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Report suggests Netflix is planning a game streaming offering

Much like Kleenex and Google before it, Netflix has become the noun we use to refer to any sort of video-on-demand service and now it looks like the brand wants to expand into gaming.

In a report from Bloomberg, it is said by “a person familiar with the situation” that Netflix plans to launch “video games on Netflix’s streaming platform within the next year”. Given that Netflix is a streaming service our immediate thought is that this will be a game streaming service and the Bloomberg report suggests that this is indeed the case.

Giving credence to this is the fact that Mike Verdu will join Netflix as its vice president of game development. Verdu has previously worked at Oculus, EA and Zynga to name a few.

While Bloomberg goes on to say that Netflix is advertising game development positions, the one position it links to – for a role as Director of Product Innovation, Interactive – is rather slim on details about game development experience.

“Nice to haves include applicable experiences from other industries, such as (including but not limited to) creative experience in game development or business experience managing a diverse portfolio of innovation investments,” reads the posting.

The posting seems to be leaning more towards somebody who can expand on Netflix’s interactive storytelling ala Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.

With that having been said, the appointment of Verdu is interesting and does point to Netflix having ambitions beyond streaming content.

While game streaming is rather popular at the moment with Microsoft, Google and Amazon all offering a game streaming service in some way, whether Netflix could make a success of game streaming depends largely on what games it creates.

If we were the betting sort we’d put money on the idea that Netflix is going to create simple games you can play with something as basic as a TV remote.

This would give the firm another carrot to lure viewers to its platform with and in heavily saturated markets, that might be one of the few ways Netflix could eek out some more market share.

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