Netflix, one of the world’s leading online streaming platforms, has announced the acquisition of Spry Fox, making it the sixth in-house gaming studio for the company.
The streaming giant has been experimenting with different offerings, and the company recently launched a gaming service. While the service hasn’t picked up, the company seems determined to make it a success and in its efforts, it keeps buying game studios.
Spry Fox is a Seattle-based indie developer of cozy games like Cozy Grove and Alphabear. The acquisition won’t change much for the company, and its current games will remain available for download in their current forms on their current platforms.
David Edery, co-founder and CEO of the game studio, says that the company is already working on Cozy Grove 2 and a larger non-violent MMO. He adds that because of the acquisition, they don’t need to worry about generating profits and can now instead exclusively focus on making them more enjoyable and fulfilling.
The announcement comes just weeks after Mike Verdu, VP of Gaming at Netflix, revealed that the company is opening a new gaming studio in Southern California. The company also established an internal gaming studio last month, which is based in Helsinki, Finland and the co-founder and general manager of Zynga Helsinki Marko Lastikka is leading it.
Netflix says that it’s still early stages of its mobile gaming efforts and adds that new games take years to build, indicating that the company has a long-term vision for the mobile gaming offerings and may be planning to go beyond casual gaming.
The company currently has around 14 games in development in its own studios and 55 games being developed right now, including third-party ones. Netflix currently has 35 games or titles on the service available for subscribers.
