How Netflix Thinks About the Future
Virtual reality. Most of Netflix’s key competitors have made some moves to embrace virtual reality (VR). Hulu has developed its own VR app, for which it has been licensing exclusive content from Ryot, Live Nation and others. Amazon hasn’t launched its VR efforts yet, but job offers and hires hint at a pretty significant commitment. And Disney, which is set to become a direct competitor when it launches its own streaming service in 2019, released one of the most advanced social VR experiences last year.
Netflix on the other hand has been on the sidelines, and apparently has no plans to change that. “We’ll keep an eye on it, but we don’t have any plans to invest in significant content creation for VR,” said the company’s chief product officer Greg Peters last week. Peters reiterated a point his boss, CEO Reed Hastings, has been making for some time: VR seems like a great fit for gaming, but not so much for Netflix.
Smart speakers. Netflix may not run on a device that doesn’t have a screen, but the company is still exploring how to make use of smart speakers for control and content discovery.
Sports and news. Facebook and Twitter may be spending more and more money on sports rights, but Netflix has no plans to join them.
“We don’t do news, we don’t do sports,” Hastings said.
Light Field Capture and high frame rates. Netflix has a team of a dozen employees just working on keeping up with current audio and video production technologies. That team, the audio-visual group, tests the latest production cameras, displays and other equipment to understand which cameras work best for capturing HDR for Netflix’s original productions. “It’s important for us to understand how each camera sees the world,” said Netflix’s managing director for production technologies Chris Clark.
Something that could come to Netflix sooner than footage captured with light field cameras are high frame rates, which are often touted as the next step to improve image quality.
Theme parks and merchandise. “That would be amazing,” admitted Hastings about the prospects of seeing Netflix IP in theme parks. Alas, the company has no such plans. “Not in the short-term,” said Hastings. “Not in the next five or ten years.”
However, the company already did its first merchandise deals last year, selling “Stranger Things” shirts, action figures and even a Eggo-themed “Stranger Things” card game at Target and Hot Topic. “That’s a big one for us,” Hastings said. “We’ll be doing more of that over time.”
See the full story here: http://variety.com/2018/digital/news/netflix-theme-parks-vr-smart-speakers-1202724366/