In what’s been a pretty big day for announcements from the streaming giant, Netflix has now revealed it’s opening its a new game development studio. As reported in VGC, the news broke yesterday during the TechCrunch Disrupt 2022 event, during which Netflix’s vice president of games Mike Verdu made the big reveal.
The new studio, which hasn’t been named as yet, will be based in California and headed up by Overwatch executive producer Chacko Sonny. Speaking at the TechCrunch Disrupt event, Verdu explained more about the streaming company’s plans for its new game development studio, which will be the fifth studio in Netflix’s portfolio. “We are starting another organic new studio in Southern California,” Verdu explained, adding “this time around Chacko Sonny, who oversaw production on God of War Ascension for Santa Monica and oversaw a portfolio of their games, and then was executive producer of a little game franchise called Overwatch.”
Sonny was the executive producer of Overwatch and left Blizzard Entertainment in September of 2021. At the time it was simply explained that Sonny would be taking “some time off” from Blizzard, but he ended up as being one of many big names to depart the troubled company at that time. Verdu clearly sees the acquisition of Chacko Sonny as a big win for Netflix, explaining that “He could have gone anywhere, he could have raised money, he could have done anything and he chose to come here. We are building a team around him and looking to him to reinvent what games can be.”
The latest news of this southern California studio comes off the back of last month’s reveal that Netflix would be opening up a games studio in Helsinki, Finland. Heading up the team at that studio will be Marko Lastikka., whose prior credentials include work at Zynga and Electronic Arts. Of Sonny, Verdu also added that “You don’t get people like that coming to your organisation to build the next big thing in gaming unless there’s a sense that we’re in it for the long haul and the right reasons.”
The news of another games studio is yet another string in Netflix’s bow when it comes to its ambitions for gaming. The company has also revealed today that it’s seriously considering a move into the world of cloud-based gaming, but creating games content for PC and TV platforms as well as its current offering of games for mobile games for Android and iOS devices. What kind of games it’ll create and whether these will come to additional platforms in the future, only time will tell. Either way, the behemoth that is Netflix is showing no signs of slowing down as it also reports gains of over 2.4 million subscribers to its service.
