Hi there! My name is Janko Roettgers, and this is Lowpass. This week: Netflix is considering aggregating other streaming services, and Felix & Paul is no more.

Netflix is considering copying Amazon’s playbook, and distributing competing streaming services to its subscribers, the New York Times reported earlier this week. According to the report, Netflix executives have had discussions with streamers like Peacock and Fox One to make their services available to its subscribers.

Little is known about the details of those discussions, but there are plenty of precedents for such a move. Competitors like Amazon, Roku and Google have for some time now operated so-called channel stores that resell access to HBO Max, Peacock and others. This also isn’t the first time we’ve seen a report about Netflix considering becoming an aggregator. Just last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that executives of the streamer were toying with the idea of reselling access to other streaming services through its own app.

And let’s not forget: Before losing its bid to Paramount, Netflix was looking to take over HBO Max as part of its bid for Warner Bros Discovery’s entertainment business. At the time, Netflix executives suggested that they would continue to run HBO Max as a standalone service for the time being. Netflix never got to show us what this would actually look like in practice, but one can imagine that some kind of subscription bundle was part of the plan.

With all that in mind, it’s easy to understand why the New York Times story was mostly greeted with a mixture of applause and shrugs among pundits and industry insiders. After all, it seemed to confirm the notion of the pendulum swinging back: After years of disaggregation, streaming is starting to look more and more like the cable bundle, or so the argument goes. Viewed through this lens, Netflix bundling other streamers, and turning itself into a kind of everything app for entertainment, seems almost inevitable.

However, I’d argue that it would be a mistake for Netflix to go down this path.

Felix & Paul, the VR studio named after its founders Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël, unexpectedly closed its doors this month. News of a possible closure was first reported by former UploadVR reporter Ian Hamilton. 

The shut-down has since been confirmed by a number of employees on LinkedIn, with many of them publicly posting about the closure at the end of last week. The company’s founders or CEO have yet to publicly comment on the development.

Felix & Paul was founded in 2013, and was among the first studios to produce 360-degree videos for Samsung’s Gear VR and other first-generation mobile headsets. I still vividly remember watching Strangers, the studio’s first VR film, while sitting on my couch, and feeling transported into Patrick Watson’s studio space.

With a heavy focus on 360-degree video, Felix & Paul arguably faced some challenges when Meta refocused its VR efforts on immersive gaming. More recently, the studio did release experiences like ISS Explorers that merged immersive video with game-like experiences and mixed reality.

Felix and Paul also increasingly focused on location-based VR. Part of those efforts was Interstellar Arc, an ambitious 20,000 square foot free-roam VR experience shown at Area15 in Las Vegas. Ticket sales for that experience reportedly stopped a week ago.

Apple’s Vision Pro group hit with layoffs. The company has laid off 100 employees working on immersive video and gaming.

Amazon raises Fire TV prices. The company raised prices for various Fire TV devices from $10 to $60, making it the latest streaming device maker to respond to the AI memory shortage.

Netflix made $2.8 billion in the UK last year. The streamer’s 2025 revenue, as reported in a filing with the government, surpassed that of the UK’s largest private broadcaster.

SoundCloud wants to be more like Bandcamp. The streaming service will offer artists a chance to sell music downloads this fall.

The Trump administration may institute new hardware tariffs. The administration is reportedly considering new tariffs on chips, game consoles and more.

Xbox is getting disc-to-digital feature. Microsoft wants to offer gamers the option to play games they own on discs through the cloud.

Everything we know about Meta’s next VR headset. An exhaustive compilation of all of the rumors, leaks and educated guesses about Meta’s “Phoenix” headset.

Last weekend, I attended a pop-up comedy show in a pop-up Chinese grocery store that used to be a restaurant, and will soon become affordable housing. Which, honestly, was a one-of-a-kind experience. When else do you ever have the chance to watch a very funny comedian while sitting directly behind a freezer full of chicken feet?

Thanks for reading, have a great weekend!