- You might have noticed a trend in Netflix coverage lately.
A few major shows have been leaving the platform,
prices are creeping up even higher,
and Netflix is cracking down on sharing your passwords.
What hasn't been making as much noise
this new side strategy from Netflix
where Netflix is trying to be the Netflix of gaming,
publishing new titles and acquiring some game developers.
Can a company that started out
as a movie rental warehouse broaden their service?
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With all the news out on Netflix,
this side play on gaming has stayed
somewhat under the radar for many consumers.
A non-scientific sampling of my family,
only one nephew even knew about the little games tab
on the Netflix app.
The strategy makes sense though.
The entire industry has been talking
about the Netflix of gaming for a couple years now.
That Netflix title being synonymous with the idea
of a successful pair of ideas.
One having a catalog of games for a subscription fee,
and two having an easy distribution method for those games.
Most often we talk about game streaming,
which we covered briefly in one of our videos
on broadband and data speeds.
Services like Nvidia GeForce Now, Microsoft Game Pass,
and the fading Google Stadia.
Those services stream games
like Netflix streams movies and TV shows.
You don't need a fancy computer or an expensive game console
to play a AAA title.
So far only Game Pass is combining both the idea
of streaming a game to your browser or TV
and the catalog of accessible games
for one monthly subscription.
So Netflix stepping into the gaming space
is working on the opposite side of the gaming spectrum.
Instead of trying to immediate compete
with high end console quality games right from the get go,
they're working a more bottom up approach
to building a catalog.
A significant number of people interact
with Netflix through the phone app,
So starting their game offerings with phone games.
That idea has a lot of merit.
Depending on what analysts you listen to,
mobile gaming generates roughly as much or more revenue
than console and PC gaming combined.
And often your development costs on a hot mobile game
are way lower than AAA console games.
Plus we see renewed interest in mobile gaming coming
from hardware manufacturers too.
Qualcomm and Nvidia showing off
a possible portable gaming machine.
Gaming phones occupy a fun niche sales category.
And we're seeing more certification
for specific manufacturers in esports competition.
Now, Netflix isn't playing quite at the esports tier yet,
but they've recently expanded their catalog significantly.
If you played the first couple Netflix games
they would've been especially underwhelming.
One of the first games being a basic gravity puzzle
that looks like it came off an HTC PDA,
running Windows Mobile from over 10 years ago.
Shout out to the really old nerds in our audience.
I'm happy to report that the game catalog
is getting a lot better.
Aside from individual games,
the major value here Netflix is taking titles
that often have obnoxious in-app purchases
or micro transactions and separating those mechanics
from real world money.
We might see some of the random number upgrade situations
or slot machine style gameplay, cool down energy, or gems,
but there's no way to spend real money
to fill up again and keep playing.
This is a huge piece of mind benefit
as my daughter is getting into a few mobile games
and I don't feel I need to babysit her as much playing
a Netflix game like Mittens.
Mittens is your standard gem swap game,
only with yarn instead of gems or candy.
And it does still have levels that you can fail.
You get graded on how you complete each board.
You earned yarn so you can make cute little outfits
for your cat, all of the hyper music and flashing lights
we should expect.
And once you have it installed
there's no way to spend a dime on it.
I loves me some high concept aggressive gameplay,
graphics rich styles of experience,
but I was also a huge fan of old
Bejeweled and Zuma style games.
A lot of those games on app stores now ratchet up a ton
of micro transactions.
So if Lex fails on a board and gets stuck,
she just has to take a break.
She can't spend real cash on power-ups.
Okay, okay, okay, okay.
Some of you might be rolling your eyes at Mittens.
"Oh, I'm too serious a gamer to play a Candy Crush clone."
But Netflix is doing something similar
with other titles too, like Asphalt Xtreme,
from a popular series of racing games on mobile.
The grind and the card system are roughly similar
to Asphalt 9, but again,
there's no additional monetization baked in.
That was all cut out
of the original version of Asphalt Xtreme.
If you or your kids are inclined to try
and shortcut with real cash, you can't.
You just have to run tracks and play the game.
That becomes a significant philosophical difference
between Netflix mobile games
and the rest of the revenue generated by mobile gaming.
Loot boxes, slot machine mechanics,
random number generators, cool down clocks,
all the ways that mobile games try to keep you
on the hook spending real money.
That changes when you're on a subscription service.
So there are some silly little low effort mobile games.
