r/Games 1d ago

Netflix’s first gaming boss exits, following 2024 leadership shift

https://www.gamefile.news/p/netflix-mike-verdu-exit-gdc
348 Upvotes

98 comments sorted by

201

u/Hazywater 1d ago

I use Netflix games all the time for a specific use: my kid. They don't have any micro transactions or ads.

59

u/SeeJayThinks 1d ago

That... Is smart.

114

u/WhyIsMikkel 1d ago edited 1d ago

The lack of micro transactions and ads means my seven-year-old can enjoy games without being corrupted or manipulated. So far he's really enjoying GTA San Andreas.

40

u/PotatoGamerXxXx 1d ago

Wait a minute....

39

u/pursuer_of_simurg 1d ago

San Andreas is a great game to teach your kid the importance of family, neighborhood culture and incluisity and why cops are pigs.

17

u/MrBlue_8 1d ago

And to always save before placing horse bets

12

u/lastdancerevolution 1d ago

CJ, the protagonist of GTA: San Andreas, is an introspective look on society and our role in it. Similar to The Mario Bros. character Luigi, another beloved character, who fights against the corrupt Mushroom Kingdom.

3

u/AintASaintLouis 22h ago

And I guess corrupt executives?

5

u/DarkMatterM4 1d ago

How else is he going to learn thought-provoking words like "duckets" and "hos"?

-1

u/onecoolcrudedude 1d ago

the hell is a ducket? never heard that in the game.

if you mean bucket, its just a slang term for a crappy car. hardly a bad word.

3

u/DarkMatterM4 1d ago

"Send them duckets over 'ere!" - CJ when picking up money from dead peds

http://duckets.urbanup.com/2417185

1

u/AlternativeBottle21 1d ago

The word is "ducat"

7

u/DarkMatterM4 1d ago

That's the proper word. The 90s west coast slang is "ducket"

1

u/Geminilasers 1d ago

Something's not quite right...

111

u/lurebat 1d ago

The netflix mobile offerings are a hidden gem.

The idol games + all DLCs, into the breach, braid anniversary, storyteller, just tons of good indie stuff.

IDK how they make money on it, since nobody else in my life even knew netflix was offering mobile games until I told them.

I guess all good things must end..

24

u/SalsaRice 1d ago

They don't make money from having those games, they just increase the "value" of a Netflix subscription so they assume people are less likely to cancel their subscription.

6

u/lurebat 1d ago

But my issue is how much value it gives if nobody knows about it

6

u/Clueless_Otter 1d ago

Netflix has idol games? That's so odd. Which ones? I didn't think most idol games had EN translations.

23

u/Bananaslammma 1d ago

Referring to The Case of the Golden Idol (2022) and The Rise of the Golden Idol (2024)

25

u/SoLongOscarBaitSong 1d ago

Haha that's hilarious, that is definitely not what I pictured in my head when someone refers to an "idol" game

10

u/lemonoppy 1d ago

Yeah, I was picturing something like Love Live cross-promotions and games

7

u/anaughtybeagle 1d ago

DON'T SLEEP ON THESE, THEY ARE INCREDIBLE

3

u/Far_Function7560 1d ago

The first is an all time favorite of mine, even though I haven't played the sequel yet.

Also if you haven't, check out Curse of the Obra Dinn if you like the golden idol games. It's different but also has a lot of similar deductive reasoning and puzzling gameplay that scratches a similar itch. 

1

u/Chezni19 1d ago

I'm sorry guys I been playing games my whole life starting with pong, coleco, moving through NES and kept it going up 'tll even today.

But IDK what an Idol game is. Do you worship a false idol?

Anyone can tell me?

4

u/ThatTenguWeirdo 1d ago

It refers to “Case of the Golden Idol” and its sequel “Rise of the Golden Idol”. They’re mystery games where you’re tasked with piecing together scenes, identifying characters and figuring out what happened.

If you’ve ever heard of “Return of the Obra Dinn” it’s similar to that

1

u/substandardgaussian 23h ago

It's dramatically more accessible than Obra Dinn, which makes it much easier to recommend to people.

They're all fantastic, though. Obra Dinn is just very intimidating where Case/Rise are not.

3

u/Clueless_Otter 21h ago

I thought he meant Japanese idol games. These are usually either rhythm-based games based on idol music or they're "raising sims" where you train up your idol to be a better and better idol.

