INTERNATIONAL: You might soon be able to play a video game based on our favourite series on Netflix. The world’s biggest streaming service is diving into video games, with growth in its movie and TV streaming service starting to slow, thanks to increased competition and less Covid-19 restrictions, meaning people are spending less time at home.
Netflix has dominated the world of entertainment for a decade now, with 209 million global subscribers, but growth is slowing. Worldwide, Netflix added 1.5 million new subscribers in the second trimester of 2021, beating their own forecast of 1.2 million, but over the same period it lost 400,000 subscribers in the US and Canada.
Now the California-based company is ready to dive into the video game universe. CEO Reed Hastings says the move has been in the pipeline for years and this seems to be a good time to start. He says video games have properties, like films, that you can own, such as the intellectual property and you can have long franchises. Netflix says it is in the very early stages of expanding its video game content, starting with mobile games. The good news is that this will be at no extra charge for subscribers – at least for now…