Earlier this month, Netflix has officially launched its mobile gaming service for android users. While the company claimed to be hard at work bringing Netflix Games also on iOS, Bloomberg technical reporter Mark Gurman recalled that Apple’s App Store policies will prevent Netflix from making games available from its app. It is therefore likely that Netflix will make its video games available through the App Store.
Netflix Games: how will it be on iOS?
Apple prevents third-party apps from functioning as a gaming hub, which has become a source of friction with cloud gaming services such as Xbox Cloud Gaming, Nvidia GeForce Now e Google Stadia. Services of this type can only get around this by offering their games via a web app, just like Facebook did some time ago.
According to Gurman’s latest newsletter, Netflix will follow Apple’s rules by making its games available through the App Store. This means that the games will not be downloadable or playable from the Netflix app, but will need to be launched as a separate application. On Android, however, the games are grouped in a dedicated tab on the Netflix app, but are downloaded individually from the Google Play Store.
While this setup isn’t all that different from how the service was originally intended, it’s self-evident that it’s still not ideal for an all-in-one gaming and streaming service. Users should be able to download and play the games from within the service itself, to take full advantage of the cross-medialità of the initiative.
That’s why Gurman predicts Netflix will eventually bring its games to the cloud. Again, this would work well for Android, but Apple’s policies make cloud gaming near-impossible success, forcing services to settle for meager web apps. If and when Netflix decides to embrace cloud gaming, it’s unclear what will happen next. service on iOS.