Netflix Games Pick Up Serious Steam in May
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps #118 - Making a Comeback or Going Away?. Check out the full article for more insights.
Netflix has been a game developer for almost a year now. Can you believe it?
Combined downloads of those games crossed 10 million just before the summer officially started, which means... Netflix is probably not stopping any time soon. But... Is Netflix really good at making games, or are the games coasting on brand recognition?
Let's have a look at which games are being downloaded the most. I think that will help us get a better understanding.
I used Explorer to find every game Netflix currently has in the App Store and Google Play and then used download estimates between May and mid-June to rank them.
In that time alone, the collection, which spans 20+ titles, was downloaded 2.4 million times. Nearly 25% of all downloads since inception. In a month and a half.
Stranger Things 1984 was the most downloaded game in this period, adding 462K new downloads to the total, according to our estimates. Stranger Things 3 wasn't far behind, in 4th place with 304K downloads.
It's clear that the big names are drawing the downloads. And by that, I mean Stranger Things, undoubtedly one of the best things Netflix has ever produced (except for season 2). You might look at Asphalt Xtreme, the second most downloaded game in the collection, and say downloads aren't just coming because of the name.
I almost fell for that, but then I looked at the trend, and Asphalt Xtreme had a short burst in late May while Stranger Things has managed to maintain a consistent daily average that's considerably higher.
So, is Netflix doomed? Not at all.
Many games exist for their IP alone and do very well. Netflix struck gold with many of its shows and movies, and leveraging those into games is a great move. I suspect Netflix is looking at the same numbers, so in the future, we'll be seeing more branded games and less just games.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
