Netflix Might Bring its Games to TVs in Effort to Get People to Actually Play Them

upstart writes:

Netflix has been releasing mobile video games since 2021, but this would be the company's first attempt at TV-based video games:

Higher quality TV and movies? No. A standard of not cancelling shows after a single season? Nah. Mobile games on your TV? Yup. That appears to be Netflix's plan after a developer found some hidden code while digging through the platform. The company's actually been offering games on mobile since 2021, but given paltry player numbers, the effort to bring them to TVs, where most subscribers actually use Netflix, might be the best way to remind people that they're even there.

App developer Steve Moser-who shared his findings with Bloomberg-found some sneaky lines of code during some digging into Netflix's back end. One line of the code allegedly read "A game on your TV needs a controller to play. Do you want to use this phone as a game controller?," indicating that a user's smartphone would serve as the controller for a game hosted on Netflix's interface.

Currently, Netflix's gaming service is relegated to mobile, and while there's critically acclaimed titles like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge and Immortality in there, you can only get at them either by stumbling on Netflix's games on your phone's app store or through a single row in the Netflix app. As such, it's easy to miss out on this side of Netflix entirely. According to recent data, only one percent of subscribers are playing games on Netflix.

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