Netflix Wanted To Become A Gaming Giant — Five Years Later, FIFA Shows How Far It Still Has To Go

When Netflix first entered games, members initially received five mobile titles as part of their existing subscription. There were no additional fees, advertising or in-game purchases. Netflix's advantage was obvious: it did not need to convince consumers to buy another subscription before asking them to play. The problem was getting subscribers to care. Third-party analytics from Apptopia reported in August 2022 estimated Netflix games were attracting roughly 1.7 million daily users from a subscriber base of approximately 221 million at the time. That meant fewer than 1% of subscribers were engaging daily with the gaming offering. Netflix continued investing anyway. Its catalog grew substantially, eventually including games such as Hades, Into the Breach, Grand Theft Auto titles and the Monument Valley series. As of mid-2026, Netflix says members have access to more than 120 mobile games. Yet building a respectable catalog and building a major gaming platform turned out to be very different problems. Our broader gaming features regularly come back to this same lesson: having money, recognizable IP and distribution does not automatically create a gaming audience.

Netflix's ambitions once extended far beyond mobile ports and subscription extras. In 2022, the company established a Southern California development operation known internally as Team Blue. The talent involved made Netflix's intentions difficult to dismiss. Former Overwatch executive producer Chacko Sonny joined the project. Former Halo creative leader Joseph Staten followed, along with former Sony Santa Monica art director Rafael Grassetti. The team was working on a new multiplatform AAA intellectual property. Then Netflix shut Team Blue down in October 2024 before the studio released a single game. That closure became one of the clearest indications that Netflix was reassessing what kind of gaming company it actually wanted to become. The retreat continued in 2025. More than 20 games departed Netflix's library that summer, including Hades, Death's Door, Braid: Anniversary Edition and all three Monument Valley games. Netflix Games did not disappear. It changed direction.

The Netflix Games of 2026 looks considerably different from the company that was hiring veterans of Halo, Overwatch and God of War to build a large original game. Instead, Netflix has increasingly focused on something its competitors cannot replicate quite as easily: turning the television app millions of people already use into an extremely accessible gaming device. The idea is simple. Open Netflix on a compatible TV, select a cloud game, scan a QR code and use your phone as the controller. No Xbox. No PlayStation. No expensive gaming PC. That strategy puts Netflix less directly against traditional console companies and closer to the casual social gaming territory that systems like the Nintendo Wii once expanded dramatically. It also makes the company's wider battle for control of the living-room screen increasingly relevant. A recent Yahoo Finance analysis of streaming competition highlights how rivals are fighting not only through content, but also through distribution, advertising and ownership of the interfaces consumers use to find entertainment. Gaming gives Netflix another reason for subscribers to stay inside its own interface. The question is whether those subscribers actually want to play there.

Few licenses could test the idea better than FIFA. FIFA World Cup: Launch Edition, developed and published by Delphi Interactive, launched on June 11 with all 48 World Cup teams, 1,248 players and 16 tournament stadiums. Netflix members can play using their televisions and phones, with support for up to four players. There is no separate game purchase required. FIFA President Gianni Infantino described the partnership as an important step in FIFA's gaming strategy, while Netflix Games president Alain Tascan emphasized accessibility and the idea of bringing football directly into people's living rooms. Those ambitions sound enormous. The critical reaction was considerably less flattering. In his review impressions for Aftermath, Luke Plunkett criticized the game's animations, artificial intelligence, mobile controls, presentation and overall recreation of football. Other outlets reached similarly negative conclusions, turning what should have been a prestige moment into another reminder that a strong license cannot hide weak execution. The criticism matters because this is not an obscure experiment buried inside Netflix's catalog. This is FIFA during a World Cup year. The license provides teams, players, stadiums and enormous global recognition. If Netflix wants gaming to become a meaningful part of its entertainment ecosystem, there may be few better opportunities to prove the concept.

Here is where calling Netflix Games an outright failure becomes more complicated. In its July 16, 2026 financial update, Netflix said FIFA World Cup: Launch Edition and Unhinged produced the company's two most successful cloud-game debuts. Netflix also reported that Netflix Playground, its children's gaming app, had tripled its daily players since launching in April, while engagement with its children's mobile games was up 600% year over year. Those are meaningful signs of improvement. But Netflix itself added an important qualifier: that growth is coming off a small base. The company also did not disclose actual FIFA player numbers or total gameplay hours in that update. So Netflix can credibly say FIFA represents progress. What outsiders still cannot determine is whether that progress is large enough to make gaming strategically significant alongside Netflix's enormous film, television and live-event businesses. That distinction matters. A record launch inside a small gaming ecosystem is not automatically the same thing as becoming a major force in gaming.

Netflix Games should not be written off simply because its first strategy failed to create a new Xbox or PlayStation competitor. The company may have discovered that competing directly with traditional gaming platforms was never its best opportunity. Netflix already owns the subscription relationship. It already occupies the television. Cloud technology removes dedicated hardware from the equation. A phone-controller system makes multiplayer games immediately accessible to people who would never spend hundreds of dollars on a console. There is a genuine strategy there. But FIFA demonstrates the other side of the equation. Accessibility cannot replace quality. A famous license cannot replace quality. A huge subscription base cannot replace quality. And five years of having games included with Netflix does not automatically mean Netflix subscribers think of the service as somewhere they go to play them. Follow our latest gaming news as Netflix, Xbox, PlayStation and other major companies continue pushing gaming beyond traditional consoles.

The original Netflix Games experiment clearly struggled to match the scale suggested by Netflix's enormous subscriber base. Early engagement was tiny, its ambitious AAA studio disappeared without shipping a game, major titles later left the catalog, and the company repeatedly adjusted its strategy. But 2026 Netflix Games is attempting something different. FIFA, cloud gaming and phone-controlled TV experiences suggest Netflix no longer needs to become another Xbox. It wants gaming to become another button inside Netflix. That might ultimately be a much smarter goal. The problem is that Netflix still needs to demonstrate that millions of subscribers will consistently press that button after the novelty disappears. FIFA gave Netflix one of the biggest names imaginable with which to prove it. Five years after Netflix entered gaming, the fact that we're still asking whether its subscribers actually want to play may be the clearest indication of how far the company still has to go.