Netflix hires EA, Zynga and Oculus vet as it plans to roll out games within next year

Mike Verdu, a former EA, Zynga and Facebook exec, is joining Netflix as vice president of game development.

Verdu’s job will be to ensure that Netflix is ready to offer video games alongside films and TV shows within the next year. This is according to Bloomber, which cites an anonymous source familiar with the situation.

The current plan is not to charge extra for the gaming content, although this could still change.

Before Netflix, Verdu was vice president of augmented reality and virtual reality conten for Facebook’s Oculus headsets. Prior to this, Verdu had worked at EA (on mobile games in the Sims, Plants vs. Zombies and Star Wars franchises), Kabam, Zynga and Atari.

The appointment comes after several months Netflix spent in talks with multiple veteran game industry executives about joining the company.

Netflix has been aware of the strategic importance of the video games market for quite a while. “We earn consumer screen time, both mobile and television, away from a very broad set of competitors,” the company said in January 2019.