The number of people playing casual and party games on Samsung televisions grew by more than 90% in North America and by more than 200% worldwide over the past year, according to Samsung. The figures, attributed to Kevin Beatty, Head of Product for Samsung Visual Display, appeared on October 27, 2026 in a post on the Samsung U.S. Newsroom built around an online survey of 1,803 American adults, for which Ipsos collected the data. Samsung did not say how many users either percentage starts from.

The survey supplies the headline. According to Samsung, 79% of parents wish they were spending more quality time with their children, 87% say the holidays are an important time for activities the whole family can enjoy together, and 84% admit to at least sometimes multitasking on their devices while spending time with their families. The remedy on offer is Samsung's own: Samsung Gaming Hub on compatible Samsung Smart TVs, paired with Amazon Luna's GameNight titles, which turn the smartphones already in a household into game controllers.

In Short

Samsung had Ipsos survey American adults, and most parents said they want more time with their kids and find it hard to pick something the whole family enjoys. Samsung used those answers to promote party games on its TVs that people play using their phones, and said the number of people playing such games on Samsung TVs grew more than 90% in North America in a year. For anyone selling or buying TV advertising, it is a sign that some living room screen time is moving to games, although Samsung gave no starting numbers and said nothing about ads.

What Samsung published

The post carries the title "79% of Parents Want More Family Time, The Answer Is Already in the Living Room" and sits in the Gaming category of Samsung's US newsroom, tagged Gaming, Samsung Gaming Hub and Samsung Smart TV. Two subheadings set the frame: "New research reveals the challenges families face in spending meaningful time together" and "Samsung shows how a different approach to technology can help bring us together for a modern take on family game night."

It reads as a consumer feature, not a corporate disclosure. Survey percentages open the piece. A quote from a well-being consultant follows, then a product description, a five-step setup guide, an account of a promotional event in New York City and a closing quote from a Samsung executive. An infographic published with the post repeats the five survey figures under the line "Families want more time together."

The body text calls the work "new Ipsos research." The methodology note at the foot of the page is more exact. It describes the findings as "based on a Samsung Gaming Hub survey, with online data collection provided by Ipsos." The survey, in other words, belongs to Samsung's gaming business; Ipsos ran the fieldwork.

Five figures about parents

Samsung published five percentages, every one of them about parents:

  • 79% wish they were spending more quality time with their children.
  • 87% say the holiday season is an important time for activities the whole family can enjoy together.
  • 84% admit to at least sometimes multitasking on their devices while spending time with their families.
  • 80% want options that make it easy to spend time together at home.
  • 58% say it is hard to find activities the whole family genuinely enjoys.

None of the five mentions video games, televisions or Samsung. The bridge from a wish for family time to a TV gaming service is built by Samsung's copy rather than by any published survey result. Samsung did not release the question wording, the answer scales, a full topline or any figure on gaming habits from the same poll. If the questionnaire asked about games at all, those answers are not public.

The wording also shifts between the text and the infographic. In the text, 84% "admit to at least sometimes multitasking." In the graphic, 84% "of parents multitask on their devices during family time," with the qualifier gone. "At least sometimes" points to a frequency scale on which "sometimes" was counted together with any more frequent answer, so the figure folds occasional multitaskers in with habitual ones. How many respondents chose each point on that scale was not disclosed. Smaller drifts follow the same pattern: the 87% who "say the season is an important time" become parents who "see the holidays as prime time for family activities," and the 58% who "say it's hard to find" activities become parents who "struggle to find" them.

How the poll was run

Fieldwork took four days, from September 29 to October 2, 2026. According to the methodology note, "A nationally representative sample of 1,803 U.S. adults between 18 and 64 years of age was surveyed online in English as part of the Ipsos omnibus." An omnibus is a shared survey vehicle: several clients place questions on the same wave, which keeps the cost low and allows a handful of questions to be fielded within days.

Results carry a credibility interval of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points for all respondents and 4.5 points "for the questions asked of the 727 with minor children in the household." Ipsos reports a credibility interval, a Bayesian measure of precision, for this kind of online poll rather than a conventional margin of sampling error.

The parent figures appear to come from that 727-person group, since the infographic labels each one "of parents" and the methodology attaches the wider interval to it. By PPC Land's arithmetic, the group is 40.3% of the full sample. Applying the 4.5-point interval, the 79% figure could sit anywhere between 74.5% and 83.5%, and the 58% between 53.5% and 62.5%. The ordering of the larger results is less certain than the decimals suggest: the 79%, 80% and 84% figures all overlap once that interval is applied.

