A new report suggests that Netflix has been talking with Rockstar about releasing a GTA title as it builds its Netflix Games service.
Netflix has reportedly talked with Rockstar about adding a Grand Theft Auto title to its Netflix Games subscription service, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal.
Netflix Games currently offers more than 70 titles for mobile phones, which are available to download for anyone with a Netflix subscription. The service already includes a number of highly regarded indie titles, such as Immortality, Into the Breach, Spiritfarer, Kentucky Route Zero and Oxenfree II: Lost Signals, but Netflix is reportedly looking to bring ‘higher-end’ games to the service, hence the talks with Rockstar.
If a GTA game did arrive on Netflix, it’s not clear what form it would take – whether it would be a mobile version of one of the older games in the series, for example, or a spinoff in the vein of GTA: Chinatown Wars on the Nintendo DS. Perhaps it could even be GTA6. Netflix has begun experimenting with cloud streaming for games, where users can play a streamed game on their TV by using their smartphone as a controller, so there’s scope for richer and more detailed games to come to the service via that technology.
The Wall Street Journal article also notes that Netflix is looking to create more games based on TV properties that it owns, such as Squid Game and Wednesday. The company recently released a mobile game based on the reality TV series Love is Blind.
Currently, less than one percent of Netflix users play games via the service, according to the Wall Street Journal report, but the company has been working to expand its gaming output. Netflix has already bought Night School Studio (creators of Oxenfree), Spry Fox (creators of Cozy Grove) and Next Games (creators of Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales), and in addition, the company has created its own studio to work on triple-A “multiplatform game” headed up by Halo veteran Joseph Staten. It seems Netflix is getting serious about video games.
Read more: Far from phoning it in: the trials of bringing indie games to mobile
