GAMELOOP CEO Kimmy Li took part in Streaming Media Connect 2026 with a keynote fireside chat called “Merging ‘Watch and Play’ Cloud Gaming and FAST at GAMELOOP.” The talk ran on February 26, 2026 as part of the event’s online program.
Across the hour, she laid out how GAMELOOP’s “watch and play” channel on Samsung Smart TVs blends cloud gaming with FAST-style TV, how the ad-supported model fits into the wider connected TV landscape, and why she sees Smart TVs as the next discovery surface for games.
Kimmy Li has spent the last eight years inside the game industry, moving across mobile, PC, and console work. She has held roles tied to companies like Activision, PlayStation, Verizon, and smaller studios, where her day-to-day involved shipping apps, premium games, and live services.
Across all of that, one theme kept bothering her. Even when you have a good game, getting people to notice it is hard. Storefronts are saturated, launchers pile up on desktops, and the reality is that many people only ever see what bubbles to the front page.
That discovery problem is what pulled her toward GAMELOOP. In the keynote, she desribed GAMELOOP as a way to remove several layers of hassle between “I saw something fun on TV” and “I’m actually playing it on the same screen.” The bet is that you can reach far beyond the usual console and PC crowd if you start from the TV and design the whole loop for people who might not think of themselves as gamers yet.
Watch & Play on Smart TVs as a TV-Native Format
The keynote made it clear that GAMELOOP is not trying to be Twitch copied onto a TV. Instead, the service sits on Samsung TVs as a hosted channel. You tune in the way you would a free, ad-supported TV channel, see a host or a pre-recorded block go through different games, and if something looks good, you press Play and drop into the game with the remote or a connected device. There are no downloads and no accounts standing between you and the first level.
Kimmy kept coming back to the living room. The mental picture is a TV on during the holidays or a weeknight, with kids, parents, and grandparents all around. That crowd might tune into a trivia show or a comedy block, but they are not the ones hunting for individual streamers on Twitch. GAMELOOP is deliberately built for that group dynamic instead of the single-screen, PC-centric streaming culture.
Cloud Gaming on Free, Ad-Supported TV Channels
The connected TV angle matters because that is where more of the ad money is going. Kimmy pointed to U.S. spending on ads in streaming apps on Smart TVs climbing toward the same scale as classic TV campaigns, with brands drawn to formats where they can see clearer results instead of just paying for rough impression counts.
GAMELOOP fits into that world in a few ways:
- It works like a free, ad-supported TV channel, with a mix of live and pre-recorded blocks that can carry ad breaks before or after segments.
- It layers in in-game ad inventory through partners, with GAMELOOP and developers deciding together where those breaks happen.
- It plans for a future where ad-funded TV play sits next to in-game purchases, so someone who never spends money can still play on the TV, while another person pays to skip wait times or unlock more content.
Right now it is all ad-funded. That keeps the pitch simple for anyone with a compatible Samsung TV: open the channel, choose a game, and you are in after a short break, just like starting a show on a free ad-supported streaming app. The long-term target is a freemium model where GAMELOOP still feels like TV first but quietly carries the same kind of revenue mix you see in mobile free-to-play.
Game Formats, Latency, and Smart TV Limits at GAMELOOP
Under the hood, GAMELOOP splits its catalogue into two broad types of games. First are HTML5 and JavaScript games built to run directly on the TV itself, without streaming from a remote server. These TV-first games are lighter and match the hardware ceiling of most Smart TVs, and they avoid serious latency problems because your input never leaves the device.
Second are higher-end PC games that stream from the cloud, using the same style of infrastructure you see in other cloud gaming services. GAMELOOP uses these when it wants something richer than a pure web game but still accessible enough for a living room audience. To keep things playable, the team is picking genres that tolerate small delays better than competitive shooters do.
Latency is also where design choices show up. Kimmy was clear that GAMELOOP is not trying to turn the service into a home for fast-paced shooters that fall apart if there is any input delay right now. The focus is on casual, family-friendly games where a small timing delay does not ruin the experience, and where the TV remote or a phone can be enough to play. That gives some headroom on the technical side while cloud infrastructure keeps improving in the background.
On the catalogue side, everything remains curated. Connected TV platforms are still awkward for game distribution, so GAMELOOP is helping studios bring builds over, testing them for TV suitability, and making sure everything lines up with the brand’s family-first positioning. The long-term goal is a self-serve workflow, supported by AI tools, that lets developers come on board with much less hand-holding.
GAMELOOP Live and Where Hosted Game Shows Fit In
The biggest new element compared to earlier GAMELOOP news is GAMELOOP Live. On March 13 and 14, from 5–7 p.m. Eastern, GAMELOOP will host its first live shows on Samsung TVs. The plan is to feature two games that naturally support multiplayer and crowd play, bring in a stand-up comic as host, and treat the whole thing like a TV game show you can join from your couch.
Kimmy described three layers of participation:
- A small group of people actually playing the game alongside the host.
- A wider group in a “spectator” mode where a large audience can influence outcomes inside the game.
- Everyone else watching the channel, sending emoji reactions and quick inputs through a mobile browser that talks back to GAMELOOP’s service.
The important part here is not just that the show is live. It is that GAMELOOP is trying to build a TV format where game choice, live hosting, interactivity, and ad units all sit in one place. That sits much closer to classic game shows and variety TV than to a single creator’s stream, and it is the clearest sign yet that GAMELOOP wants to live inside the TV content world rather than the traditional game store world.
Cloud Gaming’s TV Future Through GAMELOOP’s Keynote
Taken with GAMELOOP’s upcoming launch on Samsung Gaming Hub and its recent leadership changes, this keynote helps fill in where the service is heading.
You have a Smart TV-first service that:
- Treats cloud gaming as another TV channel, not a separate app.
- Uses FAST and in-game ads instead of subscriptions as its starting point.
- Keeps the experience aimed at families and casual players who already watch a lot of TV together.
- Plans to grow into a mix of curated catalogue, AI-driven personalization, and eventually more self-serve developer access.
For cloud gaming as a whole, that matters because it opens a path that sits next to Xbox Cloud Gaming, Nvidia GeForce NOW, or Amazon Luna rather than copying them. Those services still expect you to arrive as someone who already thinks of yourself as a gamer. GAMELOOP is betting that you can instead start from the TV schedule, a live host, and a simple “Play now on this same screen” button.
If GAMELOOP’s March live shows work the way Kimmy hopes, they will give everyone in this space a clearer example of what a TV-native, ad-funded cloud gaming channel looks like in practice, not just in decks and press releases.
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