Cloud gaming remote desktop

15 game streaming services you can try before Google Stadia arrives

Googles service is only the tip of the iceberg

• By Stefan Etienne
• on April 18, 2019 11:03 am
• Illustration by Alex Castro

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Streaming games from remote internet servers could be the future of the video game industry or part of that future, anyhow. By removing the need to own a PC or console to play the latest, most demanding blockbuster games, the medium as a whole could become more accessible. That is, if you have a good internet connection. Googles recent announcement of its Stadia game service has thrust this idea back into the spotlight, and when it launches later this year, it might be an interesting option for both newcomers and seasoned gamers who are curious about streaming games over the internet. But its hardly the first cloud gaming platform to debut.

If youre interested in streaming your own desktop PC games to your PC, Mac, phone, tablet, or console, you can try one of a variety of cloud gaming and in-home streaming options today. [Some of them are free!] If youd prefer to stream games that you dont already own, a few companies already have Netflix-like catalogs of games you can stream before Google Stadia arrives on the scene.

The current cloud gaming marketplace is populated by recognizable gaming brands like Steam, Nvidia, and Sony. Alongside the big names is a gallery of startups that claim to have their own proprietary tech. While some game streaming technologies are free to try, others require a credit card, making them less desirable if youre just looking to dip your toe in the water. And Id recommend dipping a toe to start because your mileage will vary widely depending on how close you are to a company's servers and the quality of your home network.

Here are the easiest ways to get a taste of what cloud gaming is like.

Game Streaming Services Compared

Stream games you already own inside your house

Even if you dont have an excellent internet connection merely a good Wi-Fi router and an Xbox, PlayStation and / or PC you can still sling games around your home in much the same way a cloud gaming service like Google Stadia will when it launches later this year.

Because the games come from your own library and you dont have to pay for server time by the month or hour, its the easiest and most straightforward way to try streaming games right now.

Steam Link

Valves Steam Link has been around for a few years, and its free in-home streaming solution is one of the best and most reliable out there. You can stream games installed on one of your home computers [Mac, Windows, Linux] to practically any other desktop, laptop, phone, or tablet on the same network while using a controller or a mouse and keyboard. Plug in an HDMI cable, and you can easily sling that content to a TV, too.

To get it working, you need two machines [a PC or Android device] to be logged into your Steam account at the same time, adding the new machine to your account with an approval code. Once you have a game installed on your host PC, all you have to do is head to your library, select the installed games Stream option, and proceed from there. You can also stream your computers desktop in a pinch.

Apple didnt let Valve bring the Steam Link app to iPhones and iPads, and Valve has sadly discontinued the physical Steam Link box, but you can also try it on 2016 and newer Samsung Smart TVs or a Raspberry Pi 3.

PS4 Remote Play

Sonys PS4 Remote Play feature allows you to stream and control your entire PS4 experience from your Mac or Windows PC, as well as iPhones, iPads and some Sony Xperia phones. The app and service are free, so all you need to get started is a PS4, DualShock 4 controller, and at least a 15 Mbps connection, according to Sony. Its fairly straightforward, only requiring you to install a desktop app and then make a quick trip over to your consoles settings to pair both systems using your Wi-Fi network. You can adjust the quality settings, too up to 1080p and 60 fps if youve got a PS4 Pro.

Xbox App on Windows 10

If you have an Xbox One, One S, or One X, you can wirelessly stream games and control your console via the Xbox app on a Windows 10 computer. Since the app is free [like the PlayStation equivalent] and already baked into Windows 10, all you have to do is link your Xbox with your Windows PC using the same Microsoft account, then find the Xbox on your local network.

After everything is set up, you can control the stream quality [up to 1080p at 60 fps], play games from your PC by controlling your Xbox remotely, chat with other players using in-game audio chat, and even use an Oculus Rift to generate a virtual room and giant flatscreen to immerse yourself in the gameplay.

Remotr

Similar to the Steam In-Home Streaming, the free game streaming platform Remotr works by using your gaming PCs library and processing power to deliver a stream to an Android device, iPhone, a tablet, or another computer. But Remotr requires you to install not one, but two dedicated apps [one for the host and another for the receiver] to get it working. One cool feature is local network support for couch co-op games. If youre firing up a party game like Castle Crashers, you can have up to three friends use their phones or tablets as controllers, each with their own screen.

If you fulfill the requirements and follow the setup guide, its another way to stream smooth, relatively low-latency game sessions from your host machine without relying on some distant data center that youd have to pay for monthly.

Rainway

Rainway is a game streaming service that allows you to remotely stream games from your preexisting Steam, Origin, Battle.net, or uPlay libraries, and its claim to fame is the web: you can stream games directly to a web browser window, as well as Mac or Windows PCs or Android phones, with an iOS version planned for a later date. Rainway makes sense if you want to stream games like you would with Steam Link, but you dont want to sign into multiple machines with your Steam user credentials.

The desktop app features plenty of settings you can tweak, including what quality youd like the stream to be, which GPU to use for encoding, and which of your monitors youd like to pull the game stream from if you have multiple monitors set up.

