It’s being reported that Netflix’s plans to step into video gaming are moving up a gear thanks to the hire of a former EA and Oculus executive.
According to Bloomberg, Mike Verdu is to join the streaming platform as its new Vice President of Game Development. Citing a person Bloomberg say is familiar with the situation, he’ll be leading a team with the idea of offering video games on the service “within the next year” and the game will appear as new genre similar to ‘Documentaries’ or ‘Stand Up Specials’. Whats more, the unnamed source claims, these games will already be included in your existing monthly subscription and won’t require an additional fee.
The news follows reports from earlier this year that said the company was looking to make moves into the gaming space with a statement from the company at the time confirming they were “excited to do more with interactive entertainment.” Of course, it already has plenty of fingers in the gaming pie, so to speak, with ongoing projects around Sonic the Hedgehog, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil and of course The Witcher to name just a few.
Verdu has a long history in gaming himself, co-founding adventure game studio Legend Entertainment in the late 80s before spending seven years overseeing EA Los Angeles and working on games such as Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, Command and Conquer: Generals and The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth. He joined Oculus in 2019 as the company’s Director of Content and is credited on titles such as Star Wars: Tales from Galaxy’s Edge and Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond.
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Though Netflix has seemingly confirmed Verdu’s appointment to Bloomberg, the company is yet to comment on the rest of the report. It’s not currently clear precisely what sort of games will appear on the platform but it certainly won’t be short on company, with streaming services such as Google Stadia, Amazon Luma and Xbox’s recent launch of Cloud Gaming on PC to name just three names already populating an increasingly crowded space.
