How Netflix Is Diving Headfirst Into Gaming
Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) is in the business of holding attention. But its leap into gaming begs the question, how will this addition affect the pricing strategy? In this clip from "The Gaming Show" on Motley Fool Live, recorded on March 7, Motley Fool contributors Ryan Henderson, Travis Hoium, and Jose Najarro discuss their thoughts on Netflix's strategy to get into gaming.
Ryan Henderson: Netflix has been pretty vocal that they want to get into gaming, at least mobile gaming, and include that in their subscription offering. One way they've been doing that is they have acquired a studio before, but they will license their intellectual property to basically contracted studios to build the games for it. It's a pretty common practice especially in the gaming world. Last week, they announced that they are acquiring a Finland-based mobile game development studio called Next Games for about $71 million USD. The connection there is that Next Games has developed a Stranger Things mobile game for them in the past and so they have worked together before and, basically, this is them saying, "It feels like you did a really good job on this. There is the potential that you guys can do more for us with some more of our intellectual property so let's just take it in-house." I think right now, it's just a bid. I'm not sure if the acquisition has closed, but I imagine it will. This is, hopefully, another push toward mobile games as a part of their subscription offering. I want to pose this question to you guys which is, what do you think of the strategy from Netflix? Do you think they have a future in mobile gaming? Is that a good route for them? Also, if they started raising prices to their subscription because of mobile gaming, would that upset you?
Source Fool.com
