bite-sized video game experiences, there’s plenty for Netflix to daw inspiration from. From a Black Mirror graphic adventure or point-and-click game to a Bridgerton visual novel, there’s a lot of untapped potential there.
Over the next few months, it seems very likely that Netflix will acquire another handful of mobile-based studios, though it might be quite some time before subscribers get to enjoy any of these studios’ new experiences. Still, in time, it seems likely that the service’s game offerings will be pretty substantial, and said lineup could possibly outdo the offerings of competitors like Apple Arcade.
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