Netflix Showcases New Video Game Strategy, In Time For Holidays

Dreading that holiday conversation with crazy Uncle Bobby about his curious and strongly held beliefs? Or maybe you have friends coming and want something cheap and fun to do together. Netflix is offering “a stack of” new distractions for the whole clan, a batch of group-friendly games that can be played on a big-screen TV in concert with your phone.

The company showcased those and three other types of new game titles Wednesday at its Hollywood offices, part of the next iteration of the streaming giant’s three-year-old game strategy.

“Our strategy is driven by a belief that we can entirely change and find new ways to play,” said Netflix President of Games Alain Tascan at the showcase. “Can we make playing games as easy as streaming? We have a golden ticket with the opportunity to reinvent the way we play games.”

The four areas the company is now focusing on include “kids, mainstream, party and narrative games,” company executives said. All are available or “will be soon” on the Netflix app, under a “games” category on the main screen.

“Our strategy is to give people a game that’s familiar, but we also want to take advantage of Netflix’s capabilities,” Tascan said.

The company also demonstrated its new daily quiz show, Best Guess Live, hosted by Howie Mandel and Hunter March, that will run at 8 pm Eastern Time/5 pm Pacific when it launches “soon.”

The live game features two rounds, each featuring five increasingly accessible clues about something in pop culture. First to answer wins a cash prize, $5,000 for round one and $10,000 for round two, with plans for possible bonus prizes in special events.

It’s roughly similar to the briefly, wildly popular HQ Trivia from 2017. That quiz show hosted by “Quiz Daddy” Scott Rogowsky became a viral hit, with more than 1 million players per game. But the startup company behind HQ Trivia fell apart amid internal strife and the operational challenges of running a stand-alone game title, an issue Netflix won’t face with a $500 billion market capitalization.

Like some other titles on display, Best Guess Live isn’t quite yet available, but when it launches, will run on mobile devices every weekday. It will only be available in the United States, at least for now.

Available to play by the showcase attendees (while a red carpet event for Netflix’s new Eddie Murphy documentary was held next door) were the party games, including a multiplayer version of word-search title Boggle and draw-it charades title Pictionary. Three other party titles are immediately available, including a group version of puzzle warhorse Tetris, a Lego-based collection of mini-games, and Party Crashers: Fool Your Friends.

The novel difference with Netflix’s party games, compared to the many traditional versions of those well-known games: Individual players use their mobile phone (either iOS or Android) to scan an on-TV QR code that links them into the game on the big screen, where the competition is managed. The mobile devices then become a vital second-screen addition to the game play, like hand-drawing clues in Pictionary.

As Tascan told me later, the hybrid approach allows the company to sidestep the limitations of needing expensive hardware such as a high-end PC, PlayStation or Xbox to play games by themselves or with others. More than 3 billion people have mobile devices, and most play games, endless studies estimate.

Tascan said he’s looking forward to one briefly revealed title, a narrative game based on the massively popular Knives Out mystery features that star Daniel Craig. Dead Men’s Party: A Knives Out Game could lead to a series of titles building a lengthy narrative into an adult-friendly game based on Netflix franchises.

For creators of such franchises, having a ready game option is yet another way to extend fan relationships and potentially generate more revenue.

“Netflix has a very attractive ecosystem for IP holders,” Tascan said.

Other games coming include a number of child-friendly titles built around franchises such as Peppa Pig, Barbie, Lego, Paw Patrol, and Toca Boca that bring parents the patina of safety implied by Netflix’s involvement. Not all are available yet.

More adult-focused mobile titles on the way include a Netflix-specific version of the latest WWE 2k25 wrestling game, following on this year’s hugely successful launch of weekly WWE Raw live broadcasts. Take-Two Interactive’s Western shoot-’em-up franchise Red Dead Redemption also will soon come to Netflix’s mobile offerings.

As Giorgo Paizanis – a Boston Consulting Group partner specializing in gaming, media and tech – told me at the showcase, the game initiative may indeed further glue Netflix audiences to the app. But Netflix already has the industry’s lowest churn rate and largest user base.

Having compelling games creates more perception of value in maintaining the subscription, even with price hikes. Eventually, the real opportunity with a successful game segment might be new advertising outlets and options, an area where Netflix has lagged competitors such as Amazon and Alphabet.

Several days ago, I separately interviewed Marc de Vellis, president of digital games for Sweden-based toy giant Spin Master. Toca Boca Barber 4 and Paw Patrol are among Spin Master’s many toy/video/game franchises made for young children.

De Vellis said the company is creating versions of such franchises for both Netflix and Apple’s subscription-based Arcade service, which carries a couple of hundred ad-free titles that generally run across all of Apple’s devices.

He’ll have plenty of assets to choose from in future collaborations. Toca Boca’s creators created 34 Toca Boca titles of all kinds before launching the hugely successful online platform Toca Boca World, De Vellis said.

The attraction for Spin Master with Apple and Netflix is “their values around safety, privacy, the best content.” Just as importantly, “We want to be where the players are,” de Vellis said. “Being everywhere on services like Netflix and Apple gaming expands our influence.”

Spin Master is continuing to do partnerships that keep the Toca Boca universe connected to pop culture, including mashups this year with San Rio’s Hello Kitty and Katseye, the girl group of six pop singers plucked from reality competitions.

Netflix’s hybrid game approach for some of its titles represent another step into the future of cloud-streamed games, de Vellis said. It’s been a holy grail for many in the game business since before the pandemic, but network latency and other challenges, particularly at scale have kept any service from succeeding, despite big initiatives from telecom and tech firms.

“There’s a time where you’ll be able to go onto a screen and simply stream a game. That is the future,” de Vellis said. “Right now there’s a few steps in between. We are on a journey. Everybody in the gaming industry is on a journey until streaming becomes widespread.”

The Netflix rollout, though effective today, isn’t necessarily available on all platforms carrying the service’s many app versions. A quick mid-day check of Netflix apps on platforms such as Roku and Apple TV, and devices such as Apple’s iPad still had interfaces without the Games menu, though it was available on web browsers.

Less than a day after the Netflix showcase, a Walt Disney Corp. executive suggested Hollywood’s biggest traditional Netflix competitor also might embrace more games alongside its streaming operations. The company announced earnings early in the day that did not resonate well with investors, who sent shares down nearly 8% as a standoff with Alphabet’s YouTube TV continues to lurch toward a third week of sports blackouts.

Disney CFO Hugh Johnson told CNBC after the earnings announcement that the company might even get into “gaming” as part of the Disney+ app. That stirred confusion for CNBC on-air personalities, one of whom regularly covers the gambling industry that Disney also is part of through its ESPN sports book partnership with Draft Kings, announced several days ago after ending an underperforming agreement with Penn Entertainment.

But just as likely, given Disney’s long history of mostly licensing its many prominent franchises for game develoment and distribution by others, Johnson was talking about getting into video games as another way to get people more thoroughly connected to its app for longer engagement and other benefits.

When Disney bought LucasFilm from George Lucas in 2012, it also acquired LucasArts, known for creating and publishing dozens of Star Wars titles and other, often celebrated games. Disney soon cycled down LucasArts, however, and hasn’t been consistently in the game industry beyond licensing IP since.

That may change as Disney+ integrates Hulu programming completely into its interface, and tries to give a broader range of audiences reason to stick around.