Playcast games coming to Samsung TVs

From mid-2015 owners of select Samsung Smart TVs will be able to play a selection of top-notch video games streamed direct from the cloud with no need for a dedicated games console.

Playcast's cloud gaming platform offers access to in-demand video games such as 'Assassin's Creed,' and from big-name studios including 2K, Namco Bandai, Capcom and Disney. When the platform officially arrives on Samsung's smart, internet-connected TV it will initially be offered to consumers in Brazil, Canada, Israel, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain, the US and the UK.

Of the deal, Playcast's CEO, Michael O'Donnell, expressed his excitement and said: 'Now, any consumer who purchases a Samsung Smart TV will be able to access a sizable library of AAA video games without needing to own an expensive game console. That is literally a game changer.'

Despite being the world's leading company in a host of consumer electronics categories, from smartphone handsets to ultra-high-definition televisions, one weakness in Samsung's armory is gaming, and it is something that Samsung clearly believes is going to be a potentially huge draw for consumers.

Smartphone apps have created a whole new category of 'casual gamer' who now outnumber PlayStation and Xbox owners, and even when it comes to dedicated console gaming, research shows that it's no longer a uniquely masculine pastime. According to GlobalWebIndex, one in five women play video games on a console for an hour or more every day.

The new partnership, officially announced on Wednesday, is the second in recent months. At the end of December, Samsung revealed that it was also partnering with Sony to bring Sony's PlayStation Now cloud gaming platform to Samsung Smart TV owners (as a pre-installed app) in the US and Canada -- even though in the television space, Sony and Samsung are direct competitors.