Samsung eyes the game industry with its console-less gaming platform

Samsung is making the interesting choice of jumping into the game industry without adding any new hardware. How are they going to do this? Through your TV, your phone and any bluetooth controller, such as my lovely Moga. This cunning scheme has been unimaginatively named “Samsung Multiscreen Gaming Platform” and despite it’s awful, awful name, looks pretty interesting.

How will Multiscreen work?

It’s a great idea. Their latest TVs and phones will come with built in Android and Unity support, meaning that they can play a wide range of mobile games. I don’t just mean Angry Birds , graphic intense games like Republique and Modern Combat should also be able to run just fine on the Samsung Multiscreen Gaming Platform.

What’s more, Samsung intends to make your phone into a miniature portable game console, so when you visit a non-gamer friend with their non-samsung TV you can just plug in your phone via an HDMI adapter and away you go.

Your phone can also work as a second screen in the same way the Wii U Gamepad already does. Your phone can essentially be used in any way you can imagine from maps to secondary character support, or even a controller if your bluetooth controller isn’t at hand.

Who is it aimed at?

I have very little time for marketing nonsense, but for once I think these guys have hit on something very real with “console skeptics.” A console skeptic is someone who owned the previous generation of consoled but has not been convinced to buy into the current generation of consoles (Playstation 4 and Xbox One) and trust me, there are many of them. These people, while unlikely to buy a new console, may be convinced to buy a new TV with a console already inside it, or even a new phone. I ‘mean let’s face it, we upgrade our phones with frightening regularity as it is, add in the in-phone console and I imagine they will sell like hotcakes.

Combining the use of the two most popular home electronics and making them play games with one another is a great way of selling a Samsung phone to anyone who owns a Samsung TV and vice versa. Even for a console-lover like myself, I am more likely to buy a TV that can play games, than I am to buy a different model that doesn’t, even if I do end up paying a premium for that service.

The biggest hurdle

As always though, a game system, whether it is inside or out, will be as popular as the games that are on it and Samsung will need to demonstrate the profitability of this system before big names will start signing up. They will have a solid base of mobile game to start with, but if Samsung really wants to compete with the big boys it’s going to need something more than big screen versions of mobile games. Something it hints at with “Exclusive TV games.”