Back in November last year, Netflix officially launched Netflix Games. The company saw this as another way to get more attention and interactions, all with a gaming twist. Now it turns out that not many subscribers are actually enjoying the benefits of their subscription.
Based on information provided by Apptopia (via CNBC), it appears that around 1% of Netflix subscribers with access to Netflix Game actually use the service. All things considered, that’s still a pretty big number because Netflix has 221 million subscribers in total. This means that around 1.7 million people have tried out Netflix games, according to the report.
In addition, the total number of downloads is about 23.3 million.
There are 24 games available on Netflix Games, but the company plans to keep expanding. At this point, Netflix plans to have over 50 titles available on the service by the end of this year. That pales in comparison to, say, Apple Arcade, which (despite a recent cut of more than a dozen games) offers over 100 games.
Netflix Games exists to encourage interaction, especially in light of such a highly competitive market. Indeed, as CNBC notes, even Netflix COO Greg Peters said that Netflix Games is just one idea to keep people subscribed to Netflix, especially after they stop watching something:
However, Netflix COO Greg Peters said the company spent “many months and, frankly, years”last year exploring how games could keep customers on the service.
“We’re going to be experimenting and trying a lot of things,”Peters said during a conference call about the company’s fourth-quarter results. “But I would say that our vision for the long-term prize is really more focused on our ability to create properties related to the universes, characters, stories that we create.
Netflix has a few games that are directly tied to ridiculously popular streamer games like Stranger Things, but many other games are just standard mobile games like Card Blast and Shooting Hoops. It will be interesting to see if Netflix Games will actually publish games that are directly related to their original series or movies.
As mentioned above, this is just one idea the company is testing. Next up: an ad-supported tier. This service level, which will be launched in partnership with Microsoft, will be available in the near future.
It’s also worth noting that Netflix Games doesn’t currently support iOS. Maybe it will help boost some numbers when Netflix does launch this support in the future.