NEW YORK – APRIL 28: A window display advertises Grand Theft Auto IV April 28, 2008 in New York … [+]
The film and TV industry and the gaming sector have had a healthy relationship for some time now with studios, networks, and platforms adopting prominent gaming intellectual property (IP) to turn into content. We may now be seeing an evolution of that relationship.
Netflix’s
The goal is of course for Netflix to become a self-reliant platform for gaming as well as content. Creating multiple revenue streams for a program’s universe outside of just the content IP.
The OTT platform bought Boss Fight Games, a private game development firm, on March 24th, 2022. It also made an offer the same month to purchase Next Games for €63.1 million ($68.8 million), after working with the company to develop Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales.
One of the major positives of the gaming sector is that it aids in keeping an audience captive to the universe surrounding the content itself. Elongating the life cycle of a show could help with subscriber retention and growth into new demographics.
As Netflix owns the rights to a lot of original content, and now design firms, IP can be easily translated onto the mobile screen. There’s a possibility this becomes a high return venture but at the very least it will keep some audiences connected to programming more frequently.
The gaming industry is also on the verge of mass growth with new technology and possibilities manifesting frequently. Gamelancer, the largest gen-z gaming network, is now publicly traded and has visions of further success in the marketplace.
The company currently has 27 million fans and over 1 Billion monthly video views across TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram. Through leveraging their handle – @gaming – across platforms they’ve garnered a sizeable following that shows no sign of slowing down.
A graphic of Gamelancer’s social media platforms.
Razvan Romanescu, the Co-Founder & CEO of Gamelancer Inc., said about the current state of the sector: “The future is gaming and NFTs—we are at the frontier of a massive shift in how gaming and the world intersect at scale. Gamelancer is positioned to be the largest Gen-Z gaming conglomerate to spearhead cloud gaming and audio connectivity.”
“We want to provide real value for the gaming community through content, technology, blockchain and hardware.”
On the elevated interest in the sector, Romanescu wasn’t surprised, noting the advent of further technology growth, deeper connectivity and understanding as a reason behind the increased investment.
“I think a lot of companies are now opening their eyes to the possibilities around gaming and what can be achieved.” He added.
“The move by Netflix is not surprising and gives them further opportunities to scale and help in effectively keeping subscribers. We’ve found that creating a sustainable gaming community, coupled with informative content and innovative ideas, like in-game voice chat, has been very productive. There’s a lot we have in the pipeline to further expand and adapt to the growth across the marketplace in due course also.”
The gaming industry has been eyed for some time but has historically been a tough nut to crack with everyone looking for a product like GTA V which turned over around $6 billion on a budget of just $265 million.
Content from games has been done in the past by both Disney and Meta with very mixed results, and Disney had strong IP also. Netflix’s success in its gaming venture will be one to watch.
