Samsung Plans Tizen Smart TV Cloud Gaming Platform: What We Know
During the Samsung Developer Conference 2021 (SDC 21) event today, Samsung revealed plans to launch its own cloud gaming product for smart TVs running the company's Tizen OS. Samsung simply calls the product "Cloud Game Platform," noting that the core of the product will be offering high-end gameplay experiences without requiring consumers to purchase high-end gaming hardware. The move may pit Samsung against Google, which has established its own cloud gaming platform Stadia as something consumers can play on their TV using a Chromecast dongle.
Among its other announcements today, Samsung talked extensively about its Tizen OS, a Linux-based alternative to Android TV, Roku OS, and similar operating systems powering consumers' entertainment devices. Tizen has largely revolved around the video streaming market, but Samsung revealed intentions to expand the platform to offer other experiences, including for business.
Tizen for business will, Samsung says, power a variety of display-based services, including everything from digital billboards to touchscreen kiosks in stores. The platform will add new management ports so that administrators can manage the displays in real time, remotely apply settings to a network of screens, and more.
The Tizen ambitions go beyond business experiences, however, with Samsung also targeting a new consumer market: cloud gamers. Arguably made mainstream by Google Stadia, cloud-based gaming allows customers to access and play top-rated video games on the hardware they already have by essentially "streaming" the game from the company's own servers.
As a result, consumers can, for example, play a cloud-based game on their low-end laptop or desktop, smartphone, tablet, or other supported streaming devices. It seems Samsung is still in the early stages of its Cloud Game Platform plan, as the company left out this tidbit in its SDC 21 press release and only dedicated a couple of minutes to the topic in its presentation video above. Other details are still under wraps.