Come 2015, owners of Samsung Smart TVs will soon be able to play PlayStation Now (PS Now) games on the device as the company has tied up with Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCE) for the streaming service.
On Tuesday, Dec. 23, SCE and Samsung Elctronics announced their partnership, divulging that the PS Now service would be available for a few models of the South Korean company's Smart TVs from H1 2015. Thanks to the partnership, Samsung has become the first licensee of PS Now. With this teaming up, Sony will be able to expand PS Now's reach to non-Sony platforms as well.
"We are excited to collaborate with PlayStation to deliver even more entertainment value to our Smart TV platform," said Youngchan Kim, VP of Samsung Electronics.
Introduced at the CES 2014, the PS Now service basically enables users to stream PS3 games directly from the cloud via an app, negating the need of a PlayStation gaming console. Users need not download the games and are spared the cumbersome trips to a store every time they desire to play a new game. With over 200 PS3 titles up for grabs, one only requires the wireless DualShock controller from Sony and is good to go!
Sony would benefit immensely from the partnership with Samsung as its PS Now service, which is still at a nascent stage, can take advantage of the fact that South Korean company is the global market leader (it accounted for 36 percent of the share in Q3 2014) in the TV industry.
With Sony persevering to spread its gaming experience an extensive audience and opening the world of PlayStation "to the masses", the partnership with Samsung seems poised to do just that.
"Partnering with Samsung is a key step toward realizing this vision, as we can reach a broader audience of consumers who may not own a PlayStation console to show them why gaming with PlayStation is such a unique and amazing experience," noted Masayasu Ito, EVP of SCE.
The demo of the PS Now on Samsung's Smart TV's is slated to take place at the impending CES 2015 in January at Las Vegas. Even though Samsung is the only one on board right now, given Sony's ambitious plans a strong possibility exists that rival TV makers like LG may hop onto the PS Now bandwagon as well.
