Samsung’s smart TVs offer Stadia at 4K, but GeForce Now limited to 1080p

Yesterday, Samsung unveiled its new smart TVs at CES 2022, and all of them run a new version of Tizen OS that offers access to cloud gaming services like Google Stadia, Nvidia GeForce Now, and Utomik. However, Samsung had not revealed what quality to expect from Stadia and GeForce Now.

Phil Eisler, Nvidia’s cloud gaming boss, confirmed to The Verge that the company is focusing on offering smooth 1080p 60fps cloud game streams to its smart TV partners (which includes Samsung). For now, 4K gaming via GeForce Now is limited to Nvidia’s Shield TV box. In the second half of 2022, the company may expand 4K resolution to more devices, and Samsung’s premium TVs might get that higher quality due to a fast processor.

Eisler said, “The TVs use many different SoCs with different performance levels capable of decoding our streams at 60 FPS, so we’re focused on 1080p first. We’ve rolled that out with LG first in December and with Samsung models in the first half of 2022, and will increase resolutions in the second half of 2022 as we continue to optimize for those decoding applications.”

Google’s Stadia, on the other hand, will offer cloud game streaming at 4K resolution on Samsung’s new smart TVs. However, it has been reported that some of Stadia’s 4K streams are often upsampled 1080p streams. The company reports the resolution of Stadia’s stream itself and not the internal render resolution of games. So, take that 4K resolution with a pinch of salt.