Netflix is tapping its plethora of popular unscripted series to expand its burgeoning video games business. On Thursday, the streamer will announce four new interactive fiction mobile games rolling out this year based on its top reality TV franchises: “Netflix Stories: Perfect Match,” “Too Hot to Handle 3,” “The Ultimatum: Choices,” and “Netflix Stories: Selling Sunset.”
These titles will join the nearly 100 video games currently available to subscribers at Netflix — which continues its expansion into gaming, a journey it first set out on in 2021 — including “Too Hot to Handle: Love is a Game,” its sequel “Too Hot to Handle 2,” and “Netflix Stories: Love is Blind.” All of Netflix’s mobile games come from the main Netflix app and once downloaded, each game is played in its own app.
News of the streamer’s gaming expansion comes just as Netflix has placed renewals and new series orders across its unscripted content.
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Per Netflix, each of its four newly announced mobile games will launch alongside the new season of their respective reality TV series, and the games will include in-universe versions of Nick Lachey (host of “Perfect Match”) and Chloe Vietch (host of “The Ultimatum: Choices,” and a workshop guru in “Too Hot to Handle 3”).
Debuting June 6, “Netflix Stories: Perfect Match” is described as “an all new game that casts players on the new season of the show. Enter the villa as a successful relationship podcaster looking for love on the show, but when someone from your past shows up on night one, you have to decide to pursue something new or explore what might’ve been.” The game, like the show, is hosted by Nick Lachey.
“Too Hot to Handle 3” will launch July 18: “Crash the retreat and start drama among paired-up singles in this season of the ‘Too Hot to Handle’ game, the beloved game based on the hit series. Netflix reality star Chloe Veitch triumphantly returns to the resort to help contestants (including you) with workshops designed to encourage growth in dating and romance – or fuel more drama. Flirt with glittering singles, get tangled up in love triangles and make fateful decisions that could have lasting consequences for your dating life.”
Release dates have not yet been set for “The Ultimatum: Choices,” which Netflix expects to debut in September, and “Netflix Stories: Selling Sunset,” which is targeting a fall launch.
For “The Ultimatum: Choices,” “as a contestant on the show, you must decide to marry your current partner or find love with a new one. Netflix Reality Universe star Chloe Veitch (‘Too Hot to Handle,’ ‘Perfect Match’) appears as the host of the show, guiding players like you as you make choices that stir up drama, build meaningful relationships, and form love triangles.”
New “Netflix Stories” addition “Selling Sunset” (other titles been utilized in the “Netflix Stories” game format include “Love Is Blind,” scripted drama “Virgin River” and the upcoming “Perfect Match”) will ask,
“do you have what it takes to join The Oppenheim Group?” “In this game, you’re the newest agent at L.A.’s glitziest luxury brokerage and must sell your way to the top to win a $100 million Bel Air listing. But to prove yourself as the top realtor, you’ll have to navigate affluent clients, office drama and another new agent who wants to take you down.”
“Early on in our Netflix journey, we had a hypothesis that interactive fiction games would work well, particularly because we’ve made such strides on the unscripted reality TV shows on the content side,” Netflix’s vice president of external games Leanne Loombe told Variety. “They resonate really well, they’re obviously extremely popular for us. I think it provides our members a new way to engage, just kind of immerse themselves into that fantasy. And when we think about what we’re trying to create with games, it’s really expanding on that fandom from a lot of beloved Netflix IPs, as well as the original stuff that we bring to Netflix to from a gaming perspective. Interactive fiction games in the free-to-play mobile space, they’re super popular, but they also have barriers within them when you’re playing. In order to get the best story, in order to get the best items, the customization, you generally have to pay. And that is one of the improvements that could be made in that genre, and we’re well-positioned to do that, because our value propositions are no ads and no in-app purchases. So when our members are playing those kind of games, they get the best options straight away, the best stories, the best clothes, the best customization abilities, nothing is locked behind any paywall. So I think that really does provide the ultimate amount of freedom for our members to just play the way that they want to play.”
Loombe says this expansion of Netflix’s reality TV series-inspired gaming titles does not mean the streamer is not still dedicated to mining its own scripted IP for games (it’s already announced games based on “Squid Game” and “Rebel Moon,” and just debuted a “Virgin River” game this week), it just means this interactive fiction genre has been found to best serve these types of shows.
“Ultimately, we’re trying to entertain the world and at its core, our vision for Netflix games is to have a game playable on Netflix for every one of our members,” Loombe said. “So that really means we have to think a lot about the variety, the diversity and the breadth that we’re creating in our games portfolio, so that we can actually serve multiple different types of players. In our portfolio, we have everything from ‘Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy,’ which, of course, skews to a certain kind of player and demographic, all the way to ‘SpongeBob SquarePants,’ which is probably a very different one too. And then we think about, okay, how do we serve some of the fans we have of our other beloved Netflix IP. We do have ‘Stranger Things,’ we do have ‘Squid Game,’ and I think the reimagination of those IPs in game format would really resonate with a certain type of player. You could probably imagine ‘Stranger Things’ as much more in the RPG-type genre. ‘Squid Game’ is probably in the competitive genre. And so that’s a very specific kind of player. But we also think about how do we serve the more approachable, maybe a little bit more casual fans of the other IPs like ‘Too Hot to Handle’ and ‘Love Is Blind’ and ‘The Ultimatum’ — and the best format for those is interactive fiction.”
Watch the trailer for the new Netflix game titles below.
