Netflix seems to have closed the door on their video game industry ambitions, at least for now.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle based on a GameFile report from Stephen Totilo, Netflix has closed Team Blue, a AAA video game developer that they founded.
Team Blue launched in October 2022 and was located in Southern California. They were working on an original multiplatform title at the scale of a AAA game.
Chacko Sonny, an industry veteran of nearly thirty years, was put in charge of Team Blue. Sonny is best known for a comparatively short tenure as executive producer of Overwatch, but he had worked on games as varied as Vigilante 8, 007: Nightfire, Star Wars Battlefront II, 2018’s God of War, and Wattam.
In April 2023, he was joined by Joseph Staten, a veteran from Bungie and Halo. He was writer and cinematic director for Halo and Halo 2, and was head of creative for Halo Infinite before joining Team Blue.
A month later, Santa Monica Studio art director Raf Grassetti left for Netflix’s studio as well. All three men have left Netflix, with their studio now closed. It’s unfortunate that we don’t have even a faint idea of what Team Blue was working on. Short of former employees leaking this information, or perhaps some sources hitting the network of insiders talking to journalists and content creators, we’ll never know either.
We also don’t really know why the studio was closed either. If you were wondering if this was a reflection of bad business going on in the streaming business, you would be wrong.
As reported in Yahoo Finance today, Netflix stock is at a record high today. This comes after they told investors they made $ 9.83 billion in revenue this Q3 2024 a few days earlier.
Netflix is apparently getting positive buzz for both their successful password crackdown against consumers, and their new initiative to enter sports and live events. Upcoming Netflix shows and events in this category include the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight, two NFL games for this Christmas, and WWE programming starting next year.
This news may seem hard to swallow for some consumers, and for others, hard to believe. This is the same Netflix that still seems to be making clear mistakes, like continuing to cancel shows after two seasons, losing more stars for their The Witcher TV show, and so forth.
But as it relates to Neftlix’s video game ambitions, they may have simply lost interest. With the video game industry itself still experiencing doldrums, Netflix may have simply chosen to stick to their core business now that it’s seeing a wave of success again.
We wish the best for the former employees of Team Blue and hope they can find placement back in the video game industry.
