Netflix is reportedly considering introducing ads and in-app purchases to its games as a means of generating additional revenue on top of the subscription model that currently includes both its movie and series streaming services and games at no extra cost.
According to a (paywalled) Wall Street Journal report, “people familiar with the discussions” taking place at Netflix say executives have been talking about how the streaming company can generate further money from its games arm. The sources suggest that some of the ideas being discussed include the introduction of ads and in-app purchases for those on ad-supported tiers and charging additional amounts for “sophisticated” games on top of the regular subscription cost.
Netflix Games are currently included in the price of regular subscriptions with no additional monetisation. Current games available to play include several Grand Theft Auto titles, Oxenfree, Terra Nil and Sam Barlow’s Immortality. Netflix recently announced that Hades would also make its way into the gaming lineup in 2024.
During an earnings call in April 2023, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters told investors that the company wanted to offer a unique gaming experience to subscribers, in part to avoid pressuring game developers to consider monetisation during the development and prioritising player enjoyment.
“We want to have a differentiated gaming experience and part of that is giving game creators the ability to think about building games purely from the perspective of player enjoyment and not having to worry about other forms of monetization, whether it be ads or in-game payment,” Peters said at the time.
The WSJ report clarified that these discussions were only internal and didn’t spell an end to ad and microtransaction-free gaming on Netflix. However, its sources did confirm that talks about further monetizing Netflix Games occurred in “recent months.”
While this report does come from anonymous sources rather than from Netflix itself and isn’t an indication that we’ll be seeing more ads any time soon (if at all) in games offered by the streaming company, previous stats from 2022 do appear to show that Netflix Games hasn’t picked up a huge amount of players and therefore likely isn’t making too much bank off them either. Less than one per cent of users at the time of the report used Netflix games on a daily basis, according to Apptopia. To put numbers to that, in 2022, there were roughly 221 million subscribers, with only about 1.7 million playing games via the service daily.
Given the relatively small player base for Netflix Games currently, despite some pretty lofty goals for the streaming company’s offering, it’s pretty unlikely that further monetisation would go down all too well (or make much of a dent into furthering profits) – but we’ll have to wait and see whether the reported discussions actually go anywhere as the year continues.
Lead Image Credit: MAXSHOT.PL, Shutterstock
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