What you need to know
- The PlayGalaxy Link service for Samsung smartphones will be officially discontinued on March 27, 2020.
- Customers can continue to use the Parsec Gaming service on supported devices.
- Samsung is shifting focus to "new products", likely in the form of the recently announced xCloud partnership with Microsoft.
It's only been a little over half a year since Samsung launched the beta for the PlayGalaxy Link PC-to-phone game streaming app, but Samsung is throwing in the towel due to "internal policy changes". Gamasutra discovered the announcement on the PlayGalaxy website, which was originally posted on February 27. Folks who have been using the PlayGalaxy Link app, an extension of the Parsec Gaming streaming service, will no longer be able to use the PlayGalaxy Link on their Samsung smartphone after March 27, 2020.
PlayGalaxy Link was a unique implementation of modern streaming services that allowed users to play games from their already-established Steam library via the PlayGalaxy Link app on their supported Samsung smartphone. While it's not clear what the specific reasons for the discontinuation of PlayGalaxy, it's not unlikely that Samsung could have been facing pressure from developers and/or publishers, much in the way that NVIDIA's GeForce Now service has. In a short memo left on the PlayGalaxy website, Samsung said it's focusing efforts on future products.
This will allow our Development organization to more effectively focus its resources and add value to the next release of new product. PlayGalaxy Link team
Doubtless, the future new product they're talking about revolves around Samsung's recently announced Project xCloud integration for Samsung phones, where Samsung smartphone owners can utilize their phones to stream games via Microsoft's xCloud service. While Samsung typically offers several options and settings for users on its phones, supporting two different cloud streaming services may have proved to be too costly a venture for the fledgling idea. Cloud gaming services have been seeing a huge spike in players lately and will likely continue to grow in popularity as prices and options improve.
