“No storage limit, no downloads. Just bring your controller.”
That’s the promise made by the Sizzle Reel for the Samsung Gaming Hub at its launch event Monday in London, accompanied by action-packed footage from the likes of Halo Infinite, Forza Horizon 5, Red Dead Redemption 2, Fortnite and more.
The Hub is a section on Samsung’s 2022 Smart TVs that gives users access to Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass, Nvidia’s GeForce Now, Google’s Stadia, Amazon’s Luna (available in the US only), and even PC subscription service Utomik, allowing you to play games through the can stream cloud.
In the communication around it, there are hints of unlocking games for people without a dedicated device – but what indication do these companies have that there is enough demand for such a service? Both Microsoft and Sony have repeatedly said that demand for their latest consoles is higher than any previous generation, so those who would enjoy the titles shown surely already own such a device (if not a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X | S, then probably one of their ancestors)?
“For our part, we know that there are three billion gamers worldwide, and we know that we speak to the vast majority of those customers today,” said Pav Bhardwaj, senior global product manager at Xbox Game Pass GamesIndustry.biz.
“For us, cloud gaming opens our product and service to customers around the world in different markets. There are various reasons why people don’t buy dedicated hardware: affordability, accessibility, maybe they are former gamers or already own devices for other platforms. We really believe this is about accessibility and choice.”
Gus Grimaldi, Head of Product for Europe at Samsung Electronic, adds: “People who already know all these AAA games have probably already set up their console or PC. [We want to] Open up the ecosystem to let you play these games and take out the friction so you can try the best games out there or maybe games for your kids or some other demographic in your house. You can all join in and try it out. It’s about giving people choices – not everyone is a professional gamer.”
That’s true, but billions of non-professional gamers with a gaming inclination almost certainly have a smartphone or tablet. These devices have become ubiquitous in most markets, already delivering a wide range of gaming experiences from casual titles like Candy Crush Saga to AAA equivalents like Apex Legends, Call of Duty Mobile, and Genshin Impact (and before Epic’s legal crusade, Fortnite ). . What’s more, these are all available for free – unlike the services on the Samsung Gaming Hub, no subscription is required.
Bhardwaj notes that Xbox Cloud Gaming is already available on phones via the Game Pass app, as well as web browsers for low-end PCs and iOS.
“For us, this is just an expansion and evolution of all the different places you can play,” he says.
Grimaldi points out the crucial difference between mobile devices and smart TVs: “There’s nothing like playing a game on a phone or tablet compared to a full-size screen. This experience is so much nicer, so much better, being able to offer this to Samsung customers without having to be an expert on how to get the games is great for us.”
“It’s not that one harms the other, it’s more of a rising tide and it’s a really good place to have all these different opportunities.”
Pav Bhardwaj, Xbox
As mentioned, the Samsung Gaming Hub includes a variety of streaming services, with the partnership with Xbox certainly dominating the marketing. Sony’s own service, PlayStation Now, is missing; When asked if this could be added at a later date, Grimaldi couldn’t comment, but adds that Samsung “always operates an open ecosystem”.
It is worth remembering that Sony has in fact already tried this. Back in 2014, the platform owner brought its PlayStation Now service – built on the foundations of Gaikai, which it had acquired for $380 million just two years earlier – to its own line of Bravia TVs. A year later, this was extended to Samsung TVs as well, but the service was removed from everything but PlayStation 4 and PC in early 2017.
Since the idea of bringing high-end games to an audience without a console is nothing new, what’s different this time? Bhardwaj highlights the hard work that both Microsoft and Samsung have put in to “meet the quality standards that today’s gamers expect”; 1080p, 60 frames per second, the lowest latency – the usual.
“We had to get the service to this level before we were satisfied with offering this level of support to customers and new players,” he says. “We had to make sure it was an experience that they would want to carry on and that’s what we feel like now.
“We also wanted to ensure that the cloud gaming experience is ubiquitous on our other devices. We didn’t want that sub par service – if you want to deliver on that promise you need to be able to deliver Halo, Forza and all the other great games in really great quality with low latency. You have to do that, we didn’t want to do anything else.”
