Monument Valley 3 in Netflix Games
Yesterday, during Gamescom’s opening night ceremonies, Netflix Games released a trailer for Monument Valley 3. The franchise’s sequel from Ustwo Games, which has been in development for five years, will be published exclusively on Apple’s App Store and Android by Netflix Games on December 10th. Monument Valley 1 and 2 are also moving to Netflix Games on September 19th and October 29th, respectively. Both games previously launched on the App Store as paid titles and were later added to Apple Arcade.
Netflix has been slowly rolling out a big catalog of games, tied to a Netflix login. There are loads out now, including the excellent Lucky Luna and Laya’s Horizon (both from Snowman, developer of the excellent Alto’s series of iOS games).
Out of curiosity, I checked out the full list of game they currently have available to subscribers, and it’s pretty good! It’s similar to Apple Arcade, but what stands out to me is that it has more of the sorts of games that appeal to me. Below are some standouts, some of which are on Apple Arcade as well, and some that were game-of-the-year contenders in the larger gaming space outside of iOS.
Wow. I wonder what the story is behind the scenes that would lead to this (the story is “a truck full of money”). If there was a pantheon of iOS games, the previous Monument Valley games were surely in it.
See also: Filipe Espósito.
Previously:
- Roblox: the Biggest Game in the World
- Inside Apple Arcade
- Apple’s Mac Gaming Push
- Netflix Games for iOS
- Apple Arcade Adds Classic Games
- iOS Game Revenue
- Monument Valley: iOS 42% of Downloads But 73% of Revenue
Update (2024-08-22): John Gruber (Mastodon):
I think Netflix is doing what Apple claimed they were doing with Apple Arcade — except Netflix didn’t lose focus five minutes into the initiative.
[…]
Apple has botched this. It’s hard to believe, but they have. The general gist among game developers is that Apple is a hard-driving partner with whom, mostly likely, you’ll break even at best.
The major flaw in Apple Arcade is revenue sharing. It’s complicated, pays out over time, and there’s no way of knowing how it will pay out. Netflix pays for content upfront. Easiest way to get paid for anything.
