It will be necessary to pair your device to the machine on which the Steam client will have to be installed and pair it so that what you will see on the screen will be nothing more than a mirroring of the PC screen, so you will need a WiFi connection quality and, if possible, have the PC connected to the wired network. It is a retransmission tool, so you will need a PC with the game running. That latter part’s just physics.Steam Link is the official Valve app for Android with which you can play your Steam video games directly from any Android device. Even in a best-case scenario, you’re probably going to notice the input latency with Steam Link Anywhere, and it’s going to be more latency than you’d get with Google or Microsoft’s streaming solutions. On the other hand, Valve’s approach introduces more latency as your PC first compresses the image, then uploads it, and then you download it however many miles away. With Microsoft and Google, fidelity will always be limited by your internet speed-not to mention, any data caps your ISP’s put in place. Valve’s approach is more expensive of course, but when you come home you can return to playing games at 4K, 60 frames per second (or whatever your PC can handle). You keep buying PC hardware, you keep buying games, and then you have the option of taking your library on the go by using your own high-end machine to facilitate a streaming connection-again, as long as your internet speeds are fast enough.Ĭontrast that to Google and Microsoft’s approach, where they invest in the hardware and you just stream the game.

Or not nothing, per se, but the promise of Steam Link Anywhere is that your Steam library continues on as normal. There’s been a lot of discussion about what that future means for game ownership, how it will affect users with limited internet, how it affects people with high-end hardware, and so on.

Google’s expected to announce a streaming-centric console next week during GDC, and Microsoft’s Project xCloud is supposedly on its way as well. We’re hearing more and more about streaming as the future of games though.

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