You may have already heard this news break somewhere else on the Internet or perhaps on Twitter. But it seems like Netflix is going to dive headfirst into the video game streaming market within the upcoming year. Many people are comparing it to Google Stadia, but I think they will be different style offerings. Netflix’s business model is subscriptions. They want to get you to keep paying that fee every month. If they can include video games and raise your price by $6 a month, they will. Just like they did when adding 4K or multiple simultaneous streams. However, in this Bloomberg article, it sounded like they don’t currently plan to charge more, though I’m sure they eventually will.
While Stadia does have a subscription, they only give you a couple of (usually mediocre) games to play and higher-quality streaming for the price. Outside of that, they require you to buy games individually if you want to play them. And while this has worked well on traditional consoles, I think it was a hold-out from when games were physical and sold in retail stores. With everything streaming digitally, with no real sense of ownership, just a license to stream, why pay full price for a game? This is where I think Amazon Luna and Xbox Cloud Gaming did it right. They are both available with subscription services that give you access to an entire library of streaming games without being required to buy any single one.
I’m pretty excited about this and looking forward to what Netflix can do in the space. They tried once to get in on video game rentals by mail when considering spinning out their mail-only Qwikster service, but they pulled back that idea after negative customer feedback. Feedback about a separate service and fee, not about video games. Their streaming infrastructure is already in place. They likely need to put some more powerful machines behind it to run the games, though. And they will probably have to sell a WiFi-connected controller like the other services. A controller with their red and black color scheme would be *chef’s kiss*. I can’t wait to see what they come up with.
Anyway, what are your thoughts on Netflix getting into the world of video games? What are your thoughts on game streaming services in general? Leave me a comment and let me know.