In an effort to strengthen its budding gaming division, Netflix has partnered with Ubisoft, one of Europe’s largest game developers.
The Ubisoft games, including its most popular game, Assassin’s Creed, will be the inspiration for three new mobile games that the California-based streaming service will release in 2019.
In response to a downturn in the company’s streaming business, Netflix is making the move in an effort to quicken the growth of its new gaming division. Since the streaming company declared in April that its ten-year subscriber boom has come to a stop, it has lost more than half of its market value.
The French gaming company will create the mobile games for Netflix as part of the deal. In addition, there will be a Mighty Quest-inspired game, a castle-building and monster-hunting game, and the historical puzzle adventure game Valiant Hearts.
With no commercials or in-app sales, the games will be made exclusively available to Netflix customers, giving Ubisoft the chance to reach new audiences and try out new formats for its classic games. The deal’s worth has not been disclosed in any specifics.
In an effort to capture a piece of the most lucrative segment of the entertainment market, Netflix joined the world’s leading technological corporations last year and entered the gaming space by signing a number of well-known executives.
In an effort to become the “Netflix of gaming,” major tech companies like Amazon, Meta, which owns Facebook, Google, and Apple have all increased their stakes in video games recently.
28 new games have been released by Netflix, and the company has also bought three gaming firms, including Texas-based Boss Fight Entertainment and Night School Studio, which created the spooky adventure game Oxenfree. It acquired Next Games, the Finnish publisher of mobile games based on its popular television series Stranger Things, in March.
However, the corporation has had trouble convincing a sizable portion of its 220 million customers to become regular players. According to market research company Apptopia, Netflix’s mobile games have 28 million installations and 1.9 million daily active users. In comparison, King, a well-known game developer and creator of Candy Crush, has about 30 million active users per day.
Netflix’s head of external games, Leanne Loombe, stated that while the streaming service was still “extremely devoted to games,” it was currently conducting experiments to see which game genres and styles were most popular with its customers.
In the future, she added, “we are going to start to focus more on Netflix IP” since “that’s what we have a superpower in.” She said, “Whoever our subscribers are, we want to make sure there’s a game on there for them.”
By the end of the year, the large streaming company hopes to have 50 titles in its library.
However, its effort coincides with a broader slump in the gaming industry, with console manufacturers, publishers of video games, and manufacturers of gaming chips reporting dwindling interest and sales in recent months. US internet company Snap, which controls social media company Snapchat, said last week that it was postponing its gaming ambitions.
Despite a recent decline in gaming engagement, notably on mobile, Loombe said the business was unconcerned since “people are still playing games…
We still have a great opportunity, therefore.
She said, “You need a couple hours to watch a TV show or a movie, but just five minutes to play a game on your commute.”
