While the vast majority of Netflix’s 250 million subscribers may think of the company primarily as a TV and movie streaming service, 99 per cent of them are missing out on a major perk.
In recent years, Netflix has branched out into the video games industry.
The company has acquired a number of gaming studios, including industry titan Night School Studios, which developed the Oxenfree games.
Oxenfree 2 was developed exclusively for Netflix, and yet the streaming platform’s games push is yet to be picked up by subscribers in earnest.
In fact, while every Netflix subscription comes with a games library accessed via the Netflix mobile app, it’s unclear how many subscribers even know that the games exist.
The library of more than 70 games can be found in the “Mobile Games” row on the Netflix app home screen.
It includes award-winning titles including Immortality, Kentucky Route Zero and Before Your Eyes, all of which can be downloaded to mobile and played at no extra cost to subscribers.
There are also games to complement popular shows, including ones inspired by Squid Game, Black Mirror and reality TV.
But the games feature is little-used, with a report from CNBC revealing just 2.2 million Netflix subscribers — about 0.88 per cent — play one of the streamer’s games daily.
The stats indicated retention was a problem, with more than 70 million subscribers having downloaded a game at some point and mostly failing to become repeat users.
That could be because, while viewers can watch a few minutes of a TV show or movie to get a taste, games require a download and larger time investment.
Netflix continues to throw money and resources at the endeavour, with the number of games on the app having tripled in the past year.
According to Co-CEO Greg Peters, the streaming platform is taking a “crawl, walk, run” approach to the gaming industry.
“This trajectory is not dissimilar from what we’ve seen before,” Mr Peters said on the company’s prerecorded earnings call Wednesday, per CNBC.
“When we’ve launched a new region, or when we launched new genres, like unscripted” we had to “crawl, walk, run, but we see a tremendous amount of opportunity to build a long-term centre value of entertainment.”
