Was Sony Ahead of Its Time with PlayLink? Netflix's New Party Game Raises the Question

Netflix has launched a new star-studded party game that uses smartphones as controllers — and it's prompting some to ask whether Sony was onto something years ago with PlayLink, its own phone-as-controller initiative for PS4.

PlayLink launched around 2017 and produced a handful of titles — Knowledge Is Power, That's You, Frantics — all built around players using their phones instead of DualShock controllers. The concept was solid for party settings: no need for multiple gamepads, just phones everyone already had in their pockets. Sony quietly wound the initiative down after a few years, with the games never finding a mainstream audience large enough to sustain the platform.

Netflix is now attempting something similar with its gaming push, leaning on its existing subscriber base and recognizable IP to drive adoption. The key difference is distribution — Netflix games sit inside an app already on hundreds of millions of devices, while PlayLink required a PS4, the individual PlayLink app downloads, and enough people in the same room willing to engage. Sony's version had the right idea but faced a steeper climb to get all the pieces in place.

Whether Netflix's version fares better remains to be seen. The source raises the comparison as a talking point rather than delivering a verdict, but the parallel is hard to ignore — same core mechanic, very different ecosystems behind it.