Kotaku

A publicly accessible "Samsung Confidential" presentation Alan Queen, a senior director at the company's Innovation Lab, gave at last October's Samsung Developers Conference offers a bit of insight into the electronic giant's home console plans.P

Several slides on Queen's presentation indicate Samsung's gaming ambitions are targeting a consumer group called "Console Skeptics," who are current console owners not necessarily interested in upgrading to the next-generation consoles. Queen cites a September 2012 survey of more than 1,000 American "video game consumers," and claims 57 percent of those surveyed fell into the so-called "Console Skeptics," dwarfing the 42 percent divided evenly between the "Casual Gamers" and "Next-gen console buyers" segments. Queen believes Console Skeptics are "poorly served by consoles," listing the "cost of games" and "inconvenience" as impediments to console gaming for Console Skeptics.P

Queen's presentation focuses on two home gaming offerings from Samsung: the Samsung Mobile Console and Samsung Multi-Screen. The Samsung Mobile Console—a centralized smartphone game launcher and storefront launched in December in conjunction with the release of Samsung's smartphone gamepad—supports television play with a controller through AirPlay-style mirroring or an HDMI connection. The target audience for the Samsung Mobile Console are "above mid-core gamers" who are "console skeptical" and own a Samsung smartphone, according to the presentation. Queen says this offering—which turns a Samsung mobile device into a console-of-sorts—belongs in the microconsole product category alongside the Ouya and Nvidia Shield.P

Queen's presentation claims the Samsung Multi-Screen offering, which was sort of announced at CES last month to absolutely no fanfare, will be released in the fourth quarter of this year. Samsung Multi-Screen allows a "Samsung TV [to become] an equivalent of a game console," and players will be able to control games with either a physical or virtual gamepad, the presentation says. Queen says Samsung televisions will have "native development support" for Unity, and a unified development pipeline will allow developers (who are using Unity) to release the same project for both Samsung mobile devices and Smart TVs. Also, pairing a controller with a Samsung smartphone will enable a Wii U-type multiscreen experience in which the smartphone screen can serve as a map or inventory.P

At the heart of both of Samsung's gaming offerings is a platform and storefront dubbed Samsung Gaming Service, which Queen pitches to developers as an "open TV gaming platform" with "low cost development" and freedom for developers to set prices and monetize as they see fit. Queen's value proposition towards consumers is a simple-to-use, curated platform with access to "Exclusive TV games" (whatever that means) at a "range of price-points, including free-to-play." Tied to Samsung's account and payment system, the company's angle is obvious—it makes money from digital purchases. Another slide hints at the possibility for supporting cross-platform play and cloud progress syncing.P

In any case, Samsung's renewed push for smart TV gaming seems to be an evolution beyondthe current collection of qualitatively questionable titles designed to be played on a remote control. Whether it will gain any traction is another question entirely, and very possibly doubtful if rumors of Apple and Amazon set-top box devices with controller and native game support come to fruition.P

***P

Area 5's Outerlands is apparently not the only warmhearted video game culture documentary in the works. According to the November newsletter of the Sullivan Senior Center in Torrington, Connecticut, 2K Games "is producing a documentary about people who play video games" with the aim of "documenting the depth and beauty of video games while solidifying its increasingly substantial role as a medium in our culture." 2K Games—or the documentarians—chose members of the Sullivan Senior Center's Wii Bowling team, who have won the National Senior League Wii Bowling Championship four times, "to [serve as representatives] for the senior population in [the] documentary."P

Production on the documentary began last March, and the documentary was slated for a release last December, which did not happen. The project sounds more interesting than your average behind-the-scenes promotional video, so hopefully we will see the fruits of it sometime soon.P

Looks like another company is gonna enter the gaming market eventually... Let the saturation of the games market begin... :/

Sounds more like the Ouya to me...

"above mid-core gamers" who are "console skeptical"

That's funnier and more confusing than my avatar.

Why on earth are all these companies only choosing to join the market now? They would have been far better off releasing before the PS4 and X1 could establish themselves. You don't give a head start to the currently dominating brands of a business that has multi year life cycle :/

Sounds like our favourite hobby will change a lot this gen. Samsung and Amazon are definitely up to something and maybe Apple follows. The mobile companies have arrived, brace yourselves!

But seriously, the market can't possibly hold five or six console manufacturers. Somebody is bound to fail and vanish in the next 10 years. Interesting times ahead. I just hope that the players will profit from the upcoming war.

This is either the reaction to that sentence by most people, or the face of the person who thought to describe ANYONE as a "console sceptical above mid-core gamer".

Why can't all these companies just fuck off and leave us alone! I don't want gaming to become some overly saturated market where Samsung/Apple and Amazon release a rehashed version of their poorly built consoles each year!

*Crawls under desk and gets into fetal position*

I think Nintendo should get out of the console biz now, it's becoming unprofitable and way too crowded. Sign a sweetheart deal with Sony now and work with them, insist that Nintendo take the lead in the portable business but Sony helps out.