one analyst recently put it, “Netflix has won the streaming wars.” Now, the streaming giant is putting money behind a future in video games.
By fall 2023, according to widely cited reports, Netflix had spent $1 billion on gaming, buying up four smaller development studios and building two of its own in California and Helsinki, Finland, and publishing dozens of titles for mobile devices, including tower defense game Bloons TD and graphic adventure Oxenfree. Analysts believe the company likely spent another $1 billion on gaming in 2024 alone, increasing its offering to 140 games made available to anyone with a Netflix subscription, all without ads or in-app microtransactions.
Traction in the gaming marketplace has been harder to come by. Netflix’s portfolio of mobile apps have recorded 192 million downloads, according to data provider Apptopia, and daily active user counts hover around 1.1 million, each fractional compared to mobile publisher competitors and even smaller in relation to Netflix’s overall subscriber base.
“We’re not yet the Netflix of games,” Netflix president of games Alain Tascan said last week while presenting at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. “But that’s exactly where we’re headed.”
This evolution from linear, passive entertainment on Netflix to more interactive experiences makes a lot of sense, in theory. The $180 billion gaming industry now dwarfs the size of traditional Hollywood movies and television (estimated at $100 billion annually), and has become the preferred pastime for younger generations. As far back as 2019, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos cited Fortnite as its major competitor for user attention—no doubt one of the reasons the company hired Tascan, who worked previously as an executive at Epic Games on Fortnite.
(https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattcraig/2025/03/23/can-netflix-become-the-netflix-of-gaming/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailydozen&cdlcid=64b14e4f554da33a6b169a8c)
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Il est assez drôle de noter qu'après les transitions littérature/cinéma et cinéma/Netflix, on se retrouve avec la petite dernière : Netflix/gaming.
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