Shooting Hoops, Card Blast Casino, Dominoes Cafe,
and Bowling Ballers, just silly little time wasters.
They're great for a short stint while you're
in a waiting room and you just need to kill some time.
The more recent additions though,
show not only a higher tier of arcadey gameplay,
but the potential to cross over with other popular titles
and popular movies and TV shows.
Pixel art style RPGs for "Stranger Things."
An action rhythm platformer
in the League of Legends universe.
A beautiful arcadey mini putt-putt game,
and a breakout Arkanoid clone
that I'm embarrassed to say I've burned quite a bit
of time playing.
Okay, yeah, I'm not that embarrassed.
I love little arcade games.
We're seeing a broader collection
of different gaming experiences.
Arcanium Rise of Akon is a particularly interesting title
for fans of collectible action card games.
Again, the monetization hook
on other examples of the genre is different
when you're getting the game as a bundle in a subscription.
The Premium Pass in a card game
like GWENT is about 10 bucks,
but then you can spend another dollar to skip levels
for faster progress and in-game collectibles.
If you check out GWENT on Google Play,
some of those in-app purchases can climb
to pretty high levels.
For me personally, a game like Slay the Spire,
is one of the gold standard titles in card games
because you buy it once for 10 bucks
and you can just play it.
A popular title like Hearthstone is free to get started,
but again, in-app purchases ranging from a dollar to $80
for how deep you want to get into building your deck.
So just as part of your Netflix subscription
there's a solid fantasy deck building game ready to go.
If you're already paying for Netflix,
you don't have to spend a dime.
Lastly, I wanted to highlight one educational title
which shows promise as a strategy for expanding
on the experiences offered by a streaming company.
This is a True Story is a short story-based title
with a gorgeous hand painted aesthetic,
simple side scrolling and puzzle mechanics,
built on true events and interviews.
Not the most Twitch console grade kind of gaming experience
but an interactive story and narrative that draws
in players to learn a little about people
from other parts of the world.
These kinds of titles are often the hardest
to monetize on mobile directly.
If there's no built in revenue model,
then you have to charge consumers up front.
And for a short, intimate, interactive narrative,
it's really hard to find your audience in a phone app store.
Why would I spend more than a dollar
on this game if it's short?
Instead of looking at a shorter focused experience
and rewarding the developers for not wasting your time,
we try to quantify how many much money is worth it
to spend on an app.
I don't know about you, but the money I've spent
on games like Monument Valley was easily more worth it
than many of the movies I've rented,
but under a subscription model,
there's less pressure for one individual game
to perform immediately and make back it's development costs.
This is a True Story, is a lovely little gem
to be discovered in one panel of your Netflix app.
It can be a long tail property for Netflix,
and hopefully we see some similar experiences
added over time.
All right, all right, as as we're landing this plane,
I'm wrapping this video up.
There's an interesting psychological element
to this move from Netflix.
Looking at a service like Amazon Prime,
that was first sold as a way to subscribe
to cheaper shipping and a handful
of other little value ads from Amazon.
Now it's a TV streaming service with other perks
for music and ebooks and gaming and grocery shopping.
We've been trained to consider Prime
as this larger value add for shopping and when prices climb,
Amazon has these other verticals
that can be added to the Prime value bucket.
Netflix has had a much more specific content niche,
adding games and developers is expensive.
And I would imagine that's a small part
of the costs associated with raising prices.
What we need to watch, will consumers allow
for an expanded idea of Netflix with other services included
in that subscription price?
Netflix has never been linked with the idea of gaming.
So on its surface I can see a lot of people bulk
at higher prices for games they don't think they'll play.
In our household though, the idea that my daughter can play
a Candy Crush clone without any
of the most obnoxious monetization elements
of Candy Crush is almost worth
the additional cost all by itself.
And I would imagine that many of you have some relatives
with a Netflix account that are also super
into phone casual gaming.
Candy Crush in-app purchases range from a dollar to $150.
Maybe getting a few family members
to switch over to Mittens might be kind of fun.
And what say you?
Can Netflix eventually become the Netflix of gaming?
Is this the value add that will keep you subscribed?
Or are you more interested in interactive videos
like "Bandersnatch" and "Quiz Show?"
Drop us those comments down below.
As always, thanks so much for watching,
for sharing these videos, subscribing to the channel.
For reviews.org, I'm Juan Carlos Bagnell,
AKA Some Gadget Guy.
And I will catch you all on the next video.