An exclusive US partnership between Samsung and Xbox will include various marketing and retail activations throughout the country. In addition, a national Samsung TV spot will air around the launch of Xbox One X this fall.
“The gaming industry is extremely attractive to Samsung because these are passionate consumers that desire the best technology available to drive the ultimate gaming experience,” Eddie Combs, vice president of home entertainment marketing at Samsung Electronics America told AListDaily. “Samsung QLED TVs provide 4K UHD picture with HDR for a truly immersive experience. Samsung QLED also features some of the industry’s lowest input lag and ultra-fast motion rate to enable amazing gameplay.”
Touted as the “world’s most powerful console,” Microsoft’s Xbox One X features a six teraflop GPU compared to PlayStation 4 Pro’s 4.12 teraflops. For gamers, this means smoother animations, faster rendering and playing in 4K HDR environments.
However, if you want to count all the pores on a game character’s face, you’ll need a 4K TV. Although prices for them have dropped significantly over the past months, QLED TVs in particular aren’t cheap. Much like virtual reality, consumers need to try a game in 4K before they’re ready to spend over a thousand dollars on a Samsung QLED TV in addition to a new $500 gaming console.
Samsung’s QLED TV uses Quantum Dot technology to make tiny details visible. Three-step image processing results in low input lag of less than 20 milliseconds. In other words, it looks really pretty without slowing down the game. The new QLED TVs even have features built in with gamers in mind. Samsung’s Smart Hub has been expanded to automatically recognize a connected Xbox One X. Saying “Game Mode” into the voice control remote optimizes audio and video settings for gaming.
“We are seeing a rise in consumer demand for best-in-class virtual reality, TVs and gaming-centric monitors,” said Combs. “Gamers are passionate about their hardware.”
The 4K experience isn’t just for gamers. Movies, TV and even Facebook are now offering a plethora of 4K content, which is driving adoption of the new technology. Shipments of 4K UHD displays are forecasted to reach 15.6 million units in 2017 and earn $14.6 billion, according to the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). If CTA’s predictions are true, unit sales will increase 51 percent over last year, with revenue increasing 38 percent.
For E3 2017, attendees could demo games on the new Xbox One X—all playing on Samsung QLED TVs. The aforementioned retail activations throughout the US will create more opportunities to try and see both products in action. Samsung has partnered with Microsoft for several years now to promote its mobile phones and laptops. For gaming, it partnered with PlayStation to include streaming games on its smart TVs, but that service has been discontinued as of August 15, most likely due to expanding partnerships with Microsoft.
With the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro, the video game industry is a natural fit for partnerships of this kind. Earlier this year, Chinese manufacturer Hisense partnered with esports team Evil Geniuses to market its line of products, including 4K TVs.
