Netflix just redefined its gaming ambitions beyond mobile screens. During today's Q3 2025 earnings call, co-CEO Greg Peters revealed the streaming giant's pivot toward what he calls "interactivity broadly" - including TV-based party games using smartphones as controllers and real-time voting features for live shows. This strategic shift signals Netflix's attempt to create deeper engagement loops that bridge its traditional content with interactive experiences.
Netflix is betting that your smartphone can unlock a new era of living room entertainment. The streaming giant's latest strategic pivot, unveiled during today's Q3 2025 earnings call, positions gaming not as a mobile-first experiment but as the foundation for what co-CEO Greg Peters calls "interactivity broadly." The company is rolling out TV-based party games where your phone becomes the controller, starting with titles like Lego Party!, Boggle, and Tetris. But this is just the opening move in Netflix's larger plan to blur the lines between passive viewing and active participation. "These games are super easy to access," Peters told investors during the earnings call. "It's just like our series and films. You scroll to the games tab, you pick whatever you want, click it, and you're in. You don't need a special controller - that's key to this access." The emphasis on accessibility reveals Netflix's strategy to remove friction between content consumption and interactive engagement. While competitors like Apple and Google have struggled to make gaming feel native to their platforms, Netflix is leveraging its existing interface and user habits. The company's real-time voting feature, currently being tested with "Dinner Time Live With David Chang," represents another front in this interactivity push. Netflix plans to expand this to its live Star Search revival launching in January, allowing viewers to influence outcomes in real-time. "We expect to provide other interactive features to deepen engagement with live events as we go in the future," Peters said. This live voting capability positions Netflix to compete with platforms like Twitch and YouTube Live, where audience participation drives engagement. The timing isn't coincidental. Netflix's subscriber growth has plateaued in mature markets, making engagement metrics increasingly critical. The company's earlier this year already shifted focus toward multiplayer experiences and franchise-based content. Now, by expanding to TV screens, is targeting the 80% of viewing that still happens on televisions rather than mobile devices. Peters envisions creators finding "interesting and novel ways to unlock all of the power that is in this incredibly advanced controller that we all happen to have in our pockets." This smartphone-as-controller approach sidesteps the hardware barrier that has limited smart TV gaming adoption. The content strategy spans multiple fronts: games based on own franchises, kid-friendly titles, and mainstream offerings like Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy. This diversification reflects lessons learned from initial mobile gaming push, which struggled to find an audience despite quality titles. The company's measured approach - what Peters calls ramping investment "judiciously" - suggests learned from the streaming wars' unsustainable spending patterns. Rather than throwing billions at gaming, the company is building interactive features that create "synergy that reinforces both mediums," according to Peters. Industry analysts see this as answer to declining attention spans and rising competition from short-form video platforms. By makingontent interactive, hopes to increase session lengths and reduce churn. The strategy directly targets the engagement metrics that drive subscriber retention in an increasingly crowded streaming landscape.
