PlayStation games coming to Samsung TVs

From 2015, owners of new Samsung Smart TVs in the US and Canada will be able to play hundreds of PS3 games via Sony's PlayStation Now service on their new television sets and all they'll need is a wireless DualShock 4 controller.

PlayStation Now is one of the strongest weapons in Sony's gaming arsenal. It is built into the company's latest games console, the PS4, as well as its flagship smart televisions, and enables anyone to stream a choice of over 200 PlayStation 3 games direct from the cloud.

Being able to access PS3 games is one of the reasons why Sony has been beating Microsoft in the next-generation games console war -- the PS4 has comfortably outsold the Xbox One pretty much every month since both devices were launched last November -- and is also a feature that has helped it differentiate its latest televisions from its biggest rivals, LG and, of course, Samsung.

However, from 2015 the PlayStation Now service will be coming as a preinstalled app on Samsung Smart TVs sold in the US and Canada and the first live demos of the new feature will take place at the 2015 International CES, which starts on January 6 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

PlayStation Now made its debut at the 2014 International CES and is one of the key services, alongside Nvidia Grid, that is driving the popularity of cloud gaming -- ie being able to stream a game to any type of internet-connected device, rather than just a dedicated games console. Research firm Strategy Analytics forecasts that the two services will have racked up 30 million subscribers by the end of 2014 and that if they can maintain their momentum it could lead to cloud gaming becoming one of the standout tech trends of the year to come.

However, to achieve this aim, the number of devices that offer the service will need to grow and to diversify in order to reach as many consumers as possible -- hence Sony's partnership with Samsung.