Its free, so its worth a shot if youre curious but dont want to invest in a game streaming platform quite yet.

Nvidia GameStream [and Moonlight]

If youve got a relatively recent Nvidia graphics card, theres a pretty nifty way to try in-home streaming [or even over the internet] to practically any platform under the sun: the unofficial Moonlight app for Nvidias GameStream platform.

Originally, GameStream only worked if you owned a $179 Nvidia Shield TV set-top box or the old, discontinued Shield Tablet or Shield Portable, all of which still work but the Moonlight open-source project brings it to Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, Chrome OS, and even Amazons Fire OS devices. Again, youll need an Nvidia GeForce card, plus the free GeForce Experience app, but then its just a matter of pairing your device of choice to your gaming PC with a four-digit PIN.

Nvidias GameStream has been around even longer than Steam In-Home Streaming, and its felt nearly as good in our tests.

HP Omen Game Stream

If you own one of the three supported HP Omen gaming PCs, the Omen Game Steam app is one last way to stream games from your host PC to other Windows 10 PCs on your home Wi-Fi network. Simply hop onto your Omen computer, download HPs required drivers, install the Omen Command Center on your non-gaming PC, and then start gaming. Its simple enough.

Stream a Netflix-like catalog of games to practically any device

Heres where it gets interesting. With a true cloud gaming platform, you can stream blockbuster games directly from remote servers, removing the inconvenience of acquiring the latest graphics card or a whole new gaming PC. The catch is that you need a fast internet connection with a home located near the data center that will be rendering your game stream to avoid lag overcoming your game. Different cloud gaming services have different internet speed requirements, but you may need more than 20 Mbps to stream at 1080p, and youll need a low ping [the time it takes for a server to respond to your request] to avoid the game lagging behind your button presses.

For a fee, of course

Some of these true cloud gaming services are trickier to start using because they require an invite-only beta or they ask for a credit card before offering you a free trial [assuming they offer one at all]. Still, these services are what you should aim for if you want to unlock a remote library of blockbuster games for your phone, tablet, or computer that you can play anywhere your internet allows.

PlayStation Now

If you want to know what a cloud game streaming service would be like on a console and a PC, perhaps give PlayStation Now a shot. Sony offers a seven-day free trial [credit card required] so you can get started without having to pay the $19.99 monthly subscription fee. PS Now includes more than 750 PS4, PS3, and PS2 games [over 275 of those are PS4 games], with more being added every month.

Its an impressive, functional archive of Sonys best classic PlayStation games, including the original God of War series, The Last of Us, and Uncharted, and it also brings more contemporary titles like NBA 2K18 and For Honor. Since PS Now can be used on a Windows PC, it also serves as an emulator of sorts for PC players who have a spare DualShock 4 controller. [You can't use other gamepads.]

However, like any of the currently available game streaming services, there are faults. For example, Sonys support page says that PS Now streams are capped at 720p resolution, which is sub-par no matter how you spin it. Its a particularly annoying issue because cloud gaming generally feels a little low-res to begin with [due to artifacting in the compressed video stream], and starting at 720p makes the experience worse.

Jump

If you dont care for big-budget titles and instead prefer indie games, then the Jump indie game service might be up your alley. Simply put, Jump is an on-demand indie game subscription service. It has 100-plus indie games in its catalog, it includes unlimited access [some streaming platforms attach time limits], and it costs $4.99 a month. Also, its promising to see that Jump still prioritizes low-latency gameplay, just like the more expensive services, yet it still values being an indie games service.

Jump can stream indie games to you, but it doesnt offer one of the key benefits of a game streaming service playing graphically intensive games without requiring powerful hardware because it doesnt work quite the same way. Instead of the servers handling the entire workload, your PC takes on some of the data in order to run the game.

Its definitely worth checking out since you might discover a new favorite game by an indie developer. And isnt discovery the best part about gaming?

Vortex

This is a game streaming service without a free trial, so Im less keen on recommending it. But if youre curious, Vortex costs $9.99 per month for an 89-game subscription that includes Apex Legends, Rainbow Six: Siege, and a bunch of other popular titles. However, a number of games in Vortexs library require you to own them in order to play. In the case of Steam games, Vortex verifies your license ownership by checking your Steam profile [assuming its public].

You can stream games using Vortex to an Android phone, Windows PC, or the Chrome browser over your Wi-Fi or wired internet connection with at least 10 Mbps download speed.

Between the limitations to the service namely around Steam games and the lack of a free trial, Vortex might not be the best service for newcomers to try out.

Stream games you own across the internet

This is the most technical and advanced option; this is for the power users. These services dont offer a catalog of games. Instead, they let you play games you already own on an extremely powerful, cloud-based gaming PC.

Some of these services literally let you rent a virtual Windows gaming PC in the cloud, so you can download at high speeds, install, and play games on a virtual desktop as you would normally. This is especially useful to Mac users, who are excluded from most PC games or dont have properly optimized versions available.

