It’s not been a month of positive headlines for streaming giant Netflix, as it wrestles with the challenging of falling subscriber numbers for the first time in its history. Naturally, the financial markets reacted in a mature and grown-up fashion, by wiping at one stage 40% off the value of the company.
Things have settled since, but Netflix is now said to be fast-tracking plans to crack down on password sharing, as well as investigating an ad-funded cheaper subscription option.
Against the backdrop of this, there are reports of cutbacks on certain shows, although it sounds like there’s a lot of bluster and not much substance about at the moment. One area that’s not been affected as of yet is the company’s drive into the videogaming market.
Netflix has been working on this for some time, with a small collection of mobile games currently available. We’re not at the point where Sony and Microsoft are particularly shitting themselves as of yet, but behind the recent headlines, Netflix is still a well-resourced company.
Currently, the total number of games that Netflix is offering stands at 18. However, The Washington Post has been doing a bit of digging, and has uncovered plans for at least 30 more before the end of the year. Thus far, the focus remains on mobile games, but there are deeper ambitions that presumably point towards PC and console platforms going forward.
Quite what the next raft of games will be remains to be seen, but it’s a fair bet they’ll skew closely to properties that Netflix offers via its films and TV shows. There’s a joke here about a Bridgerton mobile game with a touch screen or something, but we’re too high-brow to make it.
Expect to hear more on Netflix’s game plans later on in the year. For now, expect a slow trickle of titles to keep coming through.
