A new front has opened in the battle to dominate digital entertainment. Netflix announced earlier this summer that it was venturing into video games. Last month it acquired game developer Night School Studio for an undisclosed sum. Amazon, which has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into gaming, finally had a hit with new online game New World.
The video game industry has become one of the world’s most popular — and lucrative — forms of entertainment. Video games generated nearly $178bn in global revenues last year, according to Newzoo, a market research group. That figure is projected to surpass $200bn by 2023.
For Amazon and Netflix, adding games to their platforms could attract more subscribers. Or at the very least dissuade existing ones from leaving. After a pandemic-induced jump in users, Netflix dropped 430,000 subscribers in the US and Canada in the second quarter. It regained some of these in the third quarter. Netflix has said in the past that in the “attention economy” it competes against video games just as much as rival video streaming services.