Netflix to make its games playable on more devices

Netflix will test games on select TVs and computers in a first step to make them playable on more devices, the company’s vice president of Games Mike Verdu wrote in a blog post on Monday.

The company is rolling out a limited beta test to a small group of members in Canada and the United Kingdom on select TVs starting Monday, and on PCs and Macs through Netflix.com on supported browsers in the next few weeks.

“Today, we’re taking the first step in making games playable on every device where our members enjoy Netflix — TVs, computers, and mobile,” said Verde in a post on Netflix’s blog.

“While we’re still very early in our games journey, we’re excited to bring joy to members with games.”

Although testing is currently limited to selected users, Verdi hinted that the new features are expected to be rolled out to more countries around the world, including the Middle East, in the coming months.

The streaming platform had begun its push into the gaming experience by launching Netflix games on mobiles in November 2021. So far, the company’s titles have only been available on Apple’s iOS and Alphabet’s Android.

“Oxenfree” from Night School Studio, a Netflix Game Studio, and “Molehew’s Mining Adventure,” a gem-mining arcade game, will be part of the initial testing.

Users can play the games on TV using their phones and those on PCs and Macs can play on Netflix.com with a keyboard and mouse.

“By making games available on more devices, we hope to make games even easier to play for our members around the world,” Verdu said.

Netflix said games on TV will operate on select devices from initial partners Amazon Fire TV Streaming Media Players, Chromecast with Google TV and Roku devices, among others.

It said more devices will be supported over time, but did not detail which ones would later be supported.

In March, the company had said it had a content slate of 40 more games scheduled for later this year and 70 in development with its partners, which would be in addition to the 16 games currently being developed by its in-house game studios.

Netflix signaled its intention to expand into cloud gaming last fall, when Verdu said the company was exploring such an offering and announced that Netflix would open a new gaming studio in Southern California. Arab News