1 . A new front has opened in the battle to dominate digital entertainment. Netflix announced earlier this summer that it was investing into video games. Last month it acquired game developer Night School Studio for a secret sum. Amazon, which has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into gaming, finally had a hit with new online game New World.
The video game industry has become one of the world’s most popular and profitable forms of entertainment. Video games generated nearly $178 bn in global income last year, according toa market research or on That fire is estimated to outweigh $200 bn by 2023.
For Amazon and Netflix, adding games to their platforms could attract more subscribers. Or at the very least dissuade existing ones from leaving. After a jump caused by pandemic in users, Netflix dropped 430,000 subscribers in the second quarter but regained some of these in the third quarter. Netflix has said in the past that in the “attention economy”, it competes against videogames just as much as video streaming services.
But gaming is a difficult market to enter. For every successful game, there are thousands of failures. Netflix hones to translate the success of shows like Stranger Things into video game hits. But good games need more than recognizable names. Development requires different infrastructure and talents.
Just ask Disney. The entertainment king shut down its games studio in 2016 and transformed into a licensing model. Also, Amazon spent near $1bn acquiring video-streaming service Twitch, launched gaming streaming service Luna and canceled at least four video games before New World.
Established game makers such as Sony and Microsoft all make money from selling games and consoles (游戏机). Free-to-play mobile games get users to make in-game purchases. Netflix’s plan is to add games for free and as a loss leader to win more subscribers.
The sweet spot may not be in making games at all. Apple and Google sell and distribute games from their app stores and take a cut of as much as 30 percent from each sale. No wonder established game makers are more concerned about middlemen than new entrants.
1. What does the underlined word “dissuade” in Paragraph 3 mean?| A．forbid. | B．discourage. | C．release. | D．protect. |
| A．To show the success made by the two companies. |
| B．To indicate the difficulty in subscribing to video games. |
| C．To compare video gaming services with video-streaming services. |
| D．To prove the challenge in making money through gaming industry. |
| A．It will attract subscribers to buy its game. |
| B．It wants to profit from its game consoles. |
| C．In-game purchases are its sweet spot to make money. |
| D．It uses free games as a hook to attract more subscribers. |
| A．Objective. | B．Supportive. | C．Critical. | D．Unconcerned. |
