Netflix’s gaming arm is best known for its indie and mobile titles, but the company has recently moved into AAA by hiring executives from high-profile franchises like Halo, Overwatch, and God of War. That strategy may be coming to an end, however, as Netflix is shutting down its AAA studio called Team Blue, the company confirmed to Game File.
In 2022, Netflix brought on former Overwatch boss Chako Soni to lead a new SoCal-based AAA studio. A year later, former Halo executive Joseph Staten was hired as creative director, followed by God of War art director Rafael Grassetti. At the time, Staten said he was working on a multi-platform AAA game with a brand new IP.
Those executives are no longer with the company and Netflix confirmed to Game File that Team Blue has been shut down. Engadget reached out to Staten and Grassetti for comment.
Netflix entered gaming in 2017 with its retro-inspired Stranger Things mobile game. Over the following years, its strategy centered primarily around acquiring the mobile publishing rights to respected indie titles like Into the Breach and Terra Nil. It also created a number of mobile games in-house. In 2023, Netflix had about 90 such titles in development with in-house and partner studios.
They can be accessed through Netflix’s app and played directly on your device, so they fit quite well with its overall streaming strategy. However, the Team Blue Studios venture didn’t exactly fit with that model, making it a bit surprising. As Engadget’s Igor Bonifacic noted at the time, “Financing the development of a multiplatform AAA game is quite ambitious and, it should be noted, risky.”