Samsung has made some early product announcements before the start of CES 2022 on 5 January. It has finally announced its new cloud gaming platform for TVs.
As part of its CES 2022 announcements, Samsung’s Gaming Hub is a new platform service aimed at the ability to play video games on your TV without a game console or gaming PC. Samsung confirmed that Nvidia’s GeForce Now, Google Stadia, and Utomik will serve as launch partners for the Gaming Hub, with all three services powered by Tizen, Samsung’s Linux-based mobile operating system with more services expected to arrive in the future.
This announcement of the Samsung Gaming Hub rivals competitors like Microsoft, which announced last year that its Xbox division is moving beyond consoles to bring the Xbox ecosystem and experience onto smart TVs and streaming sticks. At this point Samsung has not named Xbox as a partner for the Gaming Hub. It remains to be seen if both parties will partner on Samsung’s new gaming endeavour.
To deploy high-quality visuals and sound, games will fully leverage the hardware and software available on Samsung Smart TVs. Samsung had previously stated that it was working on a number of improvements to improve cloud gaming performance on its televisions. This includes a dedicated video streaming pipeline with tight flow control and latency optimization.
On top of that, the company is working on adding support for more gaming controllers, as well as support for the Bluetooth standard protocol and USB HID device profiles.
For gamers, the most notable addition to the new TVs will be its game streaming discovery platform, the Samsung Gaming Hub, powered by Tizen. This service will allow game streaming providers to bring their game libraries directly to the TV. Samsung today announced partnerships with Nvidia GeForce NOW, Google’s Stadia and Utomik, and says more partnerships will come further down the road.
Later this year, the Samsung Gaming Hub will be available on select Samsung Smart TV models.
