Netflix CEO Reed Hastings recently attended the DealBook 2019 event in New York City, where he was among the speakers.
His speech was recorded by CNBC Television and is now available for replay on YouTube. The Netflix CEO answered plenty of questions, including one with regards to his quote from earlier this year, when he said Netflix competes more with Fortnite than with HBO for the attention of consumers. Does that mean we can expect Netflix to enter the cloud gaming market?
No. We're really focused on doing incredible series and films.
There are a lot of other things people do to entertain themselves, including Fortnite. And the original quote was that we compete with Fortnite more than we compete with HBO. Fortnite gets a lot more hours of viewing. Ultimately it's about competing for those hours of viewing. But we don't compete with Fortnite better by doing something like [a streaming service for games] because we're not very good at that. We compete by doing the most amazing TV shows you've ever seen, so you put down Fortnite and you come to watch our shows.
Perhaps it is a wise choice from Netflix, seeing as every major tech company is already focused on taking a piece of the cloud gaming market, including Valve according to yesterday's rumor. That doesn't mean the folks at Netflix are not somehow dipping their toes in gaming, as demonstrated by the recent Stranger Things adaptation. They are also experimenting on interactive TV shows (Black Mirror: Bandersnatch) on their own platform.
Of course, there's The Witcher adaptation coming out soon on as well, though that's technically not a videogame IP even if it rose to global prominence mostly thanks to the fantastic games made by CD Projekt RED. At any rate, Geralt of Rivia will be back on your screens, albeit in a non-interactive fashion, on December 20th.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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