Cloud game streaming is all the rage now with most of the major players in the tech industry joining the scene in some capacity including Microsoft, Google, Nvidia and Amazon. Now, Samsung, has also announced that it is planning to join in the fun with an offering for its Tizen smart TV platform.
Tizen is Samsung’s smart operating system. And since the Tizen OS is Linux based, it is therefore open sourced and open to everyone. This operating system supports a range of devices including TVs, mobile devices and even home appliances.
Samsung announced the new venture during its Samsung Developer Conference that started on 26th October, but the South Korean company did not delve into more details regarding what games would be available, whether the service will be available on any other platforms and when it will be officially launched.
This is not the first time Samsung has decided to delve into game streaming. As early as the early 2010s, they were experimenting with game streaming for their high-end TV systems but, unfortunately, the service did not pick up. Probably because they were too early before the necessary supporting infrastructure was mature enough to handle game streaming comfortably. Their partner at the time, Gaikai, was then acquired by Sony, who transformed the service into what we know today as PlayStation Now.
Fast forward to 2021 and as already mentioned, other tech giants have already joined the fray in cloud gaming, with Xbox having xCloud, Google having Stadia, Nvidia having GeForce Now and Amazon, with their seemingly unlimited budget, having Luna.
This guarantees breaking into the emerging cloud gaming market will be much difficult as all the above-mentioned publishers offer access to games with only a compatible controller and a simple subscription being the barriers to entry.
What will set them apart is the reliability of their service, the ability to have the games across various devices, i.e. switching from PC to mobile to tablet seamlessly rather than being locked to one medium which might be what Samsung is aiming to do with their Tizen platform and the presence of high-quality games which has kept the PlayStation ahead of Xbox for so long.
One of Samsung’s representatives is quoted to have said that their cloud gaming service will allow “users to play the latest games on their Samsung Smart TV equipped with the Tizen platform”. This further puts weight to the speculation that their streaming service will be locked to the Tizen OS, though this can always change down the line.
Samsung also revealed its plans to license Tizen to other TV manufacturers through what it calls “Tizen TV Platform Licensing”. It said manufacturers that want to launch a premium TV platform like Tizen can do so quickly and with minimal cost. The decision to license Tizen for TVs to other manufacturers will not only help the manufacturers but also help Tizen increase its popularity.
Samsung failing to provide more in-depth information regarding how the platform will work or what kind of games will be available indicates that the project is still some distance away from being completed. However, it only affirms that indeed the future of gaming is on the cloud.
