Xbox is pulling cloud gaming off 2020 Samsung TVs, weeks before hour caps arrive

Microsoft is switching off Xbox Cloud Gaming on the first TVs it ever put it on. Owners of 2020 Samsung smart TVs who used the Xbox app have been emailed to say it stops working on November 3.

What the email says

Windows Central's Jez Corden, who received the email himself and published it, quotes Microsoft directly: "Starting 3 November, the XBOX app will no longer be supported on 2020 Samsung Smart TVs as updates to the technology that powers XBOX Cloud Gaming are no longer compatible with the operating system version available on these models." The email tells affected users they can keep streaming on 2021 and later Samsung sets, and on PCs, phones, tablets and Xbox consoles.

Corden is openly sceptical of the stated reason, pointing out that the Xbox app on these sets is essentially a web app fed by a video stream, and that a compatibility wall of that kind would also have taken out services like Netflix. His own theory - and he labels it as such - is that 2020 sets may be the heaviest-used third-party screens on the service, making them the fastest bandwidth saving available.

The pattern around it

The date is not the only thing landing in November. Microsoft confirmed in early September that cloud streaming moves from unlimited to a monthly hour allowance, with Game Pass Ultimate capped at 15 hours a month, Premium at 10 and Essential at 5, and extra hours sold separately. Kotaku, rounding up the same run of decisions, also notes reporting in the New York Times that the long-rumoured Xbox cloud controller was a real project that stalled after the Activision Blizzard acquisition, with an Xbox spokesperson telling the paper it remains in some form of development.

Set against the 2023-era "This Is An Xbox" campaign - which Microsoft quietly scrubbed from its sites in March - the direction is hard to miss. The company that spent two years telling people a fridge could be an Xbox is now narrowing which devices qualify.

Why it matters

Cloud gaming was Xbox's answer to not needing to win a console generation. Retiring hardware, metering hours and letting a controller project drift are the actions of a company that no longer expects streaming to carry that weight.