Starting 3 November, Microsoft told players in an email, “the XBOX app will no longer be supported on 2020 Samsung Smart TVs.” The notice went to accounts that had previously used the app on one of those sets, and it names a cause: updates to the technology that powers Xbox Cloud Gaming are no longer compatible with the operating system version those models carry. Samsung sets from 2021 onward are not affected.
The cutoff is a date on the calendar, not a gradual fade. For owners of a 2020 Samsung set who stream Xbox games through the television itself, November 3, 2026 is the day support for the app on that set ends. Anyone who wants to keep playing on that screen will need a different device plugged into it or a newer television.
Microsoft’s email and the alternatives it lists
Windows Central’s Jez Corden published the email’s text on September 30 and updated the piece on October 2. The message says streaming can continue on newer Samsung Smart TVs, meaning 2021 and later, and across a wide range of supported devices, including PCs, smartphones, tablets and Xbox consoles. The article lists the retirement date as November 3, 2026, and gives the affected hardware as 2020 Samsung Smart TVs only.
Windows Report reported the same date and model year. Cloud Dosage, a smaller outlet, adds that select Amazon Fire TV devices and compatible LG televisions are also options, and tells buyers of external streaming hardware to verify compatibility first. Microsoft’s Xbox support pages load only with JavaScript and show no readable text of the notice, so the email as quoted by those outlets is the primary text available, and Cloud Dosage quotes the same wording.
Xbox’s public Xbox on TVs page still lists “2020 and newer” Samsung smart TVs, monitors and The Freestyle projector as eligible when it was read on October 6, with no mention of the cutoff. For now the page and the email disagree about the 2020 models.
Chromium 69 and the Web Workers requirement
The technical reason, according to Windows Central, is that the new version of the app needs Web Worker features introduced in Chromium 70, while 2020 Samsung TVs run Chromium 69, a 2018 browser engine, with no updates planned. Chrome 70 reached the stable channel on October 16, 2018, according to Google’s Chrome releases blog, so a television engine frozen at version 69 sits nearly eight years behind the browser world by this autumn.
Samsung’s developer documentation places 2020 models on Tizen 5.5, with 2021 models on Tizen 6.0. That document does not list the Chromium version for each platform, so the Chromium 69 figure rests on the Windows Central report, not on Samsung’s own table. Web Workers themselves are an ordinary browser feature. Mozilla’s reference describes them as a way to run JavaScript in background threads so that heavy processing does not block the user interface, with data passed between threads by message. The reference lists dedicated, shared and service workers as the main types, and notes that workers cannot directly manipulate the page’s document structure, which is why they suit background work such as handling streamed data while the interface stays responsive.
Windows Report frames the change as part of Microsoft’s wider effort to run Xbox efficiently, as the company balances cloud gaming infrastructure against other demands, and cites recent reports that Xbox content revenue fell 10 percent. Microsoft’s email does not mention any of that. Windows Central’s October 2 update says Samsung has no plans to update its 2020 Tizen models, that Chromium has gone unmaintained on them for nearly a decade, and that the new app version requires newer Chromium interfaces. In that account the limit sits in the television’s software, which only Samsung can change, and not in anything Microsoft can patch from its side of the stream.
Doubts about the stated reason
Corden’s piece is openly doubtful. Its title calls the reasons “poorly explained,” and the author questions whether the compatibility explanation tells the whole story, raising the possibility that bandwidth savings could be a factor on sets that may be heavily used for streaming. That is the writer’s speculation, and Microsoft has not said it.
The same update reports that sources indicated no slowdown in Xbox Cloud Gaming development overall and that rumors of cancelled Xbox Cloud Gaming controllers were false.
Cloud Dosage links the timing to a separate change, saying monthly cloud gaming allowances of 5 to 15 hours, depending on Game Pass tier, arrive in November; Microsoft’s email does not mention that, and the connection is that outlet’s observation. What remains unanswered is scale: Microsoft has not said how many 2020 Samsung owners used the app, and the email reached only accounts that had signed in on such a set.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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