Until recently, Netflix had a gaming studio in Southern California, which was tentatively named Team Blue. It is no more. The streaming service decided to shut it down.
This was reported by Stephen Totilo, citing his sources. Totilo is currently developing his own platform, Game File, and was previously the head of Axios and Kotaku.
According to him, Team Blue was working on something large-scale and very expensive. The team was developing a project that could be played on various devices, not just mobile.
Over the past two years, very experienced professionals were brought in to work on the game:
- Chacko Sonny — in the industry since 1993, produced the original MechWarrior 2 and Star Wars: Battlefront 2, built production at Activision and Sony Santa Monica, and until 2021, was responsible for Overwatch at Blizzard;
- Joseph Staten — active since 1998, started as a product manager on Myth II: Soulblighter and designer for Oni, then worked for over 15 years in various roles on the Halo series and spent six years overseeing global publishing at Xbox Games Studios;
- Rafael Grassetti — worked on cinematics for Warhammer 40000 Dawn of War II, The Witcher 2, and Assassin's Creed III. Prior to Netflix, he worked for nine years at Santa Monica Studio, leaving as the studio art director.
What went wrong is unclear. Totilo writes that these specialists are no longer with Netflix, although their LinkedIn profiles still list them as part of the company.