Samsung’s 2022 TVs will have built in Stadia, GeForce Now and NFTs

Samsung’s 2022 range of Neo QLED televisions will come with a new Gaming Hub with support for cloud streaming and NFTs, it announced as part of CES 2022 on Monday.

Launching later this year on “select” 2022 models, the new dedicated Smart Hub menu will include a section with gaming content in one place, it said, including connected consoles and YouTube Gaming content.

It will also feature cloud game libraries from Google Stadia, GeForce Now and Utomik, with “more to come”. That means players will be able to pair supported controllers to the televisions and play modern games without the need for additional console hardware.

Samsung’s 2022 displays will also see the technology trend of NFTs integrated. According to the manufacturer, 2022 TV owners will be able to purchase, display and “trade” NFT images direct from their devices.

Won-Jin Lee, corporate president at Samsung Electronics, said in a statement:

“We know that gaming continues to increase in popularity for our customers and we have bridged the gap between our Smart TV leadership and advanced gaming software to create an easier way for people to enjoy the games they love, faster.  We developed the Samsung Gaming Hub with our incredible content partners to benefit all gamers, and we plan to continue our collaboration to grow the ecosystem.”

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has previously expressed a desire to bring its own cloud gaming service to televisions.

In an October 2020 interview with Stratechery (via The Verge), Microsoft’s head of gaming discussed lowering the barriers to entry to cloud gaming.

“I think you’re going to see lower priced hardware as part of our ecosystem when you think about streaming sticks and other things that somebody might want to just go plug into their TV and go play via xCloud,” he said.

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“You could imagine us even having something that we just included in the Game Pass subscription that gave you an ability to stream xCloud games to your television and buying the controller.”

Microsoft previously partnered with Samsung to bring cloud gaming to the electronics company’s mobile products, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see the game streaming service offered with its smart TVs in the not distant future.