Samsung is on the verge of officially launching its cloud gaming service for Galaxy phones. The company's long-anticipated cloud gaming platform has been in beta for several months, with a gradual expansion of its functionality. The official release is purportedly set for October 5th at Samsung's developer conference, as indicated by a report from the Korea Economic Daily.
Mobile-Focused Gaming and Revenue Generation
Diverging from the traditional focus of other cloud gaming platforms on PC and console games, Samsung's new cloud service specifically targets mobile users. This strategic move shows Samsung's effort to recover the gaming-install ad revenue that it has lost due to numerous ad targeting restrictions that have been activated over the past few years. Speaking on this topic, Samsung's Jong Hyuk Woo confirmed to VentureBeat in August that cloud streaming can significantly help mobile game publishers by streamlining the user acquisition funnel. He elucidated that 90% of the people who express interest in a game publisher's content via an ad rarely end up actually playing the game. Samsung anticipates that cloud streaming service will eradicate this issue by eliminating the need for downloading, installing games and visiting app Stores.
A Response to Dwindling Smartphone Sales?
The initiative is also viewed as a response to Samsung's poor fiscal performance this year with a steep decline in smartphone sales. By adding another revenue stream from the existing hardware in the customer base, Samsung aims to boost its income. Samsung already operates the Gaming Hub game-streaming app for its smart TVs, which conglomerates several other streaming services like Amazon Luna and Nvidia GeForce Now. However, the Game Launcher exclusively caters to phone users, and the cloud gaming feature will be a standalone service within the Game Launcher. More accurate details and insights will be available during the Samsung Developer Conference later this week.
