I also don’t expect AAA-like games at the beginning. They will need to change their customer behaviour/expectations first, and most of them are non-hardcore gamers.
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This kind of business model doesn’t require a huge day 1 lineup. Service gradually grows bigger and better with time. Remember they are not selling console hardware but only their subscription service. They have already done this in past and honestly software businesses are way less riskier than hardware ones.
Honestly, if this gaming service is offered in the same normal Netflix app I can see this being the greatest competitor to gamepass at the moment.
Netflix already has a massive userbase of more than 200 million subscribers, if they add a gaming section to it’s app it is going to reach a lot of the casual audience that don’t play games often.
This Netflix speculation I’m reading is ridiculous.
- Netflix is a one-product company. It sells its subscription service, and that’s it. (Yes, I understand there’s some minor tangential businesses here and there, like Stranger Things licensing and the such. But it’s a rounding error, if that.)
- Yes Netflix “could” fund X number of AAA games or whatever, but pray tell where they are going to find the partners / capacity? Microsoft resolved to invest billions upon billions of dollars in Xbox / Game Pass in 2018, and here we are in 2021 talking about how thin their 2021 lineup and the usual suspects are still able to say with a straight face that “Xbox has no games.” Anything short of an “at any price, on any terms” will take years to ramp up.
- In order to be a real publisher, you need to have first-party studios. Again, MS has been so aggressive here we’re all very familiar at this point with how limited the targets are at this point. It’s been made clear to us that every japanese publisher is off the table. We’ve been told WBIE isn’t for sale. We’ve been told Nordisk Films won’t sell Avalanche. We know CDPR is a trainwreck. Ubisoft cannot be bought, and even if it could do you want to take on their 10,000 employees? The economics around the bigger public studios (Take Two, EA, Acti-Blizz) don’t make sense. And we’ve seen how long it takes to get a new studio running with the Initiative.
- They’re going to fund games from independent studios? Which ones? Again, MS has been out there spending like a drunken sailor. I can only imagine that they’ve already picked the low-hanging fruit amongst the independent developers who have capacity and are looking to make deals for games that might be ready in the next 3-4 years.
None of it adds up at all, in terms of Netflix becoming the “Netflix of gaming.”
If you look at who they hired (an ex-Zynga guy from EA doing mobile gaming and a woman who worked on VR projects for Oculus) it seems much more likely that Netflix’s goal (for the foreseeable future at least) will be to produce additive video game content that is focused on enriching their own IP rather than producing content that is a standalone product (even a premium “tier” product).
So I think you’ll see things like Black Mirror - Bandersnatch, but with an even richer gaming component. Or VR experiences in the Stranger Things / Black Mirror worlds. I think Netflix is eager to leverage its financial resources to create value-added experiences that differentiate its service from its competitors.
I see the initiative as more limited scope, quirky content and less about trying to be Stadia-style console alternative.
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Dont discard anyone and that includes WBIE, Bethesda said no on 2019…and a few months latter…
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I will discard WB.
Apparently Ghost of Tsushima and Dualsense photos were found on the Netflix app source code. If Netflix actually partners up with Playstation this could be the first real rival of Gamepass.
IMO MS will need to speed up it’s acquisitions if this is actually true.
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don’t forget when Verizon had God of war & Detroit listed on their subscription services mockup
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How is this a rival to game pass when this is just streaming and not native. If anything it would be xcloud.
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By Gamepass i mean Xcloud, as in the long run Xbox number one priority will be Xcloud.
Fwiw, that DualSense graphic is a stock video. This may just be for mockups:
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Here we go again. PS fans and their never ending speculations. Mods please do something.
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Who knows if that’s legit, but if I was microsoft I would address any holes in the portfolio as quickly as possible. Maybe no big players jump in the games business but why risk it.
Get Neatherrealm, TT, and of course Sega amd then acquisition season is over for good
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Until Netflix starts acquiring studios, they’re off topic for this thread. There’s a lot of concern and baseless speculation regarding Netflix and potential Sony partnerships. There are plenty of other threads to discuss such things.
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baseless speculations is the name of the game, they are literally polluting the internet with their shit.
60 billion debt that gets bigger any day they spend producing games and don’t getting profit of their IPs. And a CEO that has stated that the gaming division isn’t their priority and they have sold one studio to EA…they are on sale pal…
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Agreed.
Unfortunately not a lot to discuss about acquisitions right now.
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why ? 
Probably not before the merger. They also could wait to collect the earnings from the games dropping in 2022.
I’m pretty sure the games announced for 21/22 could easily sell +25 million summarised.
Lego Skywalker Saga, Gotham Knights, Suicide Squad and Harry Potter.
They cancelled a lot of games in the last years, some return of investment would probably be welcome. And it could help to “estimate” the worth of the Studios and drive the price up.
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Yeah, Hogwarts Legacy will be a money printing machine, if MS gets the rights to make a sequel to this game in an eventual WB acquisition this would be a huge win for Xbox and Gamepass.