According to What’s on Netflix, as of August 2022, there are 29 games on the giant streaming platform, and the list keeps growing each month, and they are planning to offer almost 50 games by the end of 2022. All these games were created by outside parties; none of them came from Netflix itself, but they are about to change that.
Engadget reported that in order to develop “world-class” original games without advertisements or in-app purchases, Netflix plans to open a studio in Helsinki, Finland. They are putting Zynga and EA veteran, Marko Lastikka as the director.
According to Netflix, Helsinki has some of the “best gaming talent” on the globe. Netflix had acquired a number of studios to help them produce games for the platform, but up until this point, the company didn’t have any in-house game developers.
But don’t expect to see any games produced by the in-house game studio soon. Netflix said we have to wait for “years” before we can see the result. Despite going big on games, CNBC reported that according to Apptopia, a company that analyses apps, Netflix games have been downloaded 23.3 million times overall and have an average of 1.7 million users every day. That amounts to fewer than 1% of the 221 million Netflix users.
We sincerely hope that their ambitious plan doesn’t backfire. With so many options for where users can purchase and play games, do users really want to play games on Netflix? Only time will tell.
