Netflix ventured into video games as a way to deliver other entertainment proposals to its users, however, the bet has not been well received by customers, since less than 1% of the company’s total consumers have used this platform for play.
According to data from app analytics company Apptopia, games on Netflix Games average 1.7 million daily users, which represents less than 1% of the platform’s 221 million subscribers. Furthermore, the titles have been downloaded a total of 23.3 million times since November of last year.
The commitment to this vertical in Netflix took shape before the crisis in the company, because for its CEO, Red Hastings, the real competition was not with other streaming audiovisual content platforms, but with entertainment companies, such as Epic Games , developer of the popular Fortnite.
However, during 2022 the company encountered a complex scenario, since in the first quarter it lost 200,000 subscribers and in the second period it added another 900,000 users outside, while video games have not had a great impact on users.
Despite this, Netflix Games can become a solid vertical. So far, executives have mentioned that their silence on the matter has been intentional, as “we are still learning, experimenting and trying to figure out what things are going to really resonate with our members,” Netflix Games director Leanne Loombe said in a statement. a conference at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Although so far the efforts of Netflix Games are not very clear, Greg Peters, director of operations of the company, stressed that the company will be “experimental” in the field, in addition to the fact that its commitment within this field is “long term” and will be connected to “creating properties that are linked with the universes, characters and stories that we are building.”
Examples of this are titles based on his popular Stranger Things series, as well as a game that could come out later this year based on the Queen’s Gambit series. Likewise, the executive also insinuated that they will license their intellectual properties for the development of new projects.
“We have to please our members by having the best of the category. We have to be differentially good at it. It doesn’t make sense to just be there,” Hastings said last January.
The company later spent $72 million to acquire mobile game developer Next Games, responsible for RPG Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales and others based on The Walking Dead story.
Mike Verdu, Netflix’s vice president of gaming, said this acquisition was intended to help “create a world-class library of games that our members around the world will love.”
However, the download figures for Netflix games are well below industry leaders such as Subway Surfers, Roblox or Among Us, which have more than 100 million downloads each.
