Netflix has announced that it has acquired Seattle-based independent gaming studio, Spry Fox. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Spry Fox has become Netflix’s sixth in-house games studio
Spry Fox was founded by David Edery and Daniel Cook in 2010. The company has some really successful titles like Triple Town, Alphabear, and Cozy Grove. Spry Fox’s existing games will continue to be available on all relevant platforms. In the meantime, the company will help Netflix expand into another beloved genre and grow Netflix’s games catalog.
“Our games journey has only just begun, but I’m proud of the foundational work we’ve been doing to build out our in-house creative capacity so that we can deliver the best possible game’s experience – including no ads and no in-app purchases — to our members as part of their membership,” Amir Rahimi, the vice president of game studios at Netflix, said in the blog post.
Netflix already owns Next Games, Night School Studio, and Boss Fight Entertainment which are known to develop games catering to different tastes.
Netflix is investing big in gaming. The company has been releasing games on the Netflix app to keep users engaged. It has 35 games on the platform, 14 games are in development, and also plans to launch at least 50 titles by the end of this year.
Netflix’s gaming efforts are still in the early days and the company has its long-term vision for mobile gaming. Apptopia’s recent data claims Netflix games had 1.7 million daily users and its total gaming catalog had seen just 23.3 million downloads as of August. These numbers are really small considering 221 million Netflix subscribers.
Netflix is also seriously exploring cloud gaming offerings. So, it will be interesting to see how Netflix manages to grow in the mobile gaming space.
