Last May, we shared the news about Netflix‘s goals to enter the gaming industry and new recruitment plans. Netflix, which does not step back from these goals, has officially started its activities in the game industry by hiring one of the most important names in the industry, Oculus and Electronic Arts Game Development Leader Mike Verdu.
Netflix has stated that it wants to take serious steps in the game industry by hiring a senior game development leader such as Mike Verdu. Alongside Verdu’s long history at Electronic Arts, he also previously worked as Facebook‘s Vice President of AR/VR, Head of Studios and Creative Director at Kabam, CEO of TapZen, and Creative Director and Co-President of Games at Zynga. Mike Verdu’s position at Netflix will be VP of Game Development, reporting to Chief Operating Officer (COO) Greg Peters.
Netflix has recently worked on games such as Stranger Things and The 3% Challenge, and an interactive experience close to the game such as Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. After the Netflix audience was pleased with it, Netflix, which wants to expand the small steps it took on behalf of the game industry, shows its seriousness about this issue by putting Mike Verdu at the head of future game projects.
According to Newzoo, Netflix’s transition to games was expected as all major tech companies acknowledge the power of gaming, which has reached a $175 billion industry. However, we must say that it is not that easy to switch to games. Google set up a studio with the goal of developing games for a cloud-based game service Stadia, and then faced the situation of shutting down its internal game studio headed by Jade Raymond. Besides that, Amazon also didn’t get very good results with games like Crucible and recently decided to open source the Lumberyard game engine.
