Last year, Netflix decided it would offer video games to subscribers in addition to mounds of movies and series of varying quality. It took several steps in the direction of mobile games, including hiring folks from EA and buying a gaming studio. So how is it going?
Actually… it’s not doing that well. According to an analysis from a company called Apptopia (via CNBC), the mobile games on the streaming service’s platform have been downloaded 23.3 million times. Daily, there are about 1.7 million users playing those games.
Playing games with Netflix
You might be thinking, those are decent numbers. For most companies, you’d be right. More than a million daily users and 23.3 million downloads over about 25 games isn’t shabby. At all. But Netflix has a much larger audience base to work from, and its gaming ambitions don’t seem to be touching it.
There are 221 million monthly Netflix users — folks who watch and stream on the regular. 1.7 million daily users constitute about 0.76% of that number. Looking at it from this perspective, the company’s gaming push looks like it could use another push or two.
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Part of this might be the available list of games. There are a few interesting additions — Exploding Kittens, Into the Breach, and Before Your Eyes stand out — but there isn’t much name recognition to be found. It might well be that folks just don’t realise that Netflix games are entirely free to subscribers.
All it requires is selecting the Games tab in the mobile version of the app. That’ll open the menu of titles. As with watching shows on Netflix, tapping a tile brings up more info, and tapping Go to Play Store takes you to where you can download it. Free of charge, since you’re already giving the big red N cash every month.
Source: CNBC