99 percent of Netflix subscribers haven’t tried its games yet

As Netflix continues to build out its portfolio of games, the streamer’s seeing less than 1 percent of its subscribers interact with them on a daily basis. According to data obtained by CNBC from app tracking group Apptopia, Netflix’s games average 1.7 million users per day, a sliver of Netflix’s 221 million subscribers globally.

Apptopia found that Netflix’s games have been downloaded a total of 23.3 million times since Netflix announced a push into mobile gaming in November 2021. The streamer started with just five games, a collection that it has since expanded to over two dozen titles, including a game based on the Exploding Kittens card game, the League of Legends spinoff Hextech Mayhem, and the strategy title Into the Breach. Netflix also plans on adding a game based on its original series The Queen’s Gambit.

Netflix wants to double its current offering of games to 50 titles by the end of 2022 and has acquired three indie game studios to help it meet this goal. Previous reports show Netflix’s game downloads slowly growing over the course of the (almost) one year that the games have been available.

In January, Apptopia recorded 8 million total game downloads, while data from analytics firm Sensor Tower showed total downloads hitting 13 million in June. Subscribers on Android devices can access and download the games for free from either the Netflix app or Google Play Store, while Apple’s rules require Netflix to direct users on Apple devices to the App Store for downloads.

Netflix reported losing subscribers for the first time in over a decade in April and lost 1.3 million more globally between May and the end of June. The streamer’s collection of games could play an increasingly important role as Netflix reverses the trend on subscriber losses and finds ways to make more money from those subscribers beyond raising prices on the video services they already have. Netflix already plans on rolling out an ad-supported tier by the end of this year and is also exploring ways to crack down on password sharing.

Disclosure: The Verge recently produced a series with Netflix.