The industry of video games is experiencing a revival.
Two weeks less than Take-Two announced the acquisition of $12.7 billion deal for Zynga and just a few weeks after Microsoft revealed its record-breaking investment of $69 billion of Activision Blizzard, Netflix co-founder and co-chief executive officer Reed Hastings said Thursday that the expansion of video gaming so that Netflix can “amaze our members by having the absolute best in the category” is his objective.
“We have to be differentially great at it,” Hastings stated during its earnings call. “When mobile gaming is the world-leading, and we’re some of the best producers, like where we are in film today, having two of the top ten, you should ask what’s next. Let’s nail the thing and not just be in it for being in it.”
This is a big undertaking for Netflix, currently developing its gaming business entirely from scratch. Netflix Chief operating officer Greg Peters said Thursday the company would license “large game” intellectual property that “people will recognize” later this year. Hastings said Netflix would employ the “walk, crawl, run” strategy for gaming, which is a deliberate strategy to gradually grow the business to gain insight into users’ preferences and use resources effectively.
Netflix is, naturally, has utilized this approach before when streaming video. The company has licensed well-known films or TV programs to expand its base of users as a supplement to cable TV before slowly moving towards original material. After years of testing on a show-by-show or film-by-film method, Netflix felt its recommendation algorithm and data from users could accurately predict the popularity of new original content. At present, Netflix spends billions of dollars annually on its actual content.

Young happy Asian couple playing video games in living room. Cheerful people having fun with computer gaming concept.
Blue Planet Studio
The Microsoft acquisition and the Netflix commentaries are a general recognition that gaming has become an integral part of entertainment across the globe, particularly with younger audiences. Netflix has frequently stated that games like Fortnite have a lot in common with its streaming service to attract attention.
This isn’t a new thing. Microsoft has been the owner of Xbox for years. However, it hasn’t paid more than $70 billion on anything or even an entire video game business.
Gaming has been at the forefront of people’s thoughts as companies like Meta and Roblox develop strategies around an unclearly defined plan for immersive computing known as”metaverse. “metaverse,” which will most likely include gaming at least in some way.

It is the Entertainment Software Association. The U.S. video game trade association claims that more players engage in games on video than before. But the rush to acquire could be a sign of something more simple: Gaming has become ubiquitous. Online play and mobile devices allow players to play games in real-time and have made gaming accessible to more attention and a more significant place in the youth world.
Media and tech giants have tried gaming at times, but with mixed results. Disney and Google have been among major companies that have decided to drop their plans to develop video games in the last few times. It’s likely to be too early to decide to position an organization in the metaverse, as it’s unclear precisely what the metaverse is.
Gaming is an integral part of the plan for two of the biggest tech companies. This is significant, and there will likely be more gaming consolidation shortly.