The arrival of Netflix, with Netflix Games (Games in French), in the world of video games, is what we call a shy arrival. The offer launched on Android and then on iOS, since November 9, brings together five nice and unpretentious games, to install on your smartphone. Games whose certain graphics, deliberately pixelated, are more reminiscent of the Game Boy than the latest generation consoles.
Netflix’s foray into the world of Gaming is nevertheless an event: with its 214 million subscribers (October 2021), Netflix does not go unnoticed, not only for Amazon, Google and Apple – already present in the Cloud Gaming via Amazon. Luna, Google Stadia and Apple Arcade – but also for Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, the three historical players with their consoles.
Launching a video game service almost seemed like a no-brainer for Netflix. Last year in the United States, video games weighed more heavily than cinema and music combined, with sales of $ 57 billion, or 27% more in one year, also thanks to the pandemic and containments: a mountain of greenbacks that have sparked appetites on the side of Los Gatos in California, where the headquarters of the platform founded by Reed Hastings and Marc Randoph in 1997 is located.
The video game: Netflix had to go. Samy Toupet, sector specialist, YouTuber and blogger on geektest.fr, sees three interests for the king of streaming:
“The first interest is of course economic: it is to take a piece of the pie of the video game industry. The second interest is to give more to its subscribers, especially as the packages And then, the third advantage for Netflix is to build customer loyalty around their flagship licenses. Of the first five games offered, two relate to the Stranger Things license. Netflix is obviously preparing for the arrival of the season 4 which is scheduled for mid-2022 “.
“A future Netflix console? Probably not, but a Netflix controller for Cloud Gaming, yes.”
Samy Toupet, video game specialist and YouTuberto franceinfo
In the global press release dated November 2, which announces the launch of Netflix Games, the American company talks about “first step” and evokes the beginning of a great “trip”. When we ask the question of the sequel and the long-term strategy of Netflix, and of a possible future game console bearing the red N logo, Samy Toupet does not hesitate for a second, knowing that the company has mastered the technology of streaming with very low latency, applicable to video games:
“We can very well imagine Netflix arriving in the field of Cloud Gaming, quite simply by offering a controller, like Google and Amazon, which will communicate in wifi. And so, Netflix does not even need a console! will display in streaming on the screens of the televiewers and then, one will be able to play quite simply thanks to this controller. “
Will they make people want to subscribe or stay with Netflix? The GAFA – its competitors – are already setting the bar very high: Amazon has started to build its own video game studios. And Jeff Bezos’ group just had their first real success with a video game: New World saw 700,000 players compete simultaneously, on a PC, on the day it was launched, on September 28th.
For its part, Facebook offered Oculus in 2014, for more than $ 2 billion and is betting more than ever on virtual universes and the metaverse. And then, what about Microsoft, which launched the first Xbox console, 20 years ago!
Netflix knows what to expect: it will take more than a few titles on mobile to become a video game giant.