Netflix today revealed that former VP of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Content for Facebook, Mike Verdu has joined the company as its new VP of Game Development. A well-known veteran of the industry, he has built his career at various prominent game companies including EA, Kabam, Zynga, and Atari.
Today’s revelation has confirmed what we have heard back in May whereby the streaming service was apparently looking for an industry executive to lead its video games’ effort. Aside from the hiring, no further official information has been released by Netflix although the rumour that the streaming service will begin to offer video games in 2022 is still echoing within the industry.
Aside from that, Bloomberg has also reported that Netflix is not going to charge users extra for the games, as far as its current plan is concerned. Previous rumours have also noted that the games will be ad-free and may be delivered in the same manner as per Apple Arcade.
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While Netflix has generally dabbled into gaming since a few years ago through its interactive titles such as the Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, Bear Grylls’ You vs. Wild, and Minecraft: Story Mode but the hiring of Mike Verdu clearly showed that the streaming service is really serious in getting video games as part of its offering. It is definitely going to be interesting to see how Netflix is going to make this happen, so watch this space.
(Source: Bloomberg.)