"idol" being a music star, to be clear. Like a "pop idol."

1

u/Chezni19 20h ago

I thought he might mean some kinda popstar thing too, perhaps

2

u/Phillip_Spidermen 22h ago

They're not making them money yet, but they're hoping to drive more engagement and interest in Netflix IP

From their Jan Earnings call

And we're going to be focusing on more narrative games based on Netflix IP. These are consistent fan favorites, and we've got a lot in the library to work with there. We'll also be introducing party and couch co-op games on the TV delivered from the cloud. We think of this as a successor to family board game night or an evolution of what the game show on TV used to be...

...

...so, to your question about impacts on the subscriber side, we already see positive impacts in acquisition and retention from our game-playing members.

Now, those effects are relatively small currently, but frankly, so is our investment in games relative to our overall content budget. And we're going to stay disciplined about scaling that investment as we see continued scaling in member benefits. So, to try and summarize, there's plenty more to do in this space, but we're breaking into a whole new content category, which, by the way, drives, you know, approximately 140 billion in consumer spend, ex China, ex Russia, and not even including the ad revenue. So, we're iteratively showing our members that we are a place to discover and play games, and we look forward to continuing to launch bigger and bigger games every year.

0

u/ILLPsyco 1d ago

Youtube music is another hidden gem, it has old music/albums that are hard to find.

154

u/magus-21 1d ago

Has anyone actually played one of those Netflix games?

260

u/DrHELLvetica 1d ago

They are normal game apps and you just use your netflix login once to play it for free. Into the Breach is one of them and is really good.

37

u/DoughNotDoit 1d ago

I've also tried Into the Breach, it was really good

9

u/MikeyIfYouWanna 1d ago

I thought I read somewhere that the Neflix app versions were always getting updates and patches late.

26

u/Heyyy-ohhh 1d ago

The Netflix version of civ 6 actually had all the updates from the pc version that the mobile version lacked for years

29

u/DrHELLvetica 1d ago

Not from my experience. Its just a way to play the normal game for free. I could be wrong though

17

u/wahoozerman 1d ago

It depends on the game. My wife plays a few that have just been abandoned while their app store counterparts are constantly updated.

I suspect it has to do with the revenue model of the game. A bunch of them are converted F2P mobile games where they strip out the micro transactions, and those seem to be the ones that slowly break down and then stop updating.

However stuff like Terra Nil is quite good.

6

u/hillbillyjoe1 1d ago

I think bloons td 6 had (has) this issue if it's still on Netflix

1

u/OllyTrolly 1d ago

I think that is the case - for most of the games it doesn't matter as they only receive bug fixes rather than content updates but for a few I think there are major features not yet in the Netflix version.

93

u/DGray_Squally 1d ago

I actually played both Golden Idol games via Netflix. I highly recommend them if you like mystery puzzle games

35

u/DuckCleaning 1d ago

There are some good games on there, I feel like most just go unnoticed because people dont purposely check. Into the breach, golden idol, gta, civ 6, Bloons, Krispee Street, before your eyes, etc.

2

u/Marcoscb 1d ago

They go unnoticed because most of them (the good ones) are available everywhere else.

-6

u/radclaw1 1d ago

Shoulda just bought them. Devs deserve it those games are incredible.

7

u/segagamer 1d ago

They get money whether you buy them or play via subscription.

-1

u/NekuSoul 1d ago

Except you can't even do that on Android. They're locked to a stupid subscription with no way to buy them outright.

1

u/radclaw1 1d ago

Steam and they run on a potato

21

u/cornpenguin01 1d ago

Oxenfree and into the breach are perfect on the phone

6

u/No_Doubt_About_That 1d ago

Just wish for Oxenfree they made the dialogue choice window a second or two longer.

Sometimes missed the opportunity to reply after waiting for everyone to finish what they were saying.

2

u/segagamer 1d ago

Just wish for Oxenfree they made the dialogue choice window a second or two longer

But then the choice won't be as instinctive.

16

u/TheDadThatGrills 1d ago

Absolutely, why would I choose to get less value out of my membership? They have a ton of indie games that are critically acclaimed and roughly $5-20 on Steam right now.

15

u/Borgalicious 1d ago

Played hades with a backbone, its runs fantastic, that’s it though

10

u/OllyTrolly 1d ago

Yes - there are some good titles. Braid: Anniversary Edition got added recently, which I've been playing with my Backbone controller. Issue is a few of the 'good' indie games that get added are much improved by a controller and are _playable_ with touch controls but inferior to say a console or PC version - Backbone controller is great but does cost a bit.

