Less than 1% of Netflix subscribers are playing the service’s games

By Cristina Alexander August 8, 2022

Netflix has launched a slew of mobile games since it announced its push into gaming last year, but most subscribers aren’t playing them yet.

According to data from app analytics company Apptopia (via CNBC), Netflix’s games have been downloaded 23.3 million times and are played by 1.7 million subscribers daily. That’s less than 1 percent of the 221 million people subscribed to Netflix worldwide.

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This report comes as Netflix faces growing competition from other streaming platforms to retain subscribers. Netflix lost over a million subscribers in the second quarter after reporting a loss of 200,000 subscribers during the first quarter in April — its first decline in over a decade.

When Netflix Games launched in November 2021, it had a small offering of five games, including Stranger Things: 1984, Stranger Things 3: The Game, Shooting Hoops, Card Blast, and Teeter Up. The games catalog has since increased to over two dozen titles, including Poinpy, This is a True Story, Exploding Kittens: The Game, the League of Legends spinoff Hextech Mayhem, Into the Breach, and Before Your Eyes.

Netflix is currently working to add more games to its catalog, including The Queen’s Gambit chess game, a Shadow and Bone RPG, a “choose your own adventure” called Too Hot to Handle, and a heist game based on La Casa de Papel (or Money Heist). It aims to have 50 games on the platform by the end of the year. To hit that goal, it has acquired three indie game studios, including Boss Fight, Next Games (which already created games based on Stranger Things and The Walking Dead), and Night School Studio, the creator of Oxenfree.

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Cristina Alexander

Gaming/Mobile Writer

Cristina Alexander has been writing since 2014, from opining about pop culture on her personal blog in college to reporting…

Gaming

Last Train Home is a historical strategy game about a World War 1 train heist

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THQ Nordic announced Last Train Home, a new real-time strategy game where players must fight and survive as they make their way through a rough Siberian winter on an armored train, during the PC Gaming Showcase. Ahead of its reveal, Digital Trends had the opportunity to learn more about this game.

Last Train Home is developed by Comanche developer Ashborne Games and is based on a real historical event. In World War I, a group of Czechoslovakian soldiers found themselves trapped after the Russian Revolution and civil war began, with the best course of escape being to cross Siberia and escape from a port on the opposite side of Russia. To do this, those soldiers stole an armored train and fought any Russian forces they came across as they rode it through Siberia during a harsh winter. Last Train Home adapts this perilous journey into a video game, with players having to manage their train and soldiers in the hopes of making it through Siberia alive.

Gaming

Xbox Games Showcase can succeed where the PlayStation Showcase struggled

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If there’s one video game presentation happening over the next week that has the most to prove, it’s the Xbox Games Showcase. Despite a strong start to the year with Hi-Fi Rush and a solid Developer Direct showcase, Microsoft’s gaming branch has floundered in recent months because of struggles with its acquisition of Activision Blizzard and the rocky launch of Redfall. With the Xbox Games Showcase and Starfield Direct Double Feature, Microsoft must reconfirm its commitment to gaming and to releasing high-quality first-party exclusives.

That said, Xbox is in an excellent position to do just that because of Sony’s underwhelming May showcase. As the first major gaming presentation of the summer, Sony had the chance to “win” the whole game reveal season early with its PlayStation Showcase. Ultimately, that live stream proved disappointing because of its focus on CGI reveal trailers and live service games.

Gaming

7 games with queer representation to play this Pride Month

A screenshot from The Last of Us Part 2 of Ellie and Dina slow dancing with one another.

With Pride Month here, there’s no better time to play a new game or two that focuses on LGBT+ characters and stories. Luckily, the number of games with LGBTQ+ representation has been growing over the last few years, particularly in the indie space. There’s a significant history of the queer community not getting represented in video games at all or in less than well-intentioned ways. And while there’s still plenty of room to grow in terms of queer storytelling in games, there are a host of fantastic games to pick from.

From games that feature queer main characters like The Last of Us Part II to titles that give players the freedom to build out their characters' identities themselves like The Sims franchise, there are games across genres that have LGBTQ+ representation. Here’s a list of games that represent different queer identities, providing a good starting point if you’re looking to see how games tackle queer stories this Pride Month.