Netflix has today announced that it will acquire Next Games, a Finnish mobile game developer that has already made an RPG based on Stranger Things. The deal will see Netflix hand over around €65 million (around $72 million), with all of the paperwork expected to be finalized by the summer. Next Games has plenty of experience courting the TV-tie-in market, and previously made The Walking Dead: Our World which was kept updated in sync with the (in)famous zombie show.
As Michael Verdu, VP of Games at Netflix explained, Next Games will become a “core studio,” “expanding our internal game studio capabilities.” This is very in-line with Netflix’s strategy to broaden out what it can offer to users beyond prestige TV miniseries that regularly last 2-3 hours longer than they should. As well as titles spun-out of Stranger Things and The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Netflix has also launched a Hearthstone-esque card battler called Arcanium: Rise of Akhan and Krispee Street. Not to mention its projects in “interactive fiction” like Bandersnatch and the recently-released Cat Burglar.
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