Xbox Corporate Vice President, Gaming Experiences & Platforms, Ashley McKissick, made an announcement about Xbox Gaming on your Samsung Smart TV. You can play games – without requiring a console. From the announcement:
Our mission at Xbox is to bring the joy and community of gaming to everyone on the planet. We are committed to achieving this vision by delivering great games and services, and enabling more people to play than ever before. That’s why we created Xbox Game Pass and continue expanding Cloud Gaming to new devices – so that we can open up the ways people can play across the devices they already own; PC, console, mobile, tablet devices, and now Smart TVs.
The announcement says that as of today, the Xbox team provided an update on their approach and vision to embed Xbox experience into Smart TVs. They are now bringing the Xbox app to Smart TVs, starting with their partner Samsung.
Together, Samsung and Xbox partnered to bring Xbox Game Pass to the millions of Samsung Galaxy phones around the world, and now they are partnering again to bring their Xbox gaming experience to their 2022 Smart TVs. Ashley McKissick says you can experience cloud gaming on Smart TVs on June 30 in 27 countries.
They are bringing the Xbox App to Samsung Smart TVs first, and our intent is to explore other TV partnerships as part of this next evolution in our vision.
Here are some more details:
Playing Xbox games on 2022 Samsung Smart TVs gives Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members easy and instant access to over 100 high-quality games, including Xbox Game Studios titles on the same day they release. You can also play Fortnite without a membership through cloud gaming.
If you are getting a new Samsung 2022 Smart TV, you will now have more ways to play games in your house.
If you’re new to gaming, this is an easy way to get into the fun without needing to buy a PC or console and also to join a thriving community of over 25 million Game Pass members worldwide.
To me, this sounds like it could be a good way to get new gamers interested in playing games that are on Xbox. My concern is that it won’t work as well on a Smart TV as it does on a console or mobile device. Hopefully, Xbox tested that out and is confident that gaming works just as well on a Smart TV as it would on a console or PC. If not, there will very likely be complaints by disgruntled gamers.
In related news, The Verge reported that Microsoft is working on Project Moorcroft, a program designed to bring early game demos to Xbox Game Pass subscribers. The demos will be similar to the limited levels and early samples of games that fans would typically spend hours in line to play at E3 or PAX.
According to The Verge, the game demos are a lot of work for developers, especially getting them ready for what was the usual annual E3 conference. Microsoft’s plan is to focus on independent developers and any game developer will be compensated and able to view how their demos preform.