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In a blog post today, Mike Verdu, vice president for games at Netflix, states that the streaming content company is rolling out "a limited beta test to a small number of members in Canada and the UK on select TVs starting today, and on PCs and Macs through Netflix.com on supported browsers in the next few weeks."
The first two games available on bigger-than-mobile screens are the visual novel-esque adventure game Oxenfree 2, from Netflix-owned Night School Studio, and Molehew's Mining Adventure, described as a "gem-mining arcade game."
Those two games and future titles can be streamed. Those early testers playing on TV can use Netflix's app-based controller, while Netflix says that members "on PCs and Macs can play on Netflix.com with a keyboard and mouse." There's no mention of controller support, Linux, or other systems that have browsers. Given the mess that Linux users encounter with web-based DRM, and Netflix's peculiar device support, it's not a likely bet, at least for now.
That said, the games are already compatible with the most popular streaming boxes: Amazon Fire TV devices, Chromecast with Google TV, Nvidia Shields, Roku devices, Walmart ONN, and smart TVs from Roku, LG, and Samsung.
Netflix has an established, if quite low-key, mobile games division, providing subscribers with free games on iOS and Android devices through the App Store or Google Play. As we noted a few months ago, Netflix Games is poised in some ways to succeed beyond the limited impact Apple Arcade or Google's Play Pass have made. Netflix Games has picked up some games and developers that had been previously seen on Arcade, offering its wide user base something new without requiring a secondary subscription, using a separate app store, or forcing developers to adapt to an unfamiliar platform.
Streamed games have not had an easy launch in their still-early days (RIP Stadia). But here, again, Netflix is not taking the traditional approach or targeting traditional game archetypes. The two streaming games announced, and their mobile games so far, lean heavily toward puzzle, casual, party, adventure, and light action (and Kentucky Route Zero). This is not a value judgment, as there are some well-regarded titles in the mix that may make their way to streaming, including Moonlighter, TMNT: Shredder's Revenge, Laya's Horizon, World of Goo Remastered, Shovel Knight, Immortality, Desta: The Memories Between, Reigns, and Into the Breach.
Netflix seems to have big ambitions for games, recently investing heavily in its studios and third-party titles. Its latest ploy for even more access could mean the entry of a new, quirky competitor for our already highly sought-after screen time.
But like Microsoft Edge, Safari has an ace up its sleeve: support for Ultra HD (4K) streaming from Netflix. According to Netflix, Safari is the only browser on a Mac that can do so, while 4K streaming is locked to Microsoft Edge on Windows. However, you must have macOS Big Sur (Safari 14) or newer installed and a specific Mac with a T2 security chip to stream Netflix in 4K.
Get UR Browser The big selling point for streaming with UR Browser is its built-in VPN component. Opera has one too, but we already chose it as our favorite browser to stream on a battery. VPNs are ideal for online anonymity, preventing your internet provider and other third parties from tracking your online activities.
What this means to you is that your physical location is unknown. UR Browser sends your streaming request to a remote server, which in turn removes your information before transmitting the data to the destination. This anonymity allows you to stream previously unobtainable content locked to locations outside the US.
HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is code that formats content on the internet. HTML5 is the latest version that removes the need for browser plugins like Flash, Java, and Silverlight. With HTML5, three components are at play: JavaScript to handle the interactive components, Cascading Style Sheets to dictate the layout, and HTML to piece it all together into the webpage you see on the screen.
HTML5 includes Encrypted Media Extensions, a platform that allows DRM-protected content to stream into a browser without the need for additional plugins. HTML5 includes the element to embed a media player for video playback in web pages.
Chromium is an open-source codebase developed and maintained by Google. Developers can use this code to create a browser as-is or adapt the code to make a browser that also includes proprietary components. Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Opera are three examples of browsers that are based on Chromium.
