In 2023, Samsung started beta testing of a cloud gaming platform. And a few days ago, this one officially launched this servicefor its Galaxy devices, in North America. When we think of cloud gaming, we naturally think of services that allow you to play AAA titles on less powerful devices, such as SmartTVs, smartphones or non-gaming PCs. But Samsung’s objective in launching its cloud gaming service on Android is different.
The Korean giant is not going to offer titles that are not normally accessible on smartphones. Samsung’s catalog will instead include mobile video games. The idea is that, thanks to cloud gaming, gamers can instantly play the titles that interest them instead of waiting for downloads to finish. “Today, a vast majority of entertainment and media are immediately available through streaming services, but the largest media category – mobile gaming, with more than 2 billion users worldwide – still uses the model download for each piece of content. Samsung strives to make mobile games just as accessible”indicates the manufacturer.
Samsung particularly mentions the losses that this wait causes to developers. These pay to get visibility through advertising, but get a low conversion rate, because a large majority of players don’t have the patience to wait for a game to finish downloading. “(…) more than 95% of people who have expressed interest in a publisher’s game, through an advertisement, never enter the game itself, which results in considerable costs for the publishers and makes advertising an ineffective funnel for monetization”according to Samsung.
How does it work?
According to Samsung, when a user presses on the ad for a video game, they may be redirected to the title’s Galaxy Store page, where they may be offered immediate access to the content using cloud gaming. According to the Korean giant, during beta tests, this option would have increased the number of player acquisitions, with a conversion rate of 50%. “(…) an improvement of a factor of 10 compared to the sector average”rejoices the manufacturer.
Additionally, this cloud gaming experience allows developers to monetize their titles, meaning games can generate revenue even if they are not installed. But for the moment, as mentioned above, Samsung’s cloud gaming service is still only available in North America. And at the moment, we do not know when it could land in France.
In any case, this is a fairly original use of streaming video game technology, but one that could have a huge impact on the industry.
- Tested in beta since 2023, Samsung’s cloud gaming service arrives in North America
- This is not positioned as a competitor to the cloud gaming services of Xbox or PlayStation
- Rather, the idea is to allow Galaxy device owners to play the titles they are interested in immediately, instead of waiting for the download to finish
