Netflix Eyes High-Profile Gaming

Netflix is on the verge of taking its video game plans to a new stage, with reports that the streaming service’s games office in Los Angeles is seeking a director for a new AAA PC game.

According to published reports Wednesday (Nov. 23), the company also hopes to hire for other positions to work with the director, seeking people with a background in first-person and third-person shooter games, as well as “extensive experience working on live service games.”

In the video game world, AAA is a term for big, blockbuster games, along the lines of the “Grand Theft Auto” or “Call of Duty” series. News that Netflix wants someone to direct a game of this type could indicate a step up from the smaller mobile games the company has produced.

Netflix declined to comment beyond saying it is always looking to hire top talent.

The company said in August it hoped to have 50 titles available by year’s end for its gaming offering, which at the time attracted under 1% of its users.

Last month, Netflix announced a new game development studio, based in California and overseen by “Overwatch” executive producer, Chacko Sonny, NME reported.

“He could have gone anywhere, he could have raised money, he could have done anything and he chose to come here,” said Mike Verdu, Netflix’s vice president of gaming, in the report. “We are building a team around him and looking to him to reinvent what games can be.”

Netflix’s gaming venture is part of a broader reinvention by the company, which this year launched an ad-supported version of its service. The company said in October it would focus less on subscriber growth.

“To focus on subscribers in our early days was helpful, but now that we have such a wide range of price points, different partnerships all over the world, the economic impact of any given subscriber can be quite different,” Netflix Chief Financial Officer Spencer Neumann said at the time, especially when comparing Netflix against other streaming services.

“So, that’s why we’ve been increasingly focused on revenue as our primary topline metric,” Neumann added. “This is going to be even more important as we head into 2023 and we develop new revenue streams like advertising and paid sharing, where membership growth is only one aspect of the revenue picture.”