The true setting

Yes, that is what we want, what we need. What is the true setting? We seek it, because (for the most) the media tends to give us a loaded canon, the question becomes for who they are loading their canons? This is seen with the BBC as they give us ‘Netflix cuts 150 US-based jobs after losing subscribers’ this headline is true, no one denies it and overall I wonder how many people left Netflix as they fired 1.2% of their workforce (150 out of 12,135). I can come up with all kinds of settings, yet we need to accept to some degree that Netflix will do what is best for Netflix, and that is not easy. Netflix has all kinds of issues. The first is that there is saturation in the streaming services. Netflix is apparently offering gaming services and become a competitor to Google and Amazon and as the BBC gives us “The redundancies, announced by the entertainment giant on Tuesday, will mainly affect its US office in California. They account for about 2% of its North American workforce.” This is fair, it amounts to a US workforce of 7500, so why did the BBC not give us that? We then see “In April, the streaming giant shocked the industry when it revealed it had lost 200,000 subscribers in the first three months of 2022, and warned another two million were expected to quit in the coming quarter. The news sparked an investor sell-off, with the firm’s stock plunging 35% in one day. It is now trading at $190 (£152), a 46% drop on its previous premium.” Now it is harder to say something about that. The stage of 2.2 million people is the setting of saturations and to some degree covid ending, or perhaps better stated, the people are expected to go back to work and there we see that Netflix is hurting the most, but not the only one. Covid endings will hit Disney, Hulu, Apple+ and others too. I see another problem, the fact that covid was ending was clearly visible, so the stage of “stock plunging 35% in one day. It is now trading at $190 (£152), a 46% drop on its previous premium” makes me wonder whether the suits of Netflix were wishful thinking or something. They are losing members, they are not correcting for 200K and 10 times that much in the coming quarter and the 35% drop implies an overreaction on one hand, or a lack of information on the other (BBC). This matters, because this knee jerk reactions from investors with their gaming enterprises will make it fail a lot faster than anyone expects. It is good news for Google and Amazon, yet there is the idea that it is not good news for gamers. You see the more game streamers there are, the more interesting it becomes for developers to sit don and seriously contemplate that dimension. Netflix would have been a decent third party. It is still possible with the other two, but three makes for a crowd and therefor for a larger interest by serious developers. That is how I see it.

So how will Netflix fare?
That is not easily seen and whatever I see makes it not truth, mere speculation and I am telling you that upfront. You see, no matter how I see it, how I interpret the knee jerk reaction by investors. There is every chance I might be wrong, and to some degree I do hope I am wrong. I have no idea how Netflix will be as a gaming solution, but a third player makes for more gamers and optionally for more embracing the streaming gaming solution. They do have options, or so we see. With “it’s looking at a cheaper, ad-based model and also planning on cracking down on password sharing which has cost it 100 million households.” We see two parts. The first is one, but one I personally would happily reject. The second one I have no issues with. The idea that 100,000,000 households share passwords implies that Netflix is losing over a billion a month. So they will need to evolve that system. At present I have no idea how, but there is always space for evolution.

So what will the future be for Netflix? I still believe that they can find all kinds of IP in the past, people forgot or merely ignored it and that is no different for movies and TV series. So saving costs in one directions does offer options in another and to be clear, there is an essential need for them to restore the loss of a billion plus. Beyond that? It will be anyones guess and a guess is as good as it gets for Netflix at present.