Netflix’s forays into the gaming business began a few years ago, with the release of a growing catalogue of mobile games, but this was just the beginning of a broader scheme. Before creating two studios, one in Helsinki and one in Southern California, the streaming giant bought Night School Studio (Oxenfree), Next Games, and Boss Fight Entertainment.
The establishment of the Californian facility coincided with Vice President of Gaming Mike Verdu’s announcement that Netflix was seriously considering developing its cloud gaming platform.
Former God of War art director Raf Grassetti has joined Netflix to work on the company’s upcoming AAA IP alongside Halo veteran Joseph Staten and other industry heavyweights.
After directing Halo Infinite, Staten announced his departure from Microsoft in April, and he soon after joined Netflix as creative director. Given his pedigree, Grassetti’s appointment as art director at Netflix makes sense.
After working on many first-party projects at Bioware and PlayStation, Grassetti joined Sony Santa Monica in 2013 as a lead character artist. He worked as a lead artist on God of War in 2018 before being promoted to art director on the 2022 sequel, God of War Ragnarok.
Other industry titans join Grassetti and Staten, including Edsall, a lead developer on Gears 4 and 5, and Sonny, former executive producer of Overwatch. We know almost little about the project this supergroup is working on, other than the fact that it’s a AAA project being created for several platforms, but it’s clear Netflix is betting big here. This unannounced project is likely one of the studio’s most high-profile initiatives, out of the 70 games under development at Netflix’s partner studios and the 16 in the works in-house.