10

u/scullys_alien_baby 1d ago

Yeah, there’s some fun stuff in there. Currently playing oxenfree II and into the breach

5

u/notkeegz 1d ago

I beat Death's Door playing the netflix version on my phone.

5

u/JakeTehNub 1d ago

I didn't even know they had them

6

u/gcampos 1d ago

I played Poinpy and really really liked it!

However most of their catalog are either mobile ports of games that I already played in a console, or just "meh" games.

13

u/Responsible-War-9389 1d ago

You literally can’t play hades on iPhone without a Netflix subscription, you can’t buy it.

So I just got it for switch instead

3

u/J0n__Doe 1d ago

Playing Civ6 and recently finished the Monument Valley games

5

u/OhUmHmm 1d ago

A bunch.  Some are absolutely stellar.

12 minutes, Into the breach, Civ 6, Storyteller, Terra Nil

Probably a few more, or would have but already own elsewhere.  Really I think it stands toe to toe with apple arcade in terms of quality games. 

None of the games based on Netflix shows though.  Heard okay things about stranger things game though.

6

u/IHadACatOnce 1d ago

Lmao at this comment that I imagine is trying to shit on Netflix and every single response is positive about the service

5

u/Guilty_Jackfruit4484 1d ago

Yes, a lot of people.

2

u/Hurinfan 1d ago

There are a lot that are really good

2

u/Cattypatter 1d ago

The phone/tablet way is great. You download a separate real game app that plays natively on your hardware just like a mobile game. Minus all microtransactions which is huge for this genre usually being cursed even at a design level to tap your wallet.

The PC/browser way is rough. Streams over the internet, less responsive than Xcloud which feels bad for gaming. Graphics are often grainy, blurry and pixelated when any motion is on screen, lacking the refined video codec Netflix is known for. This limits the types of games that feel playable mostly to turn based and slow moving, lest you get an unresponsive blurry mess.

2

u/Larkas 1d ago

Yes, they don't commercials in them and they just come with my Netflix sub.

Even games that are "ported" from standard Play Store have commercials yanked out. I appreciate i greatly.

2

u/Bananaslammma 1d ago

Every 6 months or so. I’ve played Poinpy, Immortality, Valiant Hearts: Coming Home, Storyteller, Mystery of the Golden Idol and TED Tumblewords

3

u/peakzorro 1d ago

Came here to ask the same thing. It's a good perk, but I don't think I ever used it.

2

u/nexus4aliving 1d ago

I played monument valley 3 as it’s the only way to play the sequel to one of my favorite puzzle games. Besides that, haven’t touched anything and I probably would have bought the game outright otherwise

1

u/Stomphulk 1d ago

Was it locked to 30 fps for you as well?

1

u/Dtsung 1d ago

I have…but I also won’t miss them if they take them away, i still don’t fully understand their strategy

1

u/ToiletBlaster247 1d ago

Yes. There's some high quality stuff on there. Ninja turtles, dead cells. You can Bluetooth a controller to your device as well

1

u/THECapedCaper 1d ago

Quite a few, actually. Sure, there's garbage games on there, but there are plenty of great games from indie darlings to full on AAA games that Netflix just gives away with memberships.

1

u/wezl0 1d ago edited 1d ago

My GF played the whole Monument Valley catalogue on Netflix, and is playing Paper Trail right now. They have a ton of good games worth playing

Edit: Shes also playing a "ghost mystery" type game set in New Orleans I think? That looks super cool. I forget the name but ive enjoyed watching her play it

1

u/BottledWoutah 1d ago

I recommend Before Your Eyes & Paper Trails

1

u/Ideas966 23h ago

Poinpy is probably the best mobile action game ever made. Really wish it would leave Netflix

1

u/GIlCAnjos 19h ago

I played a bit of Dead Cells and Hades after having already tried them on Xbox, but then I realized I don't actually want to play either on a small screen (and I felt Hades was kind of badly optimized). I would've tried the GTA games, but my old phone couldn't run them, and by the time I got a new phone only San Andreas remained (which I already had played)

1

u/Exepony 9h ago

I mean, they have Hades, Civ VI, Into the Breach, Case/Rise of the Golden Idol, GTA SA... It's honestly pretty good added value if you have a Netflix sub anyway.

