Samsung has announced that it will discontinue the game streaming feature for its Galaxy phones later this month.
The feature is called PlayGalaxy Link, and it was announced alongside its Galaxy Note 10 smartphone last Fall. The feature initially was only compatible with the Galaxy Note 10. Then later expanded to Samsung’s other recent Galaxy smartphones.
PlayGalaxy Link is also still currently available for users who have a compatible device. But it won’t be long before it goes out of commission. Samsung hasn’t mentioned why it made the choice to shut down the feature. The fact remains however that it will only stick around for a couple more weeks.
Samsung will take its game streaming feature offline on March 27
If you’ve yet to check out PlayGalaxy Link and you have a Galaxy smartphone that can use it, you may as well give it a try before it disappears.
Samsung will bring it offline on March 27 which means you have still have some time to give it a go. It works by mirroring whatever game you have loaded up on your PC and streaming it to your Galaxy device.
Think Remote Play for PS4, or Steam’s Link feature. Which do exactly the same thing. In fact, if you have a PC you can play games on and you do use Steam, you can still stream games to your Galaxy device using Steam Link. Problem solved.
PlayGalaxy Link is probably making room for xCloud
Samsung made a very big deal out of its partnership with Microsoft during the Galaxy S20 announcement earlier this year.
Part of that segment included talking about the two companies working on a project together. A project that would introduce a game streaming service to future Galaxy smartphones.
Samsung didn’t confirm what this service was by name, but the screenshot it shared during this talking point looked like a phone playing Halo: Reach. Which is one of the games that was added to the xCloud beta earlier this year.
Because of this partnership Samsung hay have chosen to forego future development on PlayGalaxy Link. And instead reroute the efforts of employees working on it to the service that’s tied to the Microsoft partnership.
It would make more sense too. xCloud is already a great value and it hasn’t even started charging for the service yet. There’s also no telling how long it will be in beta.
Perhaps future Galaxy smartphone buyers will receive guaranteed access to the xCloud closed beta. And if that’s available, PlayGalaxy Link is hardly competition.