General Games News - The Bear and Badger

Yossarian

The weird thing about Netflix getting into the streaming games, erm, game is that they’re the company that taught all other streaming businesses that you can’t rely on third party content.

I can’t see Netflix winning many bidding wars for acquisitions considering the amount of money being thrown at these at the moment, building up studios from scratch would take years to get off the ground. The only real option I see for them would be some sort of long term partnership with Embracer or Tencent to provide the content. Outside of that, I’d be very surprised if Netflix are willing to invest the amounts of time and money needed to break into gaming.

poprock

Look, when I said ‘take this with a pinch of salt’ …

What’s probably happened here is that someone in the Netflix board has mentioned that video games seem to make a lot of money and that streaming games seems to be an emerging thing. And that ‘we’re a streaming company, maybe we should look at this?’

So there’s been a discussion and the end result was ‘Maybe we should hire someone senior who knows about games, just in case we need to do something. Best to be prepared.’

And then word got out that Netflix were hiring a video games executive, so the rumour mill goes into overdrive and people start making investment decisions based on the idea that Netlifx might try doing something about games.

poprock

And basically, because someone said ‘maybe we should look into this’, the end result is:

I_R

I could see them spending the money if they thought they could get the users. Gaming is a very risky medium to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at though.

MattyJ

Partner with Microsoft to take the streaming tech, include gamepass games for an extra X amount per month..... Profit?

monkey

poprock wrote:

Key fact

Netflix’s subscriber base reportedly reached 200 million at the start of 2021. By contrast, Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass has just a fraction of that with 23 million subscribers as of April this year.

They could go third-party publisher for quite a while maybe, while developing their own stuff. That sort of subscriber base might be enough to get Sony and MS to let them in on the exclusives.

Although Netflix make mostly garbage television so don’t know why their games would be any different.

monkey

Would be amusing if the ‘Netflix for games’ turned out to be Netflix.

Did Netflix used to send games through the post or am I imagining that?

b0r1s

Surely an easier route for Netflix would be music. Jump on the lossless game and offer it at £5 extra month. We know they have the streaming infrastructure sorted. Would be a viable competitor and likely knock out a lot of the big guys.

LivDiv

Could be that they aren't talking AAA games and instead have looked at mobile or smaller titles. How is Apple Arcade doing?

Edit:
I actually think there may be a gap there for streamed but more basic games. We all tend to think of it as AAA then when Destiny runs like crap we write off the whole thing.
Is there a market for adding in the types of games that made the DS a hige success outside of the kids market. Brain Training, Sudoku, match 3s, tactical games all that stuff that doesn't need twitch gameplay all the time.

Edit Edit
The Android store is a mess and most games have really ugly ads interrupting the game. A small feee for a suite of games might be a seller.

b0r1s

Very well. Pretty sure they are heading to 20m subscribers. The issue is arcade is installed not streamed so that knocks out any reactive games. Plus if we are talking phones when people are out and about streaming is a no go. Definitely need an install option.

Yossarian

I_R wrote:

I could see them spending the money if they thought they could get the users. Gaming is a very risky medium to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at though.

More like billions of dollars over the course of a decade or two to break through in gaming.

MattyJ

monkey wrote:

Would be amusing if the ‘Netflix for games’ turned out to be Netflix.

Did Netflix used to send games through the post or am I imagining that?

They sure did. Played a bunch of 360 games through it!

monkey

I think I might have done as well but I also had lovefilm so couldn’t remember if I was getting them mixed up. Seems like another world now.

mistercrayon

Maybe Netflix getting “into” games is them being literally absorbed by Xbox

poprock

There are hundreds of ways it could go. And Netflix will be studying all of them.

afgavinstan

Anyone here use Luna?

poprock

Don’t you have to be in the US for that?

Diluted Dante

Well, have a US account, that isn't in Alaska, Hawaii and some other state I can't be bothered to look up again.

poprock

You kinda have to figure that these companies don’t really care about users sticking to the region agreements, and they’re just going through the motions for the sake of their contractual distribution deals.

I mean, if anyone knows exactly where I live, it’s Amazon. The fuckers are at my door delivering stuff daily.

LivDiv

I assumed with streaming stuff its so you are close enough to a server dedicated to that service.

EvilRedEye

Yuki Naka has confirmed he resigned from Square Enix and is considering retirement after the commercial failure of Balan Wonderworld.

Moot_Geeza

Possibly for the best. Chu Chu Rocket was his last great game. Will always love him for the OG Sonics and NiGHTS though.

Yossarian

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Chu Chu Rocket was his last great game.

It was his last game as director until Balan Wonderworld.

He was producer on a couple of crackers after that, including Samba de Amigo.

Moot_Geeza

I'd forgotten about Samba. Thought he was at the helm for Billy Hatcher but I never played that.

DrewMerson

afgavinstan

If I earn enough rewards points for a tenner off by launch, I'm in. As I mentioned previously, it's as close as I'll get to a new Virtua Tennis so that's enough. I'll embrace the fun if it means Yakuza costume dlc down the line.

JonB

The Fortnite effect? Can't sell anything like this these days without a hundred wacky skins and trinkets.

LivDiv

My immediate thought when seeing the trailer was that it reminded me of that mental Japanese horse racing game and as the Olympics are in Japan this time I thought they were doing a thing.
Getting a bit of that Japanese crazy into the game seems fun to me.

Verecocha

The olympics is so unbelievably boring it might be watchable if it included astronaut suits etc.

Moot_Geeza

I'll buy it if they confirm a big head mode.

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