Netflix’s entrance into the video game industry has been pretty normal, you could say, when it comes to big company’s from outside of games trying their hand in video games for the first time.
Which is to say, Netflix clearly had a good number of high hopes, acquiring Night School Studio, the team known for the excellent Oxenfree games, back in 2021, and also kicking up an internal studio called Team Blue.
The former team suffered layoffs earlier this year, while the latter was entirely shut down towards the end of last year. In other words, Netflix discovered you can’t make money in games right away, and that it takes more of an investment than it probably thought it would.
And yet, the head of Netflix’s games division, Alain Tascan, is making a bold prediction about the future of video games. While speaking on Chris Dring’s new podcast and trade publication The Game Business, Tascan talked about how he believes that console games aren’t going to be part of the video game industry’s future.
“[When it comes to] console, we started to look at the future where the platform is agnostic. Look at the younger generation. Are eight year-olds and ten year-olds dreaming of owning a PlayStation 6? I am not sure. They are wanting to interact with any digital screen, whatever it is, wherever it is, even in the car. With console you’re thinking about high definition, you’re thinking about the controller […] If we look at this older model, I think it will restrain us.”
Tascan had only just joined Netflix when Team Blue was shuttered, and joined after the aforementioned layoffs, so he can’t really be blamed for the company’s fumbles up to this point. He brings with him three decades of experience working at Epic Games, so his comment here isn’t entirely uninformed.
He’s not wrong that the youngest gamers today are more focused on just wanting to play their favourite games, no matter what platform that is. Tascan saw that first hand with Fortnite. For Netflix to start making waves in the industry with a younger crowd, it would need to play by the new rules of modern gaming.
Console games might not be the whole future of the video games industry, but it’s doubtful that we’ll truly see console games go away anytime soon.
Source – [The Game Business]
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