Samsung Galaxy phones are getting a big gaming upgrade

(Image credit: Rik Henderson / Future)

published 21 March 2024

Samsung's Gaming Hub, the service that brings cloud gaming to some of the best Samsung TVs and Samsung gaming TVs, is about to get a whole lot more portable. Speaking at this week's Games Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, Samsung announced that the Gaming Hub will be coming to the company's Galaxy phones and other Galaxy devices.

This could be a really big deal, because one of the key selling points of the Gaming Hub is that it delivers console-style gaming without a console. By bringing it to the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24 Ultra, Samsung is making them into handheld consoles – maybe not quite up to the standards of a Steam Deck or Switch OLED, but pretty great for a phone. These of course are powerful phones with good graphics processors, so the experience should be at least as good as if not better than on your TV.

What Samsung Gaming Hub for Mobile will bring to your Galaxy phone

"Our vision for Gaming Hub for mobile is to provide an all in one gaming platform optimised for Galaxy owners", Samsung's corporate VP Jikhan Jung says. "We know that bringing game streaming with cloud technology to the mobile platform provides a substantial update to the current app store for a more seamless experience.”

The key features announced so far are Instant Plays, which provide "immediate access to games without installation" - so, Cloud Gaming - and support for in-game monetisation, which should help persuade publishers to climb on board. Samsung promises "full-fledged, robust mobile-native games from top mobile game publishers", all available in a single interface that saves you having to scour multiple services and app stores.

For now, Samsung's keeping more details under wraps: we don't know when the Gaming Hub will be coming, or what devices it'll be coming to. And we also don't know what games it'll offer. In its press statement Samsung says that "Gaming Hub on Galaxy Devices is currently in beta with a select number of games" available to play in the US and in Canada, which suggests that we're not talking Game Pass or PlayStation Plus-sized catalogues here. But it's still a welcome addition for Samsung users

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Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).