Netflix acquired Boss Fight Entertainment, a small independent video game studio based in Allen, Texas. With the acquisition of its third gaming studio on Match 24, 2022, the streaming giant expands its reach into the lucrative video game market.
However, Netflix didn’t reveal the amount of the deal.
Last year in September, Netflix entered the global gaming market with the acquisition of its first-ever video game studio – ‘Night School Studio’. Since then the company has been steadily expanding the game catalog while also establishing an in-house creative development team.
In March 2022, Netflix announced its plans to acquire Next Games, a developer and publisher of mobile games based in Helsinki, Finland.
Through partnerships with developers around the world, hiring top talent, and acquisitions like this, we hope to build a world-class games studio capable of bringing a wide variety of delightful and deeply engaging original games – with no ads and no in-app purchases – to our hundreds of millions of members around the world, said Netflix.
Netflix mobile games
Late last year, Netflix launched its debut lineup of mobile games which include two “Stranger Things” games and other casual games.
Since then, the streaming giant has rolled out several other titles, including “Arcanium: Rise of Akhan”, “Asphalt Xtreme”, “Bowling Ballers”, “Card Blast”, “Dominoes Café”, “Dungeon Dwarves”, “Hextech Mayhem: A League of Legends Story”, “Knittens”, “Krispee Street”, “Shooting Hoops”, “Teeter (Up)”, “Wonderputt Forever”, “Shatter Remastered” and “This Is A True Story.”
Can Netflix be an emerging threat to big players?
In just 6 months, Netflix has acquired three gaming companies, indicating how desperately the company is trying to catch up to its competitors.
When compared to big companies like Microsoft and Sony, which are known for making gaming consoles and popular games like Halo and Spider-Man, Netflix has far fewer development studios. Even big tech companies like Google and Amazon, which are trying to break into the gaming industry, have a head start on Netflix.
Mike Verdu, who is leading Netflix’s gaming push, reveals that the company wants to stand out by leveraging the brand appeal of its streaming shows, which could be turned into games. Even if Netflix has yet to establish a reputation for producing popular video games, a game based on a Netflix hit is enough to spark gamers’ interest simply because of the name.
Verdu further said that the streaming platform can connect its popular streaming shows with related games “and stories that they love in-between seasons of a show or in-between movies.”
That’s how Netflix would eventually create new, original video games rather than relying solely on games created by third-party studios.
“It took a while for the company to reach the point, where these original shows just broke through and you saw the promise of original content and the promise of streaming come together in this magic moment,” said Verdu.
Do you think Netflix, which has more than 221.8 million paid streaming subscribers, can be a threat to the world’s biggest video gaming companies like SONY, Microsoft, Nintendo?