He continues: “Compared to eight years ago, things have evolved so much in terms of bandwidth, technology… but at the same time people’s expectations have also increased in tandem. I think we’ve reached the tipping point.” Point where, at that level, we can deliver cloud gaming services through Smart TVs in the same way Disney+ or Netflix do [of quality] — and you don’t need a console. That’s the magic of the experience.”
Here, too, there is a note that dedicated hardware is no longer required. As the media streaming services mentioned by Bhardwaj show, other forms of entertainment have long since avoided the need for dedicated hardware: movies and TV shows can be experienced in the same way, be it via mobile phone, tablet, set-top box, smart TV or internet browser . It was much more difficult to detach video games from their traditional devices.
Executives, developers, and industry experts have been predicting a world without consoles for years—at least a decade. Google’s opening game for Stadia was that the next generation of gaming wasn’t limited to one box. Consoles remain, however, and as mentioned, demand for Xbox Series X | S and PlayStation 5 indicate they’re not going anywhere any time soon. Will the rise of cloud gaming services stoke the fire behind those age-old predictions and revive the notion of a console-less future?
“Some people will always love to play on consoles, have a console in their living room to download and have that experience,” admits Bhardwaj. “I love consoles – this is just another way, another option, to open up gaming to other people. It’s not that one harms the other, this is more of a rising tide and it’s a really good place to be with all these different opportunities. PCs are still around, and new form factors will come out in the future.
“Consoles are popular and cloud gaming is just a great alternative.”
While streaming has irreversibly disrupted the other entertainment sectors, games will likely always remain something of an outlier. Mainstream audiences engage with the products of this industry with those of other media; A Netflix subscriber is likely to watch dozens of movies and TV series over the course of a year, while mainstream gamers – and even much of the core audience – will only interact with a handful (especially if they prefer the hugely popular multiplayer games like Fortnite, FIFA or Call of Duty).
“[We want to] Open up the ecosystem, eliminate friction… It’s about giving people choice – not everyone is a professional gamer.
Gus Grimaldi, Samsung
This is an added challenge for any company running a subscription-based service focused on offering a massive and continually expanding library of games. But as you’d expect, Bhardwaj is optimistic given how much Microsoft has shifted its gaming business to this model.
“If you factor in buying two or three games a year, I think there’s an equivalent in the annual subscription fee,” he says.
“There’s also an element of being introduced to genres of games that you would never have played before because you never bought them. When you have a catalog of hundreds, you’re constantly exposed to new types of games, and there’s a community element where your friends play certain types of games that you might not have played before.”
Grimaldi adds: “It’s about the search and discovery experience. The Gaming Hub gives you the power to look at all types of games no matter what you want to play…we can bring that to the top so people can play games, discover new games without understanding the entire gaming ecosystem to have to. The Gaming Hub brings all things gaming together to help with that discovery and quest, much like we do with the “media” section of our TVs by gathering all apps like Disney+, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video together.”
He adds: “It’s only natural that we start to transfer all those experiences that you’ve already had with media services to gaming.”
Going back to the notion of discoverability and the very nature of cloud gaming itself, there is one final factor in its favor – and it stems from Bhardwaj’s comments that cloud and console are complementary. While the latter offers the superior experience in terms of stability and crystal clear graphics, the former is much more accessible.
Downloading a game for console or PC, even if you got access through a subscription at no extra cost, takes time. No doubt many Game Pass users have spent hours waiting for a title to install, only to play less than an hour, decide it’s not for them, and then delete (the question of whether subscriptions make it making games feel more “disposable” is one of each other’s times). While cloud gaming allows you to test out a title in minutes; Since the feature launched on Xbox, I’ve certainly used it to assess whether a game is worth downloading.
With few to no game rentals available (why are you, Blockbuster?) and very few big new titles delivering pre-launch demos, could cloud gaming become a key discoverability tool? Bhardwaj certainly thinks so.
“I’m the kind of person who has half an hour before going out and wants to play a game,” he says. “Do I sit and wait for something to download or do I jump into the cloud feature? Being able to play a brand new game that launched was awesome and I get to try it and if I like it I’ll download it while I go out.
“It’s another level of accessibility in gaming, how quickly you can jump in and play.”