Netflix’s Gaming Service Making ‘Foundational Strides’
By Movieguide® Contributor
Netflix recently revealed what its gaming library has in store for 2024, focusing on games that are built on Netflix-owned IPs with over 90 games currently in development.
“While we’re still early in the journey, this last year we made foundational strides toward this goal,” said Mike Verdu, VP of Games at Netflix.
This year was monumental for gaming content as the company saw its first Netflix-branded games release. Until then, the library had been comprised of acquired IPs that had no connection to Netflix as a company.
QUEEN’S GAMBIT and LOVE IS BLIND games allowed players to interact with these stories in a new and exciting way.
Similar Netflix-branded games are the company’s main focus as it looks to balance out its library filled almost completely with acquired games.
Projects currently in development include “Chicken Run: Eggstraction,” “Money Heist: Ultimate Choice” and “Netflix Stories: Virgin River,” along with the acquisition of already popular games, including “Hades,” “Monument Valley 1 and 2” and “Katana Zero.”
While Netflix’s library of games has been exclusive to mobile, the company is also looking to boost popularity by expanding to games that can be played on TVs and computers.
Furthermore, the company is now helping gamers find content suited for them by tailoring game recommendations to the user rather than showing the most recent games to hit the library as suggestions.
Netflix clearly believes in its game platform and views it as a worthwhile endeavor to pursue. Already it has spent an estimated $1 billion on the service, despite as little as 1% of subscribers engaging with the games on a daily basis.
Earlier this year, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos revealed that he views the gaming platform as critical to the company’s long-term success. The platform’s rivals, however, have a different opinion.
Around the same time Netflix launched its games service, Amazon and TikTok launched video game platforms as well. This November, however, both companies laid off hundreds of employees in this sector as they effectively shut down their video game operations. Similar to Netflix, they had very little engagement from their users.
While TikTok and Amazon left the video game sector, YouTube joined it with a service that will allow users to access the games directly on the website. YouTube already has a large gaming community, so chances for success seem higher than for others before.
With a two-year head start on YouTube, it will be interesting to see if Netflix can crush its competition or if a new streaming war will emerge within gaming.
Movieguide® previously reported:
YouTube is jumping into the gaming world through its new “Playables” feature.
Playables are currently being tested and are available for Premium users to try. The feature has 37 mini-games available to play within YouTube’s platform – not requiring a download or install.
“Playables are games that can be played directly on YouTube on both desktop and mobile devices,” 9to5Google reported.
The current games library is nothing groundbreaking as it provides access to a safe selection of games such as “Angry Birds Showdown,” “Daily Solitaire” and “The Daily Crossword.” Rather than draw people into the subscription service through the feature, the company appears to be trying to sweeten the deal for current subscribers.
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