Netflix UK to Add Remote Play Video Games at No Extra Cost

The global internet video streaming giant, Netflix, has announced that they’re in the “early stages” of preparing to add remote play video game streaming to their service “at no additional cost” and within the next year, although it remains to be seen whether that has any impact on their future price hikes.

Technically speaking, Netflix has already played around with a video-based streamed game in the form of their ‘Black Mirror: Bandersnatch‘ TV episode, although this merely gave you a selection of options to help form and progress the story around your choices. On top of that they’ve also produced the rather basic ‘Stranger Things 3: The Game‘ for Nintendo Switch consoles, but streaming proper games and supporting remote play is a much bigger jump.

At the time of writing the company hasn’t released any information about precisely how this would all work within their platform or what the broadband requirements would be, although most video game streaming platforms (e.g. Google Stadia) have tended to have similar requirements as regular video streams (e.g. up to around 35Mbps for 4K HDR resolution at 60fps).

Netflix Statement (Trading Update)

We’re also in the early stages of further expanding into games, building on our earlier efforts around interactivity (eg, Black Mirror Bandersnatch) and our Stranger Things games. We view gaming as another new content category for us, similar to our expansion into original films, animation and unscripted TV. Games will be included in members’ Netflix subscription at no additional cost similar to films and series.

Initially, we’ll be primarily focused on games for mobile devices. We’re excited as ever about our movies and TV series offering and we expect a long runway of increasing investment and growth across all of our existing content categories, but since we are nearly a decade into our push into original programming, we think the time is right to learn more about how our members value games.

The company says that they would be “primarily focused on games for mobile devices,” which would also help to keep the bitrates down as you don’t really need 4K quality on a small screen to have a good experience. Much will of course also depend upon the quality of content they distribute.