Netflix reported its first loss of subscribers in 2022. Partly due to its withdrawal from the Russian market, Netflix has nevertheless reported that it isn't growing at the same pace as before. The company has since introduced various measures to combat this decline, including unpopular changes to account sharing and subscription fees. However, in November 2021, to little fanfare, Netflix launched Netflix Games.

Netflix Games is a new player in the world of subscription gaming services. Its competitors, Google's Play Pass and Apple's Apple Arcade are firmly established on their respective platforms and offer significantly more variety of games. However, it's still worth investigating what Netflix Games has to offer and what the future holds for it, as it's already released a few exclusive heavy hitters in the world of mobile gaming.

What is Netflix Games?

If you're unfamiliar with Netflix Games, you're not the only one. Even for existing Netflix subscribers, the "Games" tab on the mobile app is probably something you just ignored. Netflix Games operates under a straightforward premise. Subscribers can download exclusive games from the Play Store and App Store without additional fees, ads, or in-app purchases.

Installing Netflix mobile games is extremely simple; you can search within the Netflix app or the Play Store and install them like you would any other app. Unfortunately, there's a limited selection available. At the time of writing, there are 26 games available, which falls short of Google's Play Pass, which offers close to 1,000 games. Of course, Netflix Games is a tiny side business to its main streaming service, showing that this is a strategy to keep existing subscribers rather than gain new ones

But for existing Netflix subscribers, there's certainly no harm in checking these games out. The addition of popular titles like Into The Breach and Exploding Kittens has significantly fleshed out Netflix's library, so subscribers ought to take a quick scroll through the available games. And of course, Netflix has been successfully adapting popular shows like The Witcher and League of Legends into video content, and Netflix Games provides a fantastic opportunity to do the reverse, to turn popular shows into games.

How successful is Netflix Games for the company?

As previously mentioned, Netflix is steadily losing subscribers, but has Netflix Games had any impact on the core streaming service? Are users holding off canceling their subscription to play a round of Exploding Kittens?

No. They're not. A small percentage of Netflix's userbase is playing these games daily, having only racked up 23.3 million downloads across all titles. That being said, it's still early days for the platform. Two of the biggest games, Moonlighter and Into The Breach, were released in May and July, respectively, so it's too early to call out any success or failures for these notable releases, though if more exclusives come, perhaps people will start to take notice.

What do game developers think of Netflix Games?

While Netflix Games might not be a resounding success for the company, it's a different story for game developers. In a recent interview with Touch Arcade, Into The Breach programmer Matthew Davis stated, "I think it's extremely unlikely the mobile version would have ever been finished had Netflix not presented an opportunity to distribute the game without the challenge of how to monetize it."

Monetization is a thorny issue for games, especially for mobile games, where micro-transactions are often the primary source of revenue. Games like Into The Breach, which has found massive success on platforms like the Nintendo Switch and PC, aren't built for microtransactions. Partnering with Netflix has allowed Into The Breach and similar games to succeed on mobile without compromising on their original design.

What does the future hold for Netflix Games?

Netflix Games might be a tiny facet of the company for now, but it has the potential to be something big. Having exclusive mobile ports of popular IPs is a huge draw, but time will tell if this is enough to keep the fledgling gaming platform afloat. To succeed, Netflix needs to keep up the momentum by offering some of the best Android games out there while making a bigger effort to advertise its heavy hitters to its users, but when faced with revenue and subscriber losses, as well as reports nobody even knows what Netflix Games is, Netflix's recent diversification into gaming may be too little, too late.