Nvidia and Valve want to bolster Steam Deck with better GeForce Now support

Date:
Wed, 11 Jan 2023 16:09:20 +0000

Description:
Do you use Nvidias GeForce Now streaming service on the Steam Deck? Then
heres some good news.

FULL STORY ======================================================================

Nvidia and Valve are keen to make Team Greens GeForce Now streaming service work better on the Steam Deck for those who engage in cloud gaming on the portable (and yes, there are reasons why you might want to do so well come back to that).

As PC Gamer reports, this came from Andrew Fear, who is Director of Product Management for GeForce Now at Nvidia, and told our sister site that: There is not a native app on Steam Deck today. Use a Chromium browser to make it work. I would say that both Nvidia and Valve, I think were both interested in
making [GeForce Now on Steam Deck] better. But we dont have any announcements on a native app coming to Steam.

As Fear observes, right now if you want to stream games via GeForce Now on
the Steam Deck, you need to do so in a Chromium browser (like Chrome or Edge ).

However, as you might guess, running in a browser is not the best experience for GeForce Now it makes certain things very clunky, particularly around the interface and game controls and a native app would represent a big step forward for the Steam Deck. Analysis: Nvidia and Valve, the Steam stream
dream team?

The problem here is that Fears statement is very vague. While saying that
both Nvidia and Valve want to make GeForce Now a better experience on the Steam Deck, theres no suggestion of how that might happen and whats more,
the clarification that theres no native app in the works doesnt feel very positive. This is just a hint that things will be improved, rather than anything remotely concrete.

While its good to see that signaled, theres really nothing to get excited about yet. Whether there will ever be a native Linux app for GeForce Now, well, were uncertain about that, shall we say. Its a minority gaming platform to say the least (1.4% of all gamers on Steam as of the last Valve hardware survey), and unless the Steam Deck (which runs Linux, SteamOS to be precise) really becomes a big thing in the future, its likely not worth the effort in terms of the necessary development time and costs for now.

As to why you might want to stream games via GeForce Now on the Steam Deck? Well, for starters, its one way of saving battery life, with it being far
less demanding to run GeForce Now in the browser than it is to get the Steam Deck running certain games natively. Demanding titles can absolutely demolish the handhelds battery, of course, whereas streaming GeForce Now can give you multiple hours of longevity (reportedly in the order of five hours, from the comments weve seen).

It also allows for the ability to play some games which arent compatible with the Steam Deck and cant be run at all. That includes games with anti-cheat features that dont play nice with the Proton compatibility layer the Steam Deck relies on. Furthermore, besides non-functional titles, there may be
other games which are glitchy or run sub-optimally on the Deck, and streaming those could be a much better experience, too (while saving battery).

The trade-off with streaming as ever is that the smoothness of gameplay youll experience is down to the speed of your internet connection.



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/news/nvidia-and-valve-want-to-bolster-steam-deck-wit h-better-geforce-now-support


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