Several boundaries limit how far the results travel:

  • Age cap. Nobody aged 65 or over was surveyed. The post nonetheless pictures families "introducing grandparents to a virtual version of a favorite classic game over the holiday break."
  • Household definition. The methodology describes the subgroup as adults "with minor children in the household," which describes where respondents live. It does not by itself establish that each respondent is a parent of those children, though Samsung reports the results as findings about parents.
  • Language and mode. The poll ran online and in English only.
  • Weighting. The note calls the sample "nationally representative" but does not say which variables it was weighted on.

Timing matters too. Fieldwork closed on October 2, and the results appeared 25 days later, ahead of the holiday period the post leans on. Samsung's closing paragraph names "a party game after Thanksgiving dinner" and the holiday break as moments for play.

What Samsung is selling

Samsung describes Gaming Hub as "an all-in-one gaming discovery platform that gives families direct access to thousands of games through leading game streaming services, including Amazon Luna." The games run on remote servers and stream to the set, the model known as cloud gaming, so the television needs no console. According to Samsung, "No video game console, video game controllers or gaming experience required."

The family pitch rests on GameNight, a lineup within Amazon Luna in which, according to Samsung, "the smartphones already in everyone's pockets become the controllers." Samsung says that for Amazon Prime members, "GameNight titles, along with the additional rotating library of games available with Luna Standard, are included at no additional cost." The post gives no subscription prices, does not say how many GameNight titles exist, and does not list which Samsung models count as compatible.

The five-step setup guide is short. A household opens Gaming Hub on the TV, launches Amazon Luna and signs in with an Amazon account, picks a GameNight title, "with options ranging from trivia and word games to playful competitions," and then joins from smartphones by following on-screen instructions. The second step means each session runs under an Amazon login on a Samsung screen, so two companies' account systems meet in one living room.

Amazon has been building that lineup for months. PPC Land reported in April that Amazon Luna and Mattel scheduled Masters of the Universe: Legends Unite as a GameNight exclusive for June 5, 2026, included with Prime at no additional charge, playable with phones as controllers and available in 14 markets.

Samsung also described a recent "Play Together" event in New York City, run by Samsung Gaming and Amazon Luna, where guests played Cranium Planet and Fibbage XL, a Jackbox title. According to Samsung, "one quick round turned into 'just one more.'" The post gives no date for the event and no attendance figure.

The consultant quoted in the post, Marie Shanley, is identified only as a "Digital Well-being Consultant." No organization is named, and the post does not say whether Samsung engaged her for the campaign. "So often, everyone in the family is on a different screen, often together in the same room, yet completely consumed in their own activity," Shanley said. "Technology doesn't have to be something that pulls families apart. When it gives us a reason to laugh, compete and participate together, it can actually become a tool for connection, turning screen time into time spent engaging with each other."

The growth claim

Beatty's quote carries the only usage data in the post. "There's something special about bringing family and friends together around a game. It's the laughter, the friendly competition, and the shared moments that make it memorable," he said. "We're seeing a new era of family game night, where anyone can jump in and play together right on their TV. And families are embracing it - over the past year, we've seen unique users playing casual and party games on Samsung TVs grow more than 90% in North America and more than 200% globally."

These numbers come from Samsung's own platform, not from the Ipsos poll. Growth of more than 90% means the North American count nearly doubled; growth of more than 200% means the global count more than tripled. Taken at face value, that puts growth outside North America well ahead of growth inside it. How many players does that represent? The post does not say. Samsung did not give a starting user count, an end date for the year in question, or a definition of "casual and party games." Nor did it say whether the figures cover only games launched through Gaming Hub, or also games installed directly on the TV's operating system. A large percentage on a small base and a modest percentage on a large one would both fit the quote.

Why the living room screen matters to advertisers

The post contains no advertising product. It does not say whether Gaming Hub or GameNight sessions carry ads, and no Samsung Ads offering is mentioned. The relevance for marketers is indirect, and it runs through the businesses Samsung and Amazon already operate on the same screen.

Samsung's TV is an ad platform

Samsung sells inventory across the interface that Gaming Hub lives in. Samsung Ads opened Smart TV home screen placements to programmatic buying through The Trade Desk and Google DV360 on June 10, 2026, the first time those native, non-skippable units were sold that way, with a global rollout planned for the third quarter. Gaming Hub is reached from the same home screen, the space covered by home screen advertising. Twelve days after the programmatic news, Samsung Ads and Amazon Ads named the first brands running Amazon's interactive video ads on Samsung TV Plus, bought through Amazon DSP with "Add to Cart" prompts, and Samsung Ads put Samsung TV Plus at more than 100 million monthly active users worldwide. The two companies already share an advertising relationship on Samsung screens; Luna's place inside Gaming Hub adds a second, consumer-facing one.

