GTA: San Andreas became the most popular game in the Netflix catalog in 2023
On December 14, 2023, Rockstar Games released games from the GTA collection: The Trilogy is The Definitive Edition on the Netflix streaming service. It took them half a month to enter the top 15 in terms of downloads on the site for the whole year.
GTA: San Andreas
The trilogy accounted for 17% of all downloads of games from the Netflix catalog in 2023, TechCrunch reports, citing Sensor Tower and Appfigures data. In the first week since its release, the titles have been downloaded more than 6.4 million times.
Analysts did not specify how many downloads were for individual games from the collection. But they noted that GTA: San Andreas was in the greatest demand among Netflix subscribers — the game took the first place in game downloads not only for 2023, but also for the entire existence of the service. GTA: Vice City became the sixth game by downloads on Netflix in 2023, and GTA III — the eleventh.
By today, daily downloads of GTA: San Andreas have decreased significantly. According to analysts, the title peaked on December 16, collecting 1 million downloads per day. Whereas on January 8, it was downloaded less than 100 thousand times. With other games from the GTA collection: The Trilogy is most likely the same.
The dynamics of GTA: San Andreas downloads in the period from December 14, 2023 to January 8, 2024, according to Appfigures
In 2023, Netflix subscribers in general became more interested in games. According to TechCrunch, in 2023 they downloaded games from the service's catalog a total of 81.2 million times, 53% of these downloads occurred in the fourth quarter. For comparison, in 2022, total downloads of games on Netflix amounted to 28.7 million, and in 2021 — 5.2 million.
Thanks to GTA: The Trilogy action games turned out to be the most popular genre in the service in 2023. Lifestyle games are in second place in terms of downloads, the main hit among which was Too Hot to Handle. The third place went to the puzzles. Note that the Storyteller puzzle became the second most popular game on Netflix in 2023, immediately after GTA: San Andreas. It accounted for 10% of the total number of game downloads on the service last year.
A week ago, sources told The Wall Street Journal that Netflix is looking for ways to monetize games — now subscribers can play for free. According to the newspaper, the service is considering three options: in-game purchases, a fee for access to some major titles and a new subscription level in which advertising will be added to the games.
