According to the latest report, streaming media giant Netflix has partnered with Ubisoft, one of Europe’s largest video game companies, to support its fledgling gaming business. Netflix will launch three new mobile games next year based on Ubisoft titles, including its most successful title, Assassin’s Creed.
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Netflix is trying to boost growth in its new gaming division at a time when its streaming business is slowing. The streaming conglomerate’s market value has more than halved since April when the company revealed that its 10-year growth in subscribers had come to an end.
The partnership includes the French gaming group developing mobile games for Netflix. The game will also include a castle-building and monster-looting game based on Ubisoft’s Mighty Quest, as well as the historical puzzle adventure game Valiant Hearts.
The games will be available only to Netflix subscribers and will have no ads or in-app purchases, allowing Ubisoft to tap new audiences and experiment with new formats within existing games. No details on the value of the deal have been released yet.
Netflix entered the gaming industry last year, hiring a number of high-profile executives and joining some of the world’s largest tech companies in an attempt to grab a slice of the most valuable part of the entertainment industry.
In recent years, big tech groups including Amazon, Facebook owner Meta, Google, and Apple have all stepped up their investments in video games, vying to become the “Netflix of gaming.”
Netflix has launched 28 games and acquired three game studios, including Night School Studio, which makes supernatural adventure game Oxenfree, and Texas-based Boss Fight Entertainment. In March, the company acquired Next Games, a Finnish developer of mobile games based on its hit TV series Stranger Things.
However, the company has struggled to quickly convert a significant portion of its roughly 220 million users into regular gamers. According to market intelligence firm Apptopia, Netflix mobile games have about 1.9 million daily active users and 28 million game installs. By comparison, King, the popular game publisher that makes Candy Crush, has about 30 million daily active users.
Leanne Loombe, Netflix’s head of external gaming, said the streaming company remains “very committed to gaming” but is still in an experimental phase, working out which styles and genres resonate best with users.
“No matter who our members are, we want to make sure there’s a game for them,” she said, adding that in the future “we’ll start to focus more on Netflix’s IP” because “that’s where our superpowers lie.” The streaming giant plans to have a total of 50 games under its name by the end of the year.
But the company’s move comes amid an overall slowdown in the gaming industry, with console makers, video game publishers, and gaming chip makers reporting declining sales and user engagement in recent months. Last week, Snap, the U.S. technology group that owns social media group Snapchat, said it would suspend its game plans.
Loombe said the company wasn’t bothered by the recent decline in gaming engagement, especially on mobile, noting that “people are still playing games … so we still have a huge opportunity.” “It takes hours to watch a TV series or movie, but five minutes to play a game on the commute,” she added.
