Samsung has a new way for Galaxy users to play games. The device manufacturer has been working on getting into the gaming space for a couple years, and its latest venture is a free mobile gaming platform that’ll let you stream Android games through the cloud on a Galaxy device.
The program entered beta last year in the Gaming Hub, and is now available to the public. There will be 23 games available at launch, including Monopoly Go, Candy Crush Saga, and Honor of Kings.
My first question when I saw the news: What is this for? Downloading mobile games isn’t usually taxing on a device the way a large AAA game might be on a console or PC. Most people also have a mobile device they can play games on, which is very different than not having a gaming PC or console. But there’s a couple ways this tech could be used. If you don’t have enough storage space on your smartphone (very possible considering few phones these days come with expandable storage), you can stream a game instead of playing it locally. This will be a boon as games get bigger.
Samsung says that this is its way to keep up with streaming in other industries. The logic is that if you can stream your favorite TV shows instantly, why not be able to do so with games?
“Unlike other cloud services, there is no content gated behind a paywall and no monthly subscriptions for users to access these games via our cloud streaming tech,” Jong Woo, Samsung head of game services, said to GamesIndustry.biz.
But then I saw this quote in a press release about the announcement: “Our cloud gaming platform offers the ability for publishers to significantly increase their top-of-funnel conversion rates for their user acquisition campaigns by seamlessly converting an ad click directly into first gameplay, eliminating the need to drive users to an app store to download and install,” Woo said.
So, the technology will also be appealing to Android mobile game developers who want more people to play their games. Samsung’s developer page says that cloud streaming can be used to bring players right into a game if they click on an ad instead of ushering them to the app store link first. So keep that in mind if you accidentally click an ad.
Samsung entered the app-based gaming space with its Gaming Hub, which is available on Samsung smart TVs. It also launched some exclusive games that didn’t require a controller. This new feature lets you play full Android games instead of just small Samsung-approved ones.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.