Netflix’s gaming arm is best known for its indie and mobile titles, but the company has recently made a foray into the AAA space by hiring executives from high-profile franchises such as Halo, Overwatch and God of War. However, this strategy may soon come to an end, as Netflix is set to shut down its AAA studio, called Team Blue, the company has confirmed to Game File.
In 2022, Netflix brought former Overwatch head Chacko Sonny on board to run a new AAA studio in Southern California. 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 based on an entirely new IP.
Those executives are no longer with the company, and Netflix has confirmed to Game File that Team Blue has been shut down. Engadget contacted Staten and Grassetti for comment.
Netflix entered the gaming industry in 2017 with its retro-inspired Stranger Things mobile game. In the years since, the company’s strategy has primarily focused on acquiring mobile game publishing rights to respected indie titles such as Into the Breach and Terra Nil. It also developed a number of mobile games in-house. By 2023, Netflix had nearly 90 such titles in development across its own studios and partner studios.
These could be accessed via the Netflix app and played directly on the device, making them a good fit with Netflix’s overall streaming strategy. However, the Blue Studio project didn’t quite fit that model, which came as a bit of a surprise. As Engadget’s Igor Bonifacic noted at the time, “funding the development of a multi-platform AAA game is significantly more ambitious and, it should be noted, riskier.
