Netflix tests streaming games to US TVs to take on PlayStation and Xbox

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By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.

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Netflix is expanding its games streaming beta to the US, the company announced in an update to a blog post. The feature, which lets you play games streamed from the cloud on devices like your TV or a computer, launched first in August in Canada and the UK.

In the blog post, Netflix notes that it’s a “limited” beta test, so it seems like this won’t be available to too many people to start. (Netflix used that same “limited” language with the initial launch in Canada and the UK.) Like with the original test, the only two games available to stream are Oxenfree from Netflix’s own Night School Studio and another game titled Molehew’s Mining Adventure.

If you have access to the service, you’ll need to download Netflix’s special controller app for your iPhone or Android device to play the game on your TV. (Netflix says the streamed games work on “select devices,” including Amazon Fire TV devices, Chromecast with Google TV, Roku devices and TVs, and more.) On the web, you’ll be able to play games with a mouse and keyboard.

Netflix has been steadily growing its games library and offerings as a way to offer more benefits to subscribers. The vast majority of its games are available on mobile devices, but the company has been vocal about its interest in expanding beyond iOS and Android. According to a Monday report from The Wall Street Journal, the company is planning to release games based on its own hit franchises like Squid Game, Wednesday, Extraction, and Black Mirror,