The company’s new Gaming Hub will also come with controller passthrough support from consoles
Samsung is starting CES 2022 by announcing its latest generation of smart TVs featuring Micro LED and Neo QLED panels. Apart from a plethora of image and sound quality improvements, the company will debut the Samsung Gaming Hub on select new TVs with support for three game streaming services: GeForce Now, Stadia, and Utomik. The notable omission from this list is Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming, but worry not as Samsung says this is “just the beginning,” and support for more services will be added during the year.
As confirmed to The Verge, Samsung will support these gaming services via the new Gaming Hub, and Stadia or GeForce Now apps won’t be pre-installed on the TVs. Interestingly, the hub won’t just be limited to cloud gaming services. Instead, it will also include gaming consoles connected to the TV through HDMI like the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch. Additionally, the TVs will feature passthrough support for Xbox and PlayStation controllers, and users will seemingly be able to use them with cloud gaming services as well. To deliver a complete gaming experience, the hub will also provide users with access to YouTube Gaming and their favorite streamers. There will additionally be a marketplace from where users can purchase games.
The new Gaming Hub will be available on select 2022 Samsung TVs later this year. It is unclear if the company will bring this feature to its older TVs or not. Other details like the picture quality, resolution, and audio quality for cloud gaming services are yet to be revealed, with Samsung planning to announce these details closer to the actual launch of the hub later this year.
Stadia is already available on select Android TVs. However, the gaming service is missing from Samsung TVs since they run on Tizen OS. With the debut of the Gaming Hub, this will no longer be an issue. LG did something similar for its TVs running webOS by launching a dedicated Stadia app for them last year.
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