Digital rights management is a means for all content creators and distributors to control how you use copyrighted digital material. It prevents individuals from installing stolen software or digitally recording a copyrighted movie streamed from across the internet to your PC.
Rebecca Lee Armstrong has more than six years of experience writing about tech and the internet, with a specialty in hands-on testing. She started writing tech product and service reviews while finishing her BFA in creative writing at the University of Evansville and has found her niche writing about home networking, routers, and internet access at HighSpeedInternet.com. Her work has also been featured on Top Ten Reviews, MacSources, Windows Central, Android Central, Best Company, TechnoFAQ, and iMore.
Normally I do this by explaining the critical responsibilities and the necessary character traits and skills, but in this article I will be taking a very different approach. I want to instead introduce you to real people.
The products are all iconic, and everyone that reads this will know of every product I describe, but few people know the actual product managers behind these products. And fewer still know the back stories behind these successful products.
They focused on things like Word Count which is used 10 times a day by every press person to make sure that it was lightning fast, as the press used the feature as their performance barometer. They even made it faster than the feature on Windows.
In subsequent years, not only did Microsoft once again decide to diverge the code base, they completely separated the teams into different buildings and business units, and had them fully embrace all things Mac. Strategically it was a complete 180.
But back in 1999, a then very young Netflix based in Los Gatos with less than 20 employees, was on the edge of going bust. They had a couple experienced co-founders, including the now legendary Reed Hastings, but the problem was that they were stuck at about 300,000 customers.
Even worse, DVD sales were starting to lag, and a Hollywood backlash further muddied the situation. Then there were challenges with fulfillment logistics, difficulty maintaining DVD quality, and trying to figure out how to do all this in a way that covered costs and generated some cash.
They knew they needed to somehow get customers to want a blend of expensive and less expensive titles. Necessity being the mother of invention, this is where the queue, the ratings system, and the recommendation engine all came from. Those were the technology-powered innovations that enabled the new, much more desirable business model.
They also re-wrote the billing system to handle the monthly subscription model (a funny little side story is that they actually launched without this as they had the 30 day free trial month, which bought them the extra time they needed).
Between working with the co-founders on the strategy, validating concepts with the users, assessing the analytics, driving features and functionality with the team, and working with finance on the new business model, marketing on acquisition, and the warehouse on fulfillment, you can imagine the workload Kate faced on a daily basis.
Yet the team got the new service up and running and used this to power and grow their business for another 7 years, until they disrupted themselves again by moving aggressively to the streaming model.
The new sales team, under Omid Kordistani, was off to a strong start selling keywords to large brands and placing the results at the top of the search results, highlighted as an ad, but still very prominent, much in the style that had been done in search results at other companies, including at Netscape where Omid came from. Sales was nervous that this idea of a self-service advertising platform would diminish the value of what the sales team was trying to sell.
And the engineers, which had been working so hard to provide highly relevant search results, were undersandably very worried that users would be confused and frustrated by ads getting in the way of their search results.
This is yet another example of how there are always so many good reasons for products not to get built. In the products that succeed, there is always someone like Jane behind the scenes working to get over each and every one of the objections, be they technical or business or anything else.
One such early possibility she found were city center venues that had these large electronic billboard screens that were capable of video. But she observed that these venues were just playing the same thing you could watch on your television at home, even though the context and audience was very different.
So Alex proposed a series of experiments where she would have editorial teams assemble specific tailored content suitable for specific venues and audiences, and then she would measure the audience reach and engagement.
Camille was a product manager on the iTunes team at Apple, and as you might imagine with such a disruptive and ground-breaking product, she experienced and learned a great deal during her formative product years at Apple, especially as she was there during the years moving from the iTunes original DRM-based music, to DRM-free, was critical in helping iTunes to become truly mass market.
Moving beyond early adopters into mass market involved many different efforts, some product, some marketing, and some a blend of the two. A good example of this blend was the relationship the iTunes team engaged with the American Idol program.
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