From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action


What with all the talk about the SteamMachine coming out soon, I dug
up my old SteamLink and decided to hook it up to the living room TV. I
mean, why not? It's a perfectly workable device, and it's pretty much
done nothing but collect dust since I bought it. I've tried it once or
twice but I don't really have much use for it. When I play computer
games, I much prefer to do so in the comfort of my own study. But
maybe, I thought, if I installed the damn thing I'd /find/ use for it.

But I couldn't do it. Not for the reasons you think though.

\

In case you don't remember, the SteamLink was Valve's first attempt at living-room gaming. It's a micro-computer, only a little larger and
thicker than a cellphone. It's not very powerful --it utilizes an 1GHz
ARMv7 CPU and has only 256MB RAM-- but it doesn't need to be. That's
because the SteamLink doesn't actually run any games itself. Rather
(as its name implies) it links up the living room TV with another PC
on the local network, and it's the latter device which does all the
grunt work. All the SteamLink does is stream the video data to the
television, and send back the player's inputs to the host computer.
And it works fairly well. Latency is extremely low, and video quality
is high (albeit limited to HD 1920x1080 resolutions only. It's only a
tiny device built back in 2015, after all).

\

The goal, then, was to pair the SteamLink with my 'back-up' gaming PC.
That rig itself was somewhat aged, but still good enough for most
games I'd likely want to play in front of the television. I mean, the
host PC would certainly struggle with "Doom Dark Ages" or "STALKER 2",
but it's still got enough oomph to play most Indie games and a fair
number of AAA titles too (comparatively, it's about the same
performance level as a SteamDeck). So old as that old PC might be,
it's still capable enough for what I'd likely ask of it.

Of course, there was a small problem of networking. The living room is
on an entirely different network subnet than the PCs in the study.
This was purposefully done to add an extra layer of security
(especially since the wifi in the living room can be shared to guests)
but it makes streaming a bit harder. So I had to run some cable
between the rooms (steel beams in the walls make wifi connectivity
slower and less reliable). It was messy but it worked.

So too did the SteamLink. I'm still surprised at how effortless the
whole experience is. It's not /quite/ plug-n-play, but close enough. I
pulled out an old wireless keyboard and a spare controller, and pretty
soon I got "Doom3" running in one room, and playing in the next.

\

And once all that was done? I reversed all my steps and neatly packed everything back up again.

I could give a number of reasons for this decision. Partly because, as
I said, I just can't see myself putting this to use that often. There
aren't that many times that I invite people over to play video games,
and when I do, more often than not I just bring them into the study
and we play there. And then there was the whole power-usage thing; to
make proper usage of the set-up, I'd have to keep the spare PC
powered-up all the time. It's actually a fairly quiet beast, but the
idea of using all that electricity for so little gain bothered me.

Too, as good as SteamLink is, it's still not perfect. Even in my brief excursion with the device, I three-times accidentally dropped to the
Windows desktop, and had to drag out the keyboard to alt-tab back to
the game. And once I had to actually go to the other room entirely
because the keyboard attached to the SteamLink didn't work and I had
to alt-tab from the host PC. This is more a condemnation of the
underlying OS than the SteamLink hardware, but it did make the
experience less smooth than I'd like.

Plus, SteamLink works best with a gamepad, and I just don't like using
gamepads to play games. You can use a mouse-keyboard, but it's
cumbersome using those on a couch.

\

But none of those are the REAL reasons that I put away the SteamLink.
Sadly, that is a much sillier reason.

It's that the SteamLink packaging is just so GOOD. The way Valve
packed the device into its little blue box; it's premium! The cables
are so perfectly wrapped, the different power-outlet plugs so neatly arranged... packed away into its container, it just looks TOO GOOD to
be used.Hooked up to the TV, it was just another black bit of plastic
and wires. In the box, the SteamLink had style!

[Valve does really good packaging, is what I'm saying!]

(I think I put almost as much effort into getting all the cables and
parts of the SteamLink back into the box ever-so-perfectly as I
actually did getting all the hardware working in the first place. Even
cables are perfectly looped! The whole thing looks near-mint condition
again! ;-)

Plus, if I /really/ want to play games on the living room PC, I might
as well just drag the back-up gaming PC into the room and hook that up directly. Sure it's bigger (a LOT bigger! It's a 30kg, 1m-tall
full-tower behemoth!) but I'm sure I can squeeze it into some corner
where it wouldn't be noticed. Who needs a SteamLink when you have
extra PCs cluttering up the place already?

I love my little SteamLink. I think it's a fantastic device, and I
really, really, REALLY wish I could make myself find a use for it. But
right now, I think it's just much nicer staying in its box.

#

I never understood this push to try to get PC gaming into the living
room couch anyway; it just seems such a different type of gaming from
console stuff anyway. Did you ever use a SteamLink (or similar 'stream-to-living-room' device)? Do you think this is --in streaming
form, or direct-connect-to-PC devices like the new SteamMachine-- what
PC gamers are clamoring for anyway? Or is PC gaming better done in the
privacy of its own room?






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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

<snip>

I never understood this push to try to get PC gaming into the living
room couch anyway; it just seems such a different type of gaming from
console stuff anyway.

Ahh but you forget there are so many games made for both platforms that
are designed around console limitations then badly ported to PC and the experience of those games was always supposed to be Controller+TV, not PC+keyboard+mouse, so a lot of people who do not have consoles won't buy
those games since they don't use a PCs strengths and come with a
Console's weaknesses.

But if you can get their PC hooked up to a TV and a controller, suddenly
those games seem a bit better since you can experience them "as
intended", and if the games can be seen that way, they buy them.

It was all about selling more copies of bad Console-to-PC ports.

After all Valve makes nothing if you don't buy through them, and the alternative is you just buy a console for the TV/Couch gaming
experience, and Valve faces the possibility you'll abandon PC gaming in
favor of that and they lose your money forever.

As always, the reason is money.

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr
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