Netflix remains firm in its commitment to offer video games. The American company has announced that it expects to add 40 titles to its catalog during 2023, a figure that would be added to the 55 games that are already available today.
The popular streaming service has released this and other data related to its approach to electronic entertainment on the occasion of the Game Developers Conference that is being held this week in San Francisco.
Since the video games arrived on Netflix in November 2021, the platform led by Reed Hasting has not yet been able to share a figure that demonstrates the good reception of these – in fact, last summer it was learned that only 1% of its subscribers plays–, but this has not made them throw in the towel, quite the contrary.
During this prestigious video game congress, the streaming giant has announced that it currently has 86 games in development; among which there are 16 new projects from internal studies and 70 titles from third-party companies.
Although the company has not offered many details about these future releases, it has given some names. Among them, a new exclusive game from the creators of Vainglory (Super Evil Megacorp); the arrival of the two installments of the multi-award winning Monument Valley (Ustwo Games) to the platform; the announcement of an adaptation of the reality show Too Hot to Handle developed by Nanobit; o Mighty Quest: Rogue Palace a playable spin-off of this series developed by Ubisoft.
“We're still in the early days of our gaming journey, and the number of subscribers learning about and playing our titles continues to grow,” Netflix's vice president of external games, Leanne Loombe, told GamesIndustry.
Asked about the famous figure of 1% of Netflix users who have tried their games, Loombe replied that "they are very proud of the progress they have made so far." She explains that while they added games to their catalog at the end of 2021, her idea was to “get there as soon as possible to create opportunities and gain valuable learning”. Now, however, they want to be "more strategic when it comes to building a portfolio of games" that attracts their millions of subscribers.
Among the plans for the future, the executive mentions improving the visibility of the games within the application and, especially, continuing to work to make it possible for them to be played in the cloud and not as independent applications in the Google and Apple stores as it has to be done. at the moment.
“We believe that cloud gaming will allow us to provide easy access to games on any screen, without friction and being able to provide that accessibility to the same gaming experiences,” says Loombe.
It is clear that until Netflix finds a solution to run their games in the comfort of the cloud – as is the case with series and movies – they will not achieve the expected success. Also, the fact that they can't be played on the TV doesn't help either.
Meanwhile, the catalog of titles that Netflix offers its users continues to grow in terms of quality and quantity. Beyond titles as highly acclaimed as the exclusive Poinpy, the platform has recently added renowned titles such as TMNT: Shredder's Revenge, Before Your Eyes, Kentucky Route Zero or OxenFree, and next week the long-awaited Terra Nil will be added.
It is clear that on Netflix there is someone with a good eye when it comes to choosing which titles to join the catalogue, but something more is still needed for their proposal to come to fruition.
