Netflix is planning to make big moves in the entertainment video streaming market as it gears up to move beyond movies and TV shows to Video Games. The company has also hired executives from Social media giants Facebook and video game giant Electronic Arts to push this initiative forward. After Bloomberg reported this announcement from the company, Netflix’s share price soared high and gained about 3.3% in one day.
The objective behind this idea of bringing video games into a video streaming platform is to let the subscribers gain an immersive and interactive experience with the characters they love and the company wants to bring it to the audience within a year’s time. According to anonymous sources, Netflix will not charge extra for the video game services and it might well be included in the video streaming plans that the subscribers select.
The company has also hired Mike Verdu, who was previously with Facebook, as the vice president of game development to bring interesting games for the consumers to play. In saturated markets like the US, Netflix has looked to keep improving and growing through various different innovations to capture the attention of various target audiences. Some of the examples include Online shopping for people interested in shopping, tapping up Steven Spielberg for the movie enthusiasts and to increase the quality of films they release and even Netflix Kids for the children to watch cartoons from.
Netflix has already made some efforts into producing interactive shows and one example would be one of the episodes from their popular show Black Mirror. Their Co Chief executives have also taken a keen interest in foraying into the video game market. Ultimately, the video games can also provide huge marketing and promotion activities for the TV shows or Netflix Original Films they release. They also said that the battle royale game, Fortnite, and its developers Epic Games, are big competitors’ to their customer’s time.
Their competitors, Apple TV+, Disney+, Prime Video and HBO Max have also looked for the opportunities to grow and are moving fast with their decisions in this rapidly evolving situation. Warner bros. allowed Films to release on streaming platform HBO Max on the first day of film’s releases, Disney have acquired rights to expand their library through Marvel and Star Wars franchises and Amazon has recently completed a buyout of MGM Studios in order to improve their Prime Video Library.