GeForce Now

Nvidias desktop game streaming platform is in beta, and it has been since October 2017. But that doesnt mean its not worth looking into particularly since its free during the beta, as long as you own compatible games. GeForce Now is a game streaming and PC virtualization service that basically lets you click to instantly install your own Steam and Battle.net titles on a powerful remote PC that lives in a network of servers across North America and Europe. Not every game works, but Nvidias 500-plus supported titles include crowd-pleasers like Counter-Strike and brand-new titles like Sekiro.

By utilizing its own Tesla graphics cards, Nvidias servers can push games to Mac, PC, and Nvidia Shield players at a solid 1080p resolution and 60 frames per second. Nvidia also has plans to eventually switch to the new RTX Server so that features like ray tracing and DLSS can be enabled for supported games streamed on GeForce Now.

But you might just have to wait for a free beta invite. As Nvidia says on its site: Entry into the beta will vary depending on geographic location and space.

Steam Link Anywhere

How could I compile a list of services that allow you to stream games across the internet using a host PC. and not include Steam Link Anywhere? Valves new internet game streaming feature was recently added as a beta feature within Steam In-Home, so right now, its still half-baked. Ive tried it and decided that a how-to would help you test it for yourself because the app can be a bit unclear about the setup process.

In my tests, Ive found that Steam Link Anywhere is decent if youre playing on a fast LTE or Wi-Fi connection using your phone and you have great internet upload speeds at home for your host PC. However, there are some issues with certain Wi-Fi networks and regional carriers, which Valve reps tell me theyre working on fixing.

Right now, Valve is being somewhat cryptic about the exact requirements for Steam Link Anywhere. According to the beta page, you need to have a good upload speed and [that] your Steam Link device has a good network connection. Once you get past that, all you need is a Windows PC to host the games, plus the Steam beta client running on an Android device or the ill-fated Steam Link box.

Theres no indication as to when Valves game streaming service will exit beta or if it will have additional features, but its out there for you to try for free.

Shadow by Blade

You might not have heard of Shadow, but its a real cloud game streaming service based in the United States. Like other similar platforms, Shadow works by giving you a virtualized computer with the means to play 3D games. Currently, Shadow is operational in 38 out of the 50 states, with more on the way.

Shadow is subscription-based, so you can subscribe for $34.95 per month or $29.95 monthly with a year-long commitment. Unfortunately, you have to select one of those paid plans to gain access to the month-long trial, which I think is a bit underhanded. Blade promises to send you a reminder three days before you get charged for the next month of service, but since theres no way to demo it for free, Id say tread carefully.

Blade, Shadows parent company, is also selling a game streaming console alongside the subscription named the Shadow Ghost. Its capable of outputting video at 4K resolution at a 60Hz refresh rate or 1080p HD at 144Hz. Regarding pricing, its $139.95 for the hardware which is pricey but who said cloud gaming was cheap?

Playkey

A game streaming service based out of Russia, Playkey is a data center-powered game streaming solution that requires you to bring the games you want to play. You can test it out by subscribing, then sign-in with your own Steam, Battle.net, Origin, or uPlay account to have games in your digital library streamed in 1080p at 60 fps to your computer.

Unfortunately, while Playkey used to offer a trial period, that offer seems to have been removed from its site, which makes me even more skeptical about recommending its service. My other concern is that Playkey lacks servers in North and South America; its servers are in Frankfurt, London, and Moscow. To make up for its shortcomings, Playkeys network is decentralized, so anyone with a GTX 1080 [or better] can host and contribute to the overall computing power of the network.

Pricing is time-based on a monthly pay cycle, with a 70-hour plan available for $35, 200 hours for $40, or unlimited gameplay for $45. However, if you dont have any games, you can purchase the full games through Playkey, stream them, and then play them locally as you would on a regular gaming PC.

Parsec

What if you wanted to try cloud game streaming on a per-hour basis? Parsec can now stream for free from your own gaming PC, but its also got different cloud-based servers that you can rent at different cost tiers, powered by Amazon Web Services or Paperspace data centers that are located near New York City, San Francisco, and Amsterdam. If you are located near or in those cities, it might be a good idea to opt for the Paperspace option.

However, games are a time-consuming activity that I think Parsecs own website sums up pretty well: If you play more than 8-10 hours of games each week and you want the best experience possible, you should still build / buy your own gaming PC. Its evident that Parsec is warning you about the costs over time.

Like other cloud game streaming services, Parsec offers 60 fps, low-latency gameplay over the internet, including a desktop app and an experimental web client.

More to come

Now, you should hopefully have a few different options within easy reach if you want to try streaming games for yourself. But the free and trial services listed here dont necessarily represent whats possible once big players like Microsoft, Google, and maybe Amazon join the fray. These big internet businesses have the scale and existing infrastructure that existing cloud gaming companies can only dream of, and competing services may be forced to stay competitive by adding new features or data centers, too.

The dream of being able to reliably stream and play games from anywhere in the world might not be that far-fetched in the years to come.

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Correction, 6:00 PM ET: PS4 Remote Play is capable of up to 1080p and 60 fps streaming on a PS4 Pro, not 1080p and 30 fps.

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