I’ve always wanted to build a little PC, but I don’t have space or time to play games other than on a handheld on the sofa. I’ve been playing Xbox Game Pass on my Retroid Pocket 3 Plus and it’s been really good, but I’m wondering if a gaming pc streamed locally would be cheaper in the long run. It’d live under the TV and very rarely get used with a controller on the telly, almost always streamed to a little handheld.
Alternative is Steam Deck, which looks good, but tbh, it seems quite unweildly. Though I know it’s possibly the right route.
Any thoughts?
Which option is better depends on what games you want to play and your local network.
I think it’s a fine idea, but as others have stated it depends on your network. If you have a PC already with steam, it might be worth trying the steam link app and see how it works.
The steamdeck is going to give you more flexibility, and work around any network issues you might have. Again, depends on the games, but in general it’s a great device and you can take it with you. That said, it’s struggling to play some of the newest AAA games on launch, though patches do eventually seem to come to help it out.
Yeah the Steam Deck is such good value it’s tough to turn down. It’s just a little too big for my taste and I’d rather have bought it at launch to get the longer value out of the hardware.
fwiw, valve seems to believe it’s got another few years in it. They’ve said they might do a battery/screen refresh, but the processor and such sound like they’re hear for another year at a minimum.
Well, I guess they put their money on upscaling, FSR in particular. And yes, it has worked so far but is not really on par with DLSS in my experience but maybe it will improve.
I would definitely recommend hardwiring the stream PC to the network, but it’s a shame the Steam Deck doesn’t have WiFi 6/6E.
I think the major problem is the wi-fi when I tried streaming from my PC with wired connection to my fire stick over wifi the lag was bad. Imho the steam deck is more straightforward, but if you like to tinker and has a good wi-fi it could work.
I wonder if that was your fire stick or WiFi? I assume as I get decent performance on game pass that it would be ok for me.
Yes, I think my wi-fi is not ideal since my ISP forces me to use their router, but I didn’t have time to try and get around it.
Moonlight is a great app for this. I get very decent FPS and you should too as long as your WiFi supports it. Since you’re already streaming games I think that bandwidth is not particularly something to worry about.
My current setup is a 3080 with a 5950x and 32gb of ram and 2tb of SSD storage. Streaming games is honestly very good quality but I keep it at 1080p to reduce the lag and keep the fps up. Keep in mind that it still has some faults and drops every now and then and requires some tinkering to have the games set up juuuuuust right.
all in all, depends on the services you use, but you may go from a native handheld experience to ******needing to use the keyboard and mice on your couch quite often as you settle in. Invest in a wireless mouse and keyboard too lol.
get both and stream to the steamdeck, getting like 12h of battery instead
Haha, I do have the Retroid Pocket which I enjoy a lot already. I guess I could get a steam deck and stream from that to the Retroid? Seems a bit counter intuitive though.
Steam Deck doesn’t currently support being the streaming host (at least, SteamOS currently doesn’t - but I wouldn’t recommend wiping that as it’s one of the best parts of the deck).
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Hm, yeah, the OS admin side of things is a good point. Game pass has just been so seamless I figured a similar experience would be achievable. I’d likely turn it on as and when as I only play sporadically. I’d just like to move to a PC game library but can only really play handheld but find the current handheld gen a bit unweildly so guess found this as a potential solution. Plus I’ve always wanted to build a PC. I think a steam deck is likely a better route still.
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Yeah it’s my understanding I’ll be sticking with steam os if I do go steam deck. I do have a small steam lib but games on gog and other places too I’d have liked to have easy access too.
I don’t find the Steam Deck unwieldy. It is big, but the design and weight distribution makes it comfortable to hold - I don’t even think about it when I get into a game on it. For comparison, I find the Switch Pro controllers very slightly smaller than I would prefer, but comfortable too, and the DualSense to be about right.
You might want to take a look at geforcenow, nvidia’s cloud gaming platform. It’s only disadvantage is that not all games are available there. But depending on your location, it can be better and cheaper. For 20€ a month, you get a pc with a 4080 gpu that would cost you like 2k to make. And that pc will get upgraded every few years for free.
This does look great considering I have a bit of a library across a few stores. What’s the benefit of this over Xbox game pass? That you can play your own games?
You can only play games that you already own on geforcenow, you dont get access to any “free” games. You can play steam games, origin, even some gamepass games(as long as you have a pc gamepass subscription). But again, the game selection is limited. It used to be unlimited but then the game publishers complained so now only approved games are available(1600 or so games).
The xbox cloud gaming is shit in comparison. First of all, it runs on xbox consoles, so you need to use a controller, cant use mouse and keyboard. Secondly, the latency and overall tech is at least a generation behind geforcenow. Then again, you get what you pay for. Xbox cloud is an extra 5€, geforcenow can be 20€ a month. Geforcenow has convinced me that cloud gaming is the future, it’s that good. Xbox cloud is “eh, ok, kinda cool that it kinda works”. I am somewhat playing starfield on the xbox cloud and it aint terrible.
I think i will buy cyberpunk and its expansion to play them on geforcenow. Honestly, if i could play all games on geforcenow, i dont think i would buy a new gpu. With cloud gaming, you not only not have to pay for the hardware, you also dont have to pay for the electricity, since you are only running a videostream on your end, which uses very little power and can be run on almost anything. Though when i tried gaming on my lg oled’s browser, it wasnt great, lots of issues, though it technically worked. Maybe it was some bluetooth fuckiness.
The power note is actually a great point I hadn’t thought about. Prices are really high here and I was slightly concerned about that.
It isnt just the electricity price, it’s also the noise and temperature. Especially if you dont have an aircondition, which most houses in northern Europe dont, gaming can be hellish in the summer. Playing AAA in complete silence and without sweating enhances the experience.
