Samsung’s revamped mobile games hub tries to make it easier to find new games
During CES 2026, Samsung revealed a number of new TVs, monitors and other hardware. However, the company is also looking to expand into video games and has announced a significant update to its Gaming Hub for smartphones.
Engadget spoke with Jong Woo, Samsung’s VP of Game Services, who explained that the update will offer more personalized, faster ways to play and will put more emphasis on upcoming titles. Now available on Galaxy devices, with more updates planned, the new hub aims to be the go-to place for the latest mobile games.
“We believe that gamers want to experience new, personalized content,” said Samsung’s VP of Gaming Services. He continued: “We want to bring content to users and make it available immediately for them to play. We have instant games where, with our cloud streaming technology, we can take native Android games and put them in the cloud, so that when users want to try them, they don’t have to go through the process of downloading them first.”
According to Samsung, the mobile Gaming Hub attracts more than 160 million users across smartphones and other devices. However, the VP of Game Services at Samsung believes that, without a large library of games across multiple genres available to mobile users, “mobile game adoption is broken.”
Samsung
Initially, Gaming Hub for mobile was an add-on app for all purchased games, allowing users to track their collection. With this update, all games purchased from both Google Play and Galaxy Store are stored in Gaming Hub. It is designed to be a one stop place for players to view their games, get recommendations, access cloud streaming of selected games and view highlights from content creators.
According to Woo, the main goal of the new Samsung mobile Gaming Hub is to personalize and streamline the mobile gaming experience for players, which is often insignificant compared to the gaming experience on PC and consoles.
“We’re getting a lot of feedback from users, a lot of it from focused testing and beta testing, and what we’re finding is that we believe we’re solving pain points for mobile gamers,” Woo said of the Gaming Hub redesign. “We get an idea of the gamer’s preferences on an individual, personalized level. Based on all that, we are able to offer different types of recommendations.”
Another reason for the new changes to the Samsung Gaming Hub was to help promote the mobile gaming community, including gamers and developers. In addition to sharing YouTube videos and content from game creators and broadcasters, the company plans to add social features to Gaming Hub to make mobile gaming feel more interactive and seamless.
“A mobile phone is a very personal thing, right? It’s your personal device, and a lot of times when you play games on a mobile phone, it feels like a solitary experience,” Woo said. Currently, the enhanced Mobile Games Hub is only available on Galaxy smartphones and tablets. Users on non-Gaming devices will still use the previous version of Gaming Hub, for now.
Compared to PCs and online console hubs like Steam and PlayStation Network, it’s clear that mobile platforms are still looking to find a way to create an equally compelling environment for engagement. Even with a wide user base, mobile game hubs are often among users to access products. There’s a lot of work to be done, but the new Game Hub could be the first step in the right direction.