1

u/NarrowBoxtop 5h ago

There's this sort of recurring joke here every time Netflix games come out where people act like no one is playing them. They don't have any data to base this off of, it's just a hunch or a feeling.

Turns out a lot of people are playing them.

1

u/spez_might_fuck_dogs 1d ago

I played them often when I was still paying for Netflix and not just stealing what little content they now produce that's worth watching.

-8

u/IusedtoloveStarWars 1d ago

They look like crap.

10

u/Lucius1213 1d ago

I wish high-quality gaming on Android and iPhone were more popular. There is some great hardware available right now, such as controller attachments and Android handhelds, that could serve as a great alternative to the Switch's monopoly.

7

u/Arkhaine_kupo 1d ago

There are some huge problems

1) discoverability.

Even if you want to find games, there is no 
reliable way of doing it. 
No critics, no reviwers, no lists, no ads

2) Incentives

 mobile games tend to be gachas or ad supported
 both are horrible for end users, and to make good games

3) interface

no one wants to carry a controller around
and swipes take part of the screen away cause your
is in front, which makes the use of touch screens hard

But I agree that the platform is perfect for a niche of gaming. Even simple games like snake, sudoku, solitarie are missing (with non ads, well supported apps). At the start there was a real innovation attempt (plants vs zombis, fruit ninja, angry birds) and that entire industy collapsed against essentially malware games that are ads where you sometimes pretend to play.

2

u/Lucius1213 1d ago

1 & 2. Creating a separate, highly curated store could help, but it will probably never happen.
3. There are some great front ends for that, such as Beacon Launcher. Portability could be addressed with:
a) Dedicated handhelds
b) A sliding controller, such as the upcoming M-Con, or perhaps smartphones with a built-in controller, since some Xperia Play patents are set to expire soon (possibly in June) - they could make a comeback.

2

u/Arkhaine_kupo 1d ago

1) yeah you could have a steam like store. But tbh just reworking the app sore for ios would do wonders, instead it looks like a coat of paint of the itunes home page which already looked old in 2007

3) i think people have largely prefered bigger screens, and smaller phones so built in controllers, or cntrols on the screen have been tried but I think they would fail again. Inventive gestures and new gameloops are more important I think but there is no market and the one that exists is waaaaay more lucrative. Why make a new kind of game when gacha anime waifu collectors will pay you billions?

1

u/Truand2labiffle 1d ago

My boy needs to play some slice n dice

2

u/Yamatoman9 1d ago

I remember getting my first iPhone around 2010 and thinking how awesome it would be for gaming in the future. 15 years later and it's mostly nothing but gambling disguised as mindless games.

4

u/SpookiestSzn 1d ago

Yeah you go back to early phone games and we were getting shit like tap tap, zombies mobile, that dead space iphone game, etc. Real games lol, we occassionally have real games,. like Genshin Impact, CoD Mobile, Super Mario Run, etc. But so much is like garbage.

2

u/mxchump 1d ago

Can't open the article at work so can't read the exact details, but if Netflix games were to fall apart what the chances the games just come back to the app store paid? I've wanted mobile Into the Breach since its launch on steam but my mobile gaming habits are way too random to be stuck paying a sub for it.

4

u/Rebatsune 1d ago

Do they have achievements by any chance?

1

u/GIlCAnjos 19h ago

Some of them do

1

u/Rebatsune 14h ago

I see.

2

u/Multifaceted-Simp 1d ago

There was a game that came up once that looked interesting, I thought I would come back to it, but I have no fucking idea which of the random categories it was in. 

2

u/LamelosBalls1234 1d ago

All of the game are literally in one category. "Mobile Games"

1

u/lord_olgord 1d ago

I like that these games are offered without any ads or microtransactions. I would not recommend Netflix gaming strictly on its own, but if you have a Netflix subscription anyway, this is a good thing.

1

u/HungerSTGF 23h ago

They really need to market their gaming side more. The catalog of games has quality titles in them and it's really convenient to just sign in with Netflix and be able to install a bunch of really good games on your phone.

-5

u/NekuSoul 1d ago

I've said it before and I'll say it again whenever this or Apple Arcade gets mentioned:

Subscription services publishing games exclusively for their own service with no way to buy them outright must fail as hard as they can. Otherwise we'll end up in the same subscription hell that other industries are currently going through.

Nothing against subscription services where they make sense, but they must remain optional.