Samsung’s cloud gaming hub is now available on some of its older TVs

theverge.com:

By Umar Shakir, a news writer fond of the electric vehicle lifestyle and things that plug in via USB-C. He spent over 15 years in IT support before joining The Verge.

Many older Samsung smart TVs can now run cloud gaming apps like Xbox Game Pass, GeForce Now, and more — allowing users to play modern games like Starfield, CyberPunk 2077, and more without a console. The news comes after Samsung promised in August that it would bring the option to millions of living rooms worldwide by sending an update to 2020 model-year TVs.

Samsung’s supported cloud gaming services (part of the company’s “Gaming Hub”) include Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass, Nvidia’s GeForce Now, and Amazon’s Luna. It also includes the smaller and less known services Utomik, Antstream Arcade, and Blacknut Cloud Gaming. Samsung is also announcing today that it’s adding another cloud streaming service called Boosteroid to its Gaming Hub. Boosteroid lets you run games you own from other platforms like Steam, Epic Games Store, Battle.net, and more on a remote high-end PC — and it offers Call of Duty, too, thanks to a recent deal with Microsoft.

Gaming Hub for Samsung TVs, smart monitors, and projectors first launched in 2022 and was later added retroactively to 2021 TV models. Samsung’s cloud gaming offerings are reasonably extensive and work well in our testing. It’s not necessarily a good enough solution that you can toss your console, but if you don’t have a console or want gaming in other rooms of the house, then this could be a solid workaround.

Services available on the company’s Gaming Hub can fluctuate over time, like the loss of support for Steam Link last month, so it’s not quite a one-stop shop. Other manufacturers like LG have also added support for