Jackbox figured out a way to let you play Party Packs without a console

Jackbox Games’ Party Packs are one of the best ways to bring people together, whether they be polite colleagues or close friends. Jackbox has recently worked to make these Packs more accessible with measures like the Jackbox Megapicker, a program that allows players to switch between the minigames in each installation without having to manually shut down and re-load the stream. Now, Amazon and Jackbox are partnering to bring the games to a smart TV near you.

Jackbox will launch an app on smart TVs through Amazon’s game server hosting program known as AWS GameLift Streams. A beta version of the service will be available on select smart TV platforms in the spring. The early rollout will not contain all of the titles from the Jackbox roster; a small collection of games will be available, punctuated by ads, as a free trial of the full experience coming later. In the future, Jackbox Games plans to offer the entire catalog of games with an attached subscription fee.

The Jackbox Party Packs are currently available on Windows PC, Xbox, PlayStation, the Nintendo Switch, and both Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV. The party games are notable in that only the host needs to own the game, and the rest of the group can simply join in on a browser with a link. Each pack is about $25, and with eleven installments so far (ten traditional packs and the NSFW Naughty Pack) it can become a pricey investment. It’ll be interesting to see whether the sample pack allows even more players to get in on the fun, and whether it’s possible to gracefully insert ads between rounds of Quiplash or Drawful.