Online games news Tedious Retro Gamer, 13-08-2022
Online Games Bay
Over 6 months after introduction of Netflix Games - yes, it has happened, and don’t worry you’re not the only one that missed that - quite interesting numbers were published. Or rather one number - less than 1%.
Yes, less than 1% of Netflix users actually wandered into the amazing world of Netflix Games. Why? There are quite few reasons, each of them more funny than the others, but let’ start from beginning.
On 2nd November 2021 Netflix published a note on their website titled "Let the Games Begin: A New Way to Experience Entertainment on Mobile". Wait, what? "On mobile"? Yes boys and girls, the huge innovation from Netflix was to let you play games on your very own mobile! And it’s the completely new way to experience entertainment?
But let’s not get distracted and dive into that fascinating material. I’m gonna dissect it into small parts, afterall I cannot risk that your head will explode due to overflow of fun and entertainment.
"We love games, whether it’s physical games (Floor Is Lava), mind games (The Circle) or Squid Game😉."
It’s always a good idea to start with a joke, unfortunately author of this press release do not know about that.
"And we love entertaining our members."
Oh, here’s the joke. Well, fair enough.
"That’s why we’re excited to take our first step in launching Netflix games on mobile to the world."
Yes, it is exciting, who ever heard of games being played on mobile? Not me...
"Starting today, members everywhere can play five mobile games: Stranger Things: 1984 (BonusXP), Stranger Things 3: The Game (BonusXP), Shooting Hoops (Frosty Pop), Card Blast (Amuzo & Rogue Games), and Teeter Up (Frosty Pop)."
Well, apart from Stranger Things titles, which are clearly inspired by their own brand, rest of them sound like very generic mobile games. But at least we have five of them!
"Whether you’re craving a casual game you can start from scratch or an immersive experience that lets you dig deeper into your favorite stories, we want to begin to build a library of games that offers something for everyone."
Yes, you can choose any of 5 titles to dive deep into your gaming needs. To be fair both of the Stranger Things games look not much better than titles made using RPGMaker, but who cares about quality when you get so many titles at once, right?
"We’re in the early days of creating a great gaming experience, and we’re excited to take you on this journey with us."
Ok, so let’s see where that journey took us months later. Right now there are 24 titles available, so it is slightly improved set, although calling it a "library" is... brave I would say. Recently we also learned that less that 1% of Netflix users have actually accessed Netflix Games.
Taking under consideration the scale of Netflix it must be significant number of users anyway, but the fact that 99% of their clients never heard of it, don’t have access to the service or simply don’t care, shows how giant flop this venture was.
And who actually can pretend to be surprised with that fact? The giant streaming platform starts a venture on the over-saturated market of gaming and does it in completely inept way. I mean streaming service offers you games, but you cannot access them via their streaming service? Not to mention there were similar attempts from other completely detached from reality companies, like Google and their Google Stadia, which failed completely, even though it was far more advanced technologically.
So just like with most of there recent actions Netflix fell flat on its face with their games service that was detached from what their users were expecting it to be. We don’t even know if that less than 1% of users only joined the service, they downloaded any of the vast "library" of games or do they actually use any of them. And, of course, some of the titles available here are not exclusive, so you can get them from places like Steam.
Who would expect Netflix to fail so badly in doing the basic research before green-lighting the idea? Oh, wait, I just remembered the "Chelsea"... And "The Ranch"... And "Fuller house"... And "The Ridiculous 6"... And "Thunder Force"... Oh, well, fair enough. Who could blame Netflix for doing the most Netflix thing?
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