Add Microphone/In-Game Voice Chat Support for Xbox App on LG & Samsung Smart TVs

Xbox TV app still has no mic support after 3 years. Here's why Microsoft should fix it.

The Xbox app launched on Samsung TVs in July 2022.

It's now April 2026.

In nearly four years, Microsoft has never added microphone or in-game voice chat support to the Samsung or LG TV apps.

You cannot talk to teammates in Fortnite, Call of Duty, Sea of Thieves, or any multiplayer game.

The TV app is the only Xbox platform — console, PC, browser, handheld — with zero native voice chat path.

The LG app launched in April 2025 with the same omission baked in.

Why this matters financially, not just as a feature request

Microsoft's own earnings reports tell the story.

Xbox hardware revenue has declined 29-30% for two consecutive years (Tweaktown, Oct 2025 / VGChartz, Feb 2025).

Console unit sales dropped 51% in 2024 to 4.79 million units.

Meanwhile, Xbox content and services revenue jumped 61% YoY, with Game Pass contributing approximately 65% of Xbox's services revenue — estimated at $4.7 billion in 2024 (SQ Magazine, 2025 / Microsoft SEC filing FY2024).

The business has structurally shifted away from hardware. That means TV app subscribers matter more, not less.

Here's the part Microsoft should think hard about: a TV app user pays Game Pass Ultimate ($29.99/month) with no console purchase, no hardware subsidy, no retail margin.

Their entire relationship with Xbox is the subscription.

71% of Game Pass subscribers say the service influenced their decision to stay in the Xbox ecosystem (SQ Magazine, 2025).

For TV users with no console to protect, cancellation friction is zero.

Every session where they can't talk to their squad is a reason to reconsider.

Cloud gaming hours increased 45% YoY in 2025 (Xbox Wire, Nov 2025).

The Samsung/LG partnership has reached an estimated 18 million smart TVs worldwide (SQ Magazine, 2026).

This audience is growing and being underserved.

It's technically solvable

This isn't a hardware limitation.

On LG webOS, the OS already detects USB microphones at the system level through the Luna audio service (com.webos.service.audio) and exposes them as usb_mic0 with full volume and mute control (webOS OSE docs).

The TV knows your mic exists.

The Xbox app's sandboxed Chromium environment just doesn't have permission to access it, and there's no upstream WebRTC audio path built to the cloud servers from the TV platform.

Samsung's Tizen has equivalent infrastructure. The engineering path exists — it needs prioritization and coordination between Microsoft and the TV OEMs.

For reference: the Xbox mobile app added voice chat in February 2018 after a beta period that started December 2017 (Bleeding Cool, Feb 2018).

Microsoft has shipped mic support on non-console platforms before.

This is a resourcing and priority decision, not an impossibility.

The competitive risk

NVIDIA GeForce NOW and Amazon Luna both run on the same LG and Samsung TVs.

If either ships mic support first, it becomes a real differentiator for the consoleless audience that Xbox cloud gaming is supposed to own.

Microsoft built this market.

It would be a significant own-goal to lose TV users to a competitor over a feature the hardware already supports.

What we're asking for

Is mic support for the LG/Samsung Xbox app on the roadmap?

If yes — when?

If blocked by OS constraints — is Microsoft actively working with LG and Samsung engineering to resolve it?

Three years is long enough.

If this affects you, please upvote and comment.

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