Netflix continues its foray into the world of gaming! You will now be able to play ten titles on your TV or PC, at no extra cost! Enough to make the platform a real player in cloud gaming?
As it continues to diversify its activities in order to become much more than a streaming giant, Netflix is preparing the arrival of cloud gaming video games, directly on televisions and PCs! Indeed, the American platform has been trying its hand at the video game sector for several years now. Since November 2021, it has been offering mobile games – on Android and iOS – without additional costs or advertising. All subscribers to the streaming platform, regardless of the package subscribed to, can access this video game service without paying anything more. The catalog currently contains around fifty titles, including small recreational games, titles from franchises such as Stranger Things and real little gems that have proven themselves on PC and consoles, such as Twelve Minutes And Unknown Soldiers: Brothers in Arms (see our article).
But if the digital giant is not having a huge success at the moment, it does not seem to be discouraged. Changing strategy, the platform had tested internally in 2023 the possibility of playing its video games on TV using a smartphone as a controller. However, the deployment was reserved for Canada and the United Kingdom, and for two titles only. The project seems to be moving forward since, now, Italy, Germany and France have joined the beta program. Users can now enjoy ten titles from their PC or connected TV.
Netflix games: around ten compatible titles
To access the video game catalog from the web version of Netflix, you must use Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge to see the tab dedicated to games appear on the home page. To be able to fully enjoy your gaming session, it is recommended to have a stable Internet connection with download speeds of at least 10 Mbit/s. In short, everyone should be able to easily enjoy it. As for Smart TVs, however, in addition to the stable connection, you unfortunately need to have one of the following devices:
- Amazon Fire TV
- Chromecast with Google TV
- LG Smart TV
- Samsung Smart TV
- Nvidia Shield
- Roku devices
- Xfinity 4K Devices
- Xumo Devices
In case you own one of these models, then you will need to download the application Netflix Game Controller on iPhone or iPad or the classic Netflix app on Android which will act as a game controller.
There are currently ten titles available, some of which are worth a look:
- Infernax
- OXENFREE
- Link Twin
- Mole Gem Mayhem
- Reigns
- Reigns: Three Kingdoms
- Rocket
- Story Warriors: Fairy Tales
- The Almost Gone
- Underwatermelon: Fruit Merge
We particularly recommend you Oxenfree, a sublime supernatural thriller that tells the story of a group of friends who accidentally open a spectral rift. You follow Alex and his half-brother Jonas who, equipped with a radio to solve puzzles, try to escape this terrible nightmare. The game has an absolutely magnificent aesthetic – with 3D characters navigating in a 2D world –, a masterful soundtrack, a complex storyline – in the good sense of the word – and multiple-choice dialogues fully dubbed in English. The two titles in the series Reigns are also very good and should keep you busy for a while.