Steam Link Game-streaming App: Better Than Expected Less Than Ideal
class="cnetReview row" section=""> This is turning out to be a big year for cloud gaming. Nvidia's GeForce Now service is still in beta but going strong, and now Valve has extended its game-distribution platform Steam's in-home game review-streaming capability to iOS and Android devices that connect to the same network as the host system. The Steam Link app, which Valve launched today, brings the ability to sling your game library to an Android phone, tablet or TV or an iPhone, iPad or APKX Apple TV ( $169 at Walmart ), Mobile Games as long as you've got a Steam host system connected to the same network as your device.
Like many cloud services, Steam requires a 5GHz or ios Ethernet connection between the host and the router, as well as between the host (which can be Mac or PC) and the device. Screenshot by Lori Grunin/CNET I only had a few hectic hours to try out the prerelease version of the app, so didn't I get to test important features like the Android version (I love my stopgap Moto G5 but discovered post-purchase that it doesn't support 5GHz Wi-Fi), voice chat handling, multi- and third-party controller capability (I only used the Steam Controller) or tablet performance; I'll update this once the final Android app is available and the iOS app has been approved by Apple and APK become available via the App store.
How it works Valve's been lagging in its app development if you judge by its current Steam mobile app (on both Android and iOS), which is clunky, XAPK ugly and missing some capabilities. So it's set the bar pretty low in what we expect from the company on mobile. In that sense, the clean, easy-to-use interface is a welcome surprise. There are three steps to setting up the system. First, you enable and set up Steam's in-home streaming feature within the desktop Steam application on a host system attached to your network.
If you've never used Steam's streaming, you should note that it completely takes over your system, simultaneously displaying the streamed game cheats. That's because it sends whatever's coming off the video card to the app. It also means your streaming box or phone has to be attached to the same network and the bandwidth needs to be pretty constant. Then you connect your Bluetooth controller to the device.
As noted earlier this week, Steam quietly enabled Bluetooth support in the Steam Controller in preparation for this launch. This can get tricky, especially if you move it from device to device, because of Bluetooth idiosyncrasies.
