Update, March 5: If you’ve been on edge of your seat wondering when Netflix would release Hades, I bring sweet release: The streamer has finally announced that Hades debuts on its gaming platform soon, on March 19. Enjoy reliving the painful torment.
Original story published November 11, 2023, follows.
More than three years after its initial release, the masochistic psychodrama that is Hades still has the gaming community in a kinky stranglehold — so much so that Netflix is getting in on the action. The streaming service will soon be the exclusive distributor for a new iOS port of the Supergiant game. Hades is one of the highest-profile titles leading a fleet of other games Netflix announced this week. The well-known titles Netflix is licensing include Hades, the tenth-anniversary edition of Braid, Katana Zero, and Death’s Door — all of which will be mobile exclusives for Netflix, though it’s not yet clear when they’ll land on the service. These will be available for free and without ads to anyone with a Netflix subscription, so not a bad deal as long as you don’t mind playing on a phone.
Other new titles announced are based on Netflix-owned or -licensed IP. Those hitting the company’s games vertical in early 2024 include Money Heist, Chicken Run: Eggstraction, and The Dragon Prince: Xadia. Another, Shadow and Bone: Enter the Fold, was released this week and is available to play now. No word yet on how they’ll match up against the Love Is Blind video game, but roughly two years into the life of its gaming arm and a library of 80-plus games later, it’s clear Netflix will court gamers’ eyeballs and thumbs for the long haul. Putting up Hades and Braid — titles with established fan bases on consoles and PCs but might find new, more casual fanbases on mobile — feels like an extension of the originals-plus-licensed strategy that made Netflix a top streamer in the first place. Whether it can carve out serious space between the Sonys or Microsofts, though, is the question. Then again, the premise of Hades is to die over and over and over again in pursuit of your goal, learning a bit more each time as you go. Maybe grabbing that game was research.