Jackbox’s party game library is coming to your living room via a new smart TV app
The games will initially be free with ads, but a monthly subscription is planned
Jackbox Games, the studio behind such party titles as You Don’t Know Jack and Fibbage, is bringing its library of games to smart TVs.
The studio is teaming up with Amazon to release a dedicated Jackbox Games app for smart TVs, enabling players to take part without a console or PC.
The app, which Jackbox says will also be coming “to other platforms”, will initially launch in a beta version on “one or two smart TV platforms” this spring, with more platforms to follow.
Initially, the app will offer a “small collection” of games which will be free to play and supported with ads. Eventually, however, Jackbox plans to add its entire catalogue of games to the app, offering a paid subscription service (with no ads, of course).
“It has always been our goal to bring these games to as many people as possible and make them as easy to play as we can,” a statement from the studio reads. “That is why we are announcing a new Jackbox app that will allow you to play Jackbox Games on your smart TV and other platforms.
“How can we pull off such a technical miracle? The same way anyone does anything these days – the Cloud! Partnering with AWS GameLift Streams allows us to quickly launch and stream games to all sorts of devices from smart TVs to web applications to… I don’t know… a watch, probably. But let’s not. Gathering around your watch for a game of Fibbage is super-dumb.”
Initially operating as Jellyvision Games from 1995 to 2001, then revived in 2008, the studio was originally known for its You Don’t Know Jack series of quirky comedy quiz games.
When the studio rebranded as Jackbox Games in 2013, it released a series of new standalone games before shifting its focus to the Jackbox Party Pack series, each of which contained a number of party games which can be played with web-enabled devices (such as mobile phones) as controllers.
To date, there have been 10 Jackbox Party Packs and a three-game Jackbox Naughty Pack, offering a total of 53 party games. If Jackbox’s mission statement is to be understood, all of these games are intended to eventually make their way to the Jackbox Games app on a subscription basis.
