Xbox Game Pass Comes To New Samsung Smart TVs On June 30th

Xbox has been discussing bringing the Game Pass Ultimate library to smart TVs for at the very least a year, and it's finally scheduled for 2022. The Xbox app will hit this year's lineup of Samsung smart TVs and monitors on June 30, allowing Game Pass Ultimate subscribers to play games on the cloud without additional hardware, other than a Bluetooth-connected gamepad. Even a PlayStation controller can work.

2022 Samsung smart TV models will be able to support game streaming services , such as NVIDIA's GeForce Now and Google Stadia. In January, Samsung launched a new Gaming Hub on its TVs that puts cloud-based services at the forefront. The Xbox app will soon join them. Xbox is a major player in cloud gaming, with over 25 million Game Pass subscribers. However, not all of them are at the Ultimate Tier which unlocks streaming capabilities.

The Game Pass Ultimate library has hundreds of games available to stream and Xbox has made it a priority to release its big first-party games from the beginning. On Samsung devices the Xbox app will work with Bluetooth headsets and gamepads, including the Xbox Wireless Controller and PlayStation's DualShock 4 and DualSense.

There's currently no update on the dedicated streaming device that Xbox said it was working on last year in conjunction with the smart TV app.

Xbox has more big plans for Game Pass in the coming months. The company will soon offer Ultimate subscribers the option to stream selected games they have purchased outside of the Game Pass library. It's unclear exactly how this will work and it's likely to apply to games that have left the Game Pass catalog but remain within the Xbox ecosystem, however it could include games from third-party distributors.

A spokesperson for Xbox confirmed that the company will provide the option to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members to play games they like from the cloud. In the coming year, we'll be sharing more details about the particular games that will be compatible with Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta).

Xbox will bring cloud gaming to two new countries, Argentina and New Zealand, on June 9th. DEEP SPACE EXPLORATION This includes access to the Xbox streaming library and Fortnite. Epic Games partnered with Xbox to bring Fortnite to Xbox Cloud Gaming. It's free to play with no subscription. At the time, Xbox said it was interested in adding other free-to play titles to its cloud network.

In the next year or at least, Xbox plans to test out an option that allows multiple accounts to play at the same time under one Game Pass subscription. That'll be tested in Colombia and Ireland and Xbox executives are promoting it as a "potential expansion" to Game Pass.

Finally games demos are now available on Game Pass. Within the next year, Xbox will start rolling out bite-sized, curated pieces of upcoming games on Game Pass, allowing subscribers to try these games for free and provide feedback to developers. The program will be focused on independent games first and Xbox said developers will be compensated for their participation which means that all the work that goes into building a demo won't go unfunded. The demo program is called Project Moorcroft. There's no confirmation on whether there will be a Minecraft Project Moorcroft demo will ever be released however it's fun to say that regardless.

The new PlayStation Plus subscription service will offer time-limited, free demos of all games. It will compete directly with Game Pass. The new PS Plus goes live on June 13th, and its most expensive premium tier, Premium, provides access to more than 700 games in the PS Now library, plus cloud play for some games from past PlayStation times. The subscription plan from Sony does not support native streaming on mobile devices like Xbox's and won't include any first-party games at launch.

Sony received negative press in April following reports surfaced that the company was making it mandatory for developers of certain games to build and publish two-hour demos for PlayStation Plus Premium, with no apparent plans to compensate developers for their efforts. Xbox, of course, was careful to emphasize its plans to pay developers for building demos.