Netflix announced the launch of its new user profiles this morning. While some may be wondering if the feature is coming to their country, it appears that the answer is yes, regardless of where it is that you live (provided you live in a country where Netflix is already offered).
Netflix announced the news across all of its regional blogs, including the US/Canada, UK/Ireland, Latin America, Brasil and Nordics. Here are the various versions of the intro videos the company released:
In June, Netflix announced that its service would be available in the Netherlands in late 2013. I presume that the profiles will be available there upon launch.
The feature is rolling out to the website, iPad, iPhone, Xbox 360, Apple TV and some smart TVs and Blu-ray players over the next several days. Netflix says it will be launched on Android and on the Nintendo Wii soon, though not exact time table has been given.
We did learn that the feature was not immediately available for Android due to a lack of resources within Netflix’s profile team. This could indeed be the same reason the Wii launch was also delayed.
Netflix has had the user profiles in the works for quite some time. Earlier this summer at the E3 event, the company was showing the product off, indicating that they’d be out later in the summer. This week when the feature started appearing on Apple TV devices (minus some of its functionality), it was evident that the launch was coming soon, though we didn’t know it was going to be quite this soon.
User profiles are only one element of a broader family-oriented approach Netflix has been taking in 2013, which has also included the launch of a new family plan, a new “Netflix Families” landing page, and ad campaigns geared towards people with kids, not to mention the release of the new family-friendly Netflix original show (the first that could truly carry that label), Mako Mermaids and the big DreamWorks Animation deal that will see a slew of new kids programming appearing on Netflix in the near future.