Games on Samsung's TV platform have drawn scrutiny of a different kind this year. In August, Samsung restricted new Tizen app registrations containing residential proxy software after research found such code in more than a quarter of Tizen apps and a security firm traced Bright Data proxy code to a Pac-Man game Samsung had featured in its Editor's Choice section. Proxy traffic routed through household IP addresses complicates invalid traffic detection for anyone buying CTV inventory.

Ad-supported cloud gaming has precedent

Whether game streaming on televisions ends up carrying ads is an open question that other platforms have started to test. Microsoft began internal testing of a free, ad-supported tier of Xbox Cloud Gaming on October 3, 2025, with about two minutes of preroll ads before play, sessions capped at one hour and a five-hour monthly limit. In February 2026, Nvidia brought GeForce NOW to three Fire TV Stick models, putting a second cloud gaming service on Amazon's TV hardware alongside Luna. Samsung's own phone business runs a separate cloud gaming service, which entered beta in the United Kingdom and Germany on August 20, 2025 with Moloco handling user acquisition campaigns.

The phone joins the game

The 84% multitasking figure touches a measurement problem TV buyers know well. The second screen, usually a smartphone, is where much of the response to television advertising happens. Omdia data published in September showed the share of US viewers aged 55 to 64 who regularly use smartphones for other media while watching TV rising from 42% in 2023 to 56% in 2026, with increases from 62% to 73% among 45 to 54 year olds and from 69% to 76% among 35 to 44 year olds. Omdia did not disclose its method. Samsung's figure is a different question asked of a different group, so the two cannot be compared directly.

GameNight changes the relationship between the screens. During play the phone is not a distraction from the television; it is the controller. For the length of a session the household's phones are tied to an Amazon game running on a Samsung set, rather than scrolling social feeds alongside a streaming program.

More than one person in front of the set

Party games are built for groups. That puts them in the territory of co-viewing, the estimate of how many people sit in front of a screen at once, which TV currencies and platforms have been revising. Google Ads began counting co-viewers in connected TV reach and frequency metrics on June 2, 2026, without restating earlier data. Group gaming sessions are not ad-supported video time, but they draw on the same evening hours and the same sofa.

The time budget

The scale of television gaming remains small next to video. The Video Advertising Bureau's reading of the 2025 American Time Use Survey put game playing at 24 minutes a day, or 8% of leisure time, against 2 hours 37 minutes, or 51%, for watching video. That survey counts only the activity respondents named first, so gaming time is a floor. Earlier in the year, VAB data showed 82% of US TV households owned a smart TV, the base on which services such as Gaming Hub sit.

What the announcement does not establish

Samsung's post shows that parents in an online poll of adults aged 18 to 64 said they want more family time and find shared activities hard to arrange. It shows that Samsung's TV division reports fast growth in casual and party gaming. It does not show that the two are connected: no published survey question concerns games, and the usage figures carry no base, no date range and no definition. The post gives no advertising data, no subscription prices, no compatible model list, no count of GameNight titles and no information on the New York event. Whether Samsung or Amazon plans to sell advertising around group play on the television is not addressed.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Samsung, through its Samsung Gaming Hub business and the Samsung U.S. Newsroom, with Ipsos providing online data collection and Amazon Luna supplying the GameNight games. Kevin Beatty, Head of Product for Samsung Visual Display, gave the usage figures; Marie Shanley, described as a Digital Well-being Consultant, is also quoted.

What: A Samsung Gaming Hub survey of 1,803 US adults found 79% of parents wish for more quality time with their children, 87% see the holidays as important for family activities, 84% at least sometimes multitask on devices during family time, 80% want easy ways to spend time together at home and 58% find it hard to choose activities everyone enjoys. Samsung used the results to promote Gaming Hub with Amazon Luna's phone-controlled GameNight titles, included for Prime members, and said unique users of casual and party games on its TVs grew more than 90% in North America and more than 200% globally over the past year, without giving a base.

When: Fieldwork ran from September 29 to October 2, 2026. Samsung published the results on October 27, 2026.

Where: The survey covered the United States, online and in English, among adults aged 18 to 64. The growth figures cover North America and Samsung TVs worldwide. The promotional event took place in New York City.

Why: Samsung is positioning the television as a place for group play ahead of the holiday season. For advertisers and TV platforms, the post signals rising game use on a screen that Samsung and Amazon already sell advertising on, while leaving open how large that audience is and whether it will carry ads.