Netflix has reportedly closed its ambitious AAA studio, Team Blue. The studio previously employed big-name developers, including veterans from Halo, Overwatch, and other major franchises.
The report was released on Oct. 22 by Game File and claimed the company’s Southern California studio, known internally as “Team Blue,” has closed up shop. It was supposed to be the streaming giant’s ticket into the AAA market, with the studio developing an ambitious multi-platform title that would decouple Netflix from the mobile video game industry. It has poured significant efforts into achieving this through Team Blue, hiring high-profile veterans such as the former Overwatch executive producer Chacko Sonny and the former Halo creative director Joseph Staten, who even left Xbox to join Netflix as a new creative lead on its AAA endeavor.
Rafael Grassetti, a Santa Monica veteran and God of War’s art director, also joined Netflix’s Southern Cali studio, though all of these developers have reportedly left the company following Team Blue’s closure this month. This appears to be a major sign of Netflix’s reluctance to enter the AAA market with an original IP—a market already (over)saturated with massive high-budget titles, franchised and original alike.
Netflix previously reported that it had over 80 titles in development, implying that the company was committed to this divergence from streaming and gaming entry. However, as we can see from this decision, it is unclear what Netflix aims for going forward. We can safely say it’s probably not the high-budget multi-platform AAA realm already dominated by giants such as Microsoft and Sony.
