You know, for a few months Netflix has decided to throw both feet into the video game industry, first of all by offering and producing numerous adaptations in animated series or in film, such as Cuphead or the excellent Arcane of League of Legends, but also more recently by launching its gaming tab on mobile applications, with some small games inside. In 2022, the studio moved up a gear with the acquisition of several real video game studios and finally, the announcement of the creation of an internal studio to develop new titles, some of which may be based on SVOD platform licenses.
At the same time, Netflix has recruited from all over the industry to build a strong team and develop its AAA projects. We rely in particular on Andrew Brownellveteran of Riot Games and Blizzard, Mike Verdu (Oculus, EA Mobile, Zynga, Atari), VP of Development and now Chacko Sonny, who had left Blizzard after producing Overwatch 2, in the midst of torment for the American studio.
A third-person PC RPG
The former OW executive producer must now assemble a team to lead a new AAA RPG project announced by Netflix Games Studios. Mike Verdu announced it recently:
We’re launching another new studio in Southern California, this time around Chacko Sonny, who oversaw the production of God of War Ascension for Santa Monica and oversaw a portfolio of their games, then served as executive producer for a small franchise of games called Overwatch.
He could have gone anywhere, he could have raised funds, he could have done anything and he chose to come here. We’re building a team around him and counting on him to reinvent what games can be.
It will therefore be the fifth studio within Netflix, and the latter should be responsible for proposing ambitious productions, with a triple A budget to compete with the behemoths of the genre. According to the job offers recently published on the Netflix site, we can already predict that it will be of an RPG for PC, probably in third person, with a live-service component. The goal would be to showcase all the know-how of the brand in its original creation, but this time not on the small screen but on computers. The loop will be closed for the streaming giant, which is already considering potential adaptations in Netflix series or films.