REACTION - Netflix Games studio closure suggests a lack of vision
Give them a chance to make something!
By Jonathan Garrett
23/10/24
After a two year pre-production and early development on an unannounced title, one of the Netflix Games studios has been unceremoniously shut down before anything of substance was revealed. It’s yet another reactionary move from a publisher unwilling to let a title cook before pulling the plug, in a year where this has become painfully commonplace.
Team Blue featured developers with a strong pedigree, including God of War and Overwatch, as well as Joseph Staten who played a crucial role in the Halo franchise. Although not the entirety of their operation, it’s still a massively short sighted move from Netflix who, much like Amazon in their formative years, have struggled to find their footing.
A reasonable assumption would be that Netflix have the cash flow and investment to keep projects like this alive, but clearly that is no longer the case. It remains to be seen whether this is an indication of wider cutbacks down the line, and if Netflix are choosing to reprioritise their resources away from digital media. Perhaps they aren’t as well equipped as we thought, and this might actually be the lesser of two evils…
TARPS?
At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.
