Netflix CEO Calls Early Returns on Mobile Games Investments ‘Promising,’ Says Company Won’t Look to Make Major Gaming Acquisitions
After a fairly disastrous start to 2022, which saw the company lose subscribers for two straight quarters, Netflix has seemingly turned things around heading into the end of the year. The world’s largest streaming service now stands at 223 million global subscribers, and recently launched its ad-supported price tier, which it hopes will bring even more customers.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos spoke about the company’s progress recently at the 2022 UBS Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference. While there, he provided some updates about Netflix’s investment in mobile games, which took several big steps forward in 2022.
Sarandos called engagement numbers with Netflix’s mobile games “Early, but promising.” The company has made a huge investment in its mobile games this year, opening several in-house gaming studios across the globe. As of October, the service had 55 mobile games already available to users or in development, and it most recently made nine new games available to all subscribers at no additional cost.
“It’s an amazing opportunity to be able to reach a lot of people and made in an incredible way that mobile gaming — or in the early days and as it evolves, how to reach these big audiences and have big cultural impact. It’s been pretty hit and miss, I think, for the game industry. And I think for us, like you’ll see coming up for us, we have new games coming out in the ‘Stranger Things’ world, across a bunch of our IP, even [a game based on] our ‘Nailed It’ baking competition,” Sarandos said about Netflix’s ongoing commitment to mobile gaming.
It is good news for the service that engagement with its new games has been “promising” thus far. Netflix needs those numbers to turn a bit better than promising if it wants its investments in gaming to pay off. A report from earlier this year, before Netflix leaned as hard into mobile games as it is currently leaning, showed that less than 1% of Netflix subscribers around the globe played its games.
Sarandos was also asked if the company had thought about merging with or acquiring a major games studio to expedite the process of producing such games. Sarandos noted the company had done minor acquisitions in the past, but he thought that process would remain in-house, with a focus on delivering more games from Netflix’s most popular franchises.
“We mostly think about it as in the IP, things that are attractive in the IP space. I think historically, we’re builders versus buyers. So I think we’ll probably lean on that for a while,” Sarandos said.
Netflix
Netflix is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 3,000+ movies, 2,000+ TV Shows, and Netflix Originals like Stranger Things, Squid Game, The Crown, Tiger King, and Bridgerton. They are constantly adding new shows and movies. Some of their Academy Award-winning exclusives include Roma, Marriage Story, Mank, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.