Gamers who’re interested in playing latest next-generation video games in brilliant high dynamic range might be pleased to know that Samsung Electronics has reportedly shown an interest in enabling HDR10+ on new games titles.
That’s according to a report on the German-language Caschy’s Blog, which revealed on Sunday that Samsung executives are planning to cooperate with developer studios to get the job done.
HDR10 + is an open and dynamic metadata platform for High Dynamic Range that was developed by 20th Century Fox, Panasonic and Samsung. It’s meant to rival the more popular Dolby Vision format that’s supported by TV makers such as LG Electronics. It has a big advantage in that companies don’t need to pay to license the technology, unlike Dolby Vision.
Samsung reportedly said it’s aiming to get new games titles to support HDR10+ and is working with various unnamed partners to make it happen. The report didn’t mention any companies by name however. It also wasn’t mentioned if Samsung was focused on bringing HDR10+ to games consoles or simply games on mobile devices, which is another possibility.
However, it’s certainly conceivable that Samsung could work with Sony to bring HDR10+ to its PlayStation console. Sony has notably chosen not to adopt Dolby Vision, nor Dolby Atmos, on the new PlayStation 5, and the reason why that decision was made finally became clear this weekend when it was revealed that Microsoft has agreed a two-year exclusivity deal with Dolby to bring the standards to its Xbox Series X and Series S consoles first.
The exclusivity deal was revealed in a French-language Xbox Wire blog post that has since been taken offline, though not before it was spotted by sites including Engadget, TheGamer and MobileSyrup.
Thanks to that deal, the Microsoft Series X and Series S consoles have been compatible with Dolby Atmos since their launch in November 2020. Dolby Atmos is a three-dimensional surround sound format that makes the audio in games appear to be much more immersive. But Xbox owners need to pay a $15 licensing fee to take advantage of the technology.
Meanwhile, Dolby Vision gaming has been made available on the new Xbox consoles to Alpha members within the Xbox Insider Program, an invitation-only club that get to test upcoming content and features before they are made generally available.
The fact that Sony apparently won’t be able to bring the same capabilities to the PS5 for at least two years could well be an incentive for the company to work with Samsung on HDR10+. The company does have its own 3D sound format, called Tempest, but it has nothing to rival Dolby Vision. That said, Sony would probably take some convincing to embrace HDR10+, as it has notably refused until now to bring the standard to its latest Bravia smart TVs, preferring to use the Dolby Vision format exclusively even as other brands such as Philips and Panasonic have embraced both.
Samsung is in any case very focused on gaming, telling Caschy’s Blog that it no longer sees TVs as devices for passive media consumption only, but rather, a gateway to a much broader world of entertainment. It remains to be seen if HDR10+ will ever find its way to the PS5, or even the new Xbox consoles, but it seems clear that Samsung has lots of gaming-focused ideas in mind that it, hopefully, can implement in the near future.
