Netflix tried to get ahead of some bad news this week by hyping a gaming announcement, part of the company’s strategy to pep up investors worried about the streaming giant’s future.
Why it matters: Netflix reported its first-ever quarterly loss of subscribers yesterday, triggering a full season’s worth of takes to binge-read.
The details: Netflix announced a mobile game and animated series based on the card game Exploding Kittens on Monday, which offers “an early glimmer” of its gaming strategy, company COO Gregory Peters told investors yesterday.
Netflix currently offers 17 games, with four more announced for May.
Between the lines: Netflix’s gaming plans currently look like a subscriber retention effort and marketing play rather than a plunge into direct competition with gaming’s biggest companies.
Be smart: Gaming is a notoriously hard business to make money in, but Netflix sees gold there.
Sign up for the new Axios Gaming newsletter here.
