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Microsoft hasn't been shy about its mission to bring billions of players into the Xbox ecosystem. It's an audacious dream, particularly as Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spender confirms that just "over 100 million people who play on Xbox" platforms in 2022. But with news of Xbox gaming coming to Samsung Smart TVs on June 30, perhaps the platform holder is inching ever closer to achieving the impossible.
This new partnership between Microsoft and Samsung will let you play Xbox games through your TV, no console required. "You'll be able to launch and have a streamed gaming experience via an Xbox app on the TV directly," confirms Microsoft Gaming's chief marketing officer Jarret West.
The Xbox app is coming to Samsung Smart TVs first, with Microsoft asserting that it will 'explore other TV partnerships' in the future. For now, you'll need a Samsung 2022 Smart TV and a good internet connection to be able to play.
Ashley McKissick, corporate vice president of experiences and platforms, says that accessing Xbox games on a Samsung Smart TV is as easy as navigating to this "new thing called the Game Hub" – a streaming app, just like Netflix or Amazon Prime, built into the 2022 models – "and you just click on the Xbox app."
From there, you'll launch into the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate experience, as you'd expect to see it on other devices. You'll be able to access the hundreds of cloud-enabled games on Game Pass Ultimate, although Fortnite can be streamed directly from the Cloud without a membership. If you don't have an existing Game Pass Ultimate membership, Xbox says you'll be able to sign up directly from the app.
Microsoft is also promising that a variety of Bluetooth controllers will be supported on the Samsung TV service, including the Xbox Wireless Controller, Xbox Adaptive Controller, Elite Series 2 Controller, and the PS5 DualSense controller.
Microsoft has been aggressive in its pursuit of Cloud Gaming, and this collaboration with Samsung is the next step. By further removing barriers to play – by making hundreds of games playable from your TV, with a Game Pass Ultimate subscription – Microsoft inches one step closer to its dream of bringing hundreds of millions more players into the fold.
"[Xbox Cloud Gaming] should be part of you playing any game on any device, whether it’s a game that you own, whether it’s a free-to-play game: it is really about delivering great game content to any customer on any device through multiple business models," says Spencer.
The ability to stream hundreds of games via the cloud, directly to your TV, opens the Xbox platform up in a way that's difficult to conceptualise, but is no less exciting. Whether it works as expected – as far as Cloud gaming has come in recent years, it's still prone to issues around latency and stability – remains anybody's guess. But for now, this collaboration with Samsung is worth paying attention to, because it certainly won't be the last of its kind for Xbox.
We're set for more Xbox news out of the Xbox and Bethesda conference this weekend during E3 2022. If you want to tune in, check out the E3 2022 schedule for more details.
