According to Netflix, the biggest threat to their entertainment empire isn’t HBO, Hulu, Amazon Prime, or even the upcoming Disney+. No, the company seems to think their biggest competition is Epic’s Fortnite. 

“We compete with (and lose to) Fortnite more than HBO,” says Netflix in a recent letter to shareholders. “When YouTube went down globally for a few minutes in October, our viewing and signups spiked for that time…There are thousands of competitors in this highly-fragmented market vying to entertain consumers and low barriers to entry for those with great experiences.”

Netflix goes on to state that they’re not particularly concerned about any single competitor and instead choose to focus on improving the Netflix experience for their subscribers. We’re not sure how that recent price hike from US customers helps improve the Netflix experience, but we suppose they have a lot of faith in the value of their original content. 

Still, it’s hard to argue with Netflix’s assessment of the situation. We hear many companies look within their own borders of the entertainment world when identifying their competition. However, Netflix has realised that what that they’re competing for is screen time. As the company points out in their report, YouTube seemingly monopolises more screen time than any of the major video streaming services. 

As for Fortnite, Netflix seems less worried about Fortnite directly “stealing” customers from their service, and more worried about how the game seems to be engaging people (especially young users) and causing them to devote more of their screen time to the game rather than watching Netflix. They might retain their subscription money while they play Fortnite and watch YouTube, but they’re right to worry that people might eventually realise they don’t use Netflix as their primary source of entertainment and cancel their subscriptions. 

In any case, it’s interesting to hear one of the largest entertainment providers in the world directly reference YouTube and Fortnite as serious competition in an ever-changing digital landscape. 

It’s been an interesting few years for the Halo franchise, and now the person at the top of the series’ behind-the-scenes food chain has admitted that they “made some mistakes” along the way.

343 Industries has been handling the Halo series since 2007, when Bungie split from Microsoft and Bonnie Ross founded this new company to lead the franchise forward. In the years since, 343 has put out such games as Halo 4, Halo 5: Guardians, Halo Wars 2 and Halo: The Master Chief Collection (the latter of which received a flurry of negative feedback for its marred-by-technical-issues online elements).

“Honestly, we have made mistakes along the way”, Ross has now said in an impressively candid interview with Venture Beat. “The community has helped us in creating good learning experiences for us,” she added, piling praise on the fans of the franchise.

Ross went on to state that “the universe is the most important character” in Halo and reflected that, “if we’re going to keep the universe alive and healthy, I think that we have to ensure that we are doing right by Halo.”

“I do look at it as a very humbling experience”, she added, before once again referring to the fans’ part in proceedings. “The whole team looks at this as not just our universe. It’s the fans’ universe. How are we doing right by the fans? How are we doing right by the franchise? It is a part of our culture, this precious, precious world, and we’re responsible for taking care of it. And we want to do it right.”

Ross, elsewhere in the interview, enthused that she is “super excited about Halo: Infinite and about the Showtime [TV] series. There’s a lot more Halo stories to tell. It’s such an amazing universe.”

Here’s hoping that there are less mistakes and more fan-pleasing slamdunks as this universe continues to expand. Certainly, Ross seems to be saying all the right things. 

We’ll keep you updated as we hear more.