It’s been rumored that Netflix would expand into the world of online gaming for a long time, due to the company having approached a number of gaming industry veterans to check whether that they’d be interested in a job.
Netflix recently confirmed that games are coming to the service, with former EA and Oculus CEO Mike Verdu as head of the venture. Building on this, the well-known software engineer Steve Moser took a deep dive into the code of the Netflix app and found, among other things, the new logo for Netflix’s game service – “N Game”.
Moser also discovered that the gaming part is code-named “Shark”, and that a shark fin icon is used as its symbol. In addition, a picture of the DualSense controllers for Playstation 5 showed up, as well as a picture of the game Ghost of Tsushima. This is a Playstation-exclusive game, where a new “Director’s Cut” version will appear in August.
The latter two images have led to speculation that there may be a partnership between Sony Playstation and Netflix. BGR points out that Netflix signed a five-year agreement with Sony back in April, giving them exclusive rights to stream Sony movies once they’ve finished the cinema and sales/rental period – including feature films such as Uncharted, the Marvel movie Mobius and the next Spider-Man.
Beyond this, we currently don’t know much more about Netflix’s plans into gaming. but we do know that gaming will be included as part of the regular Netflix subscription and that no separate subscription will be required. We’ve also been told it won’t mean an increase in the cost of the subscription. The service will mainly be for mobile gaming, but Netflix has said that all devices supporting Netflix will eventually offer games. Of course, this also means both Playstation 5 and Xbox Series S and X.
Netflix is a latecomer to an already pretty saturated market, with more competitors lining up. Microsoft’s Game Pass, Apple Arcade, Google Play Pass, EA Play, Playstation Now will all be direct competitors. One of Netflix’s obvious advantages is that most people are already subscribers to them.
According to Bloomberg, the new service will go live within a year.
