Netflix opens new gaming studio in California, and discusses potential expansion into cloud gaming

Netflix has recently made ambitious steps further into the video game industry by opening up their 5th gaming studio located in Southern California. Other studios are located in Helsinki, Finland, each designed to develop various types of games.

The California studio will be led by former “Overwatch” executive producer, Chacko Sonny, who last year announced his departure from Activision Blizzard due to investigations into sexual harassments and discriminations at the company. “Overwatch'' was incredibly successful, netting billions of dollars and has now evolved into its sequel, “Overwatch 2”, which has adopted the free to play model.

At the recent TechCrunch Disrupt event, Netflix VP of gaming, Mike Verdu discussed that “Netflix is seriously exploring a cloud gaming offering”. Over the last few years, other companies like Google and Amazon have attempted their own iteration of a cloud gaming service which have not seen much success, with Google even announcing the shutdown of their service, Stadia, in January. Verdu discussed how previous cloud gaming failures were due to the products business model, and not the technology itself.

Netflix currently has 14 games in development and 35 games available on its service, including games based on original IPs such as the highly successful Netflix series, “Stranger Things”, and licensed IPs such as “SpongeBob SquarePants”, as well as the development of original games.