Is Netflix making an aggressive move to the video game industry? There was definitely a conversation about the company’s latest earnings call to back up all the smoke that has increased in Hollywood.
In response to a direct question from Fidelity Management & Research moderator Nidhi Gupta, founder and co-CEO Reed Hastings stated that “in a way, we are so busy playing closely with Bandersnatch and we have very basic interactive things.”
But it was Greg Peters, chief operating officer and chief product officer, who added more smoke to the fire when he spoke with a smile about the billion-dollar video game business.
‘We’re creating these amazing, deep universes and compelling characters, and people love the universe and want to immerse themselves deeper and get to know the characters better. We’re trying to figure out all the different ways we can enlarge the connection points and deepen the fandom, and games are definitely a very interesting part of that. Whether it’s the game of some of the linear storytelling we do like Interactive with Bandersnatch, and we will continue and we actually launched games ourselves as part of our licensing and trading effort and we are happy with what we saw . “There is no doubt that games will be an important form of entertainment and important modality to deepen the experience of fans, so we continue,” he said.
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CFO Spencer Neumann added that the company had ‘gambled’ in games. “We are a business that keeps learning and so far the learning has been good, so we are happy with how it is played and hopefully we will continue to learn,” he said.
Netflix has been involved in video games with the introduction of games around programs like Stranger Things, so it’s quite possible that it will contribute to this in the future, rather than trying everything to compete like Microsoft and Sony on the Xbox or Play station.
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But Hastings suggested that the company would not have a wonderful ‘second-hand deal’ like Amazon did by going to web services and physical shopping, but that it expects to start further with licensing and merchandise. “We do want to expand,” he said. “We have a lot to do when it comes to different types of entertainment.”
‘I do not think there will be a second industry in the sense of AWS and Amazon Shopping, I would bet that we will eventually have one, hopefully huge, very defensible profit potential and then continue to improve the service for our members, by expand into category. I will not look for any major secondary profit potential. ”