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Nvidia is giving up on GameStream to the dismay of Shield TV owners
Well, at least some Shield TV owners aren't happy
There are way too many ways to play video games these days. It's a shame about being able to play them however you'd like, though, especially when you're dealing with different hardware platforms tied to different screens. There are ways to fill those gap, though; one of them being Nvidia's Shield TV, which lets users stream PC games to their living room sets. The company has announced, however, that it is bowing out of providing that crucial connection next year.
It's official. Valve has finally announced the launch date for the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck is an upcoming handheld PC gaming system created by Valve. It runs on Linux (Arch, by the way) and utilizes a custom AMD APU. As you can imagine, it's a hot item. Valve took reservations for orders when it announced the handheld in 2021. Well, today, Valve has confirmed it will start emailing invites to reservation holders on February 25th, which is coincidentally the Steam Deck's release date. Orders will start shipping on the 28th, which means we're a month away from the first batch going out, and more batches will roll out weekly.
The upcoming Steam Deck is easily one of the most interesting products to be announced in 2021. For the most part, it's a beefier distant cousin of the Nintendo Switch, bringing the mighty performance of a gaming PC to a handheld format. Running a custom AMD Zen 2 APU with RDNA 2 graphics, it may not touch the capabilities of a really high-end computer, but the fact that it can handle a decent amount of PC games as a handheld console is pretty noteworthy on its own. As we look forward to its release, Valve is hyping the Steam Deck with one very nerve-racking teardown video.
Valve's Steam Deck is the latest attempt to make portable PC gaming a thing
Aggressively priced to start at $399, but you'll probably want more storage
For the last 4 years, the Nintendo Switch has been out on its own as the best portable gaming experience outside of playing on your smartphone. Other attempts at a portable gaming PC have come and gone without much success, but for the first time, the Switch may have a real contender.
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It would appear that everyone's favorite new MOBA trend is Auto Chess, so of course, Valve has their own version in the works that's built off of Dota. The game is called Dota Underlords, and it just entered into a limited beta where Dota 2 Battle Pass owners can jump in early to test the waters on PC. After a week of stress-testing through Battle Pass, an open beta will begin for everyone else, and this will include Steam (Windows, Mac, and Linux), Android, and iOS users.
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Valve announced some big news for Steam users today, introducing the new Steam Link Anywhere service. Building off of its namesake, Anywhere takes streaming your personal library to the next level by allowing you to play on a client device outside of your local network (which was one of the weakest points of Steam Link when it launched for Android). To coincide with the announcement of the Anywhere beta, Valve has updated the Steam Link Android app to support it.
Steam, despite some controversial competition lately, is still the king of PC gaming — the ubiquitous platform sports a massive list of features, even basic ones like a shopping cart. One of the areas where Steam has struggled, however, is the quality of its mobile app. Now, Steam Link is a fine application and I use it almost daily, but the main one is just... rough. One of Steam's most robust features is its communication tools and Chat, one of the core elements of that, just got separated out into its own app and I have to say, it's pretty nice.
Valve's Dota 2 is still one of the most popular games in the e-sports world, and the 2018-2019 season of the Dota Pro Circuit is currently ongoing. If you enjoy watching professional Dota matches, Valve has a new app just for you — Dota Pro Circuit.
A few days ago, Valve released the beta version of the Steam Link app for Android. This means that you can play your Steam library right on your phone, and it's pretty great. Though it's by no means a new concept – we've seen it before with Sony and Nvidia devices – it doesn't require either a PlayStation or a GeForce graphics card. All you need is a Steam library and your phone on the same network, plus a controller, and you're good to go.
Playing games on Android usually means playing mobile games, but Valve could give you more options soon. It's launching a Steam Link app on Android, allowing you to play your PC games on phones and tablets. In addition, Steam Video is coming to Android. Did you know Steam offered video content? Well, it does.
Valve has apparently been working with known Magic: The Gathering designer Richard Garfield since 2014 to come up with an all-new game for PC, consoles, and mobile. It is called Artifact, and it's a Dota 2-themed collectible card game that looks like it will be Valve's answer to Hearthstone. The console and PC release dates are scheduled for the end of 2018, but the sad news is that it will not be hitting Android until mid-2019.
Imagine a world where Bridge Constructor combines its bridge-building gameplay with Valve's puzzle-platformer Portal. Well, imagine no longer as apparently Headup Games have been secretly working on just that very thing. That's right, Bridge Constructor Portal is a thing and it's coming to Android really soon. There is even a trailer available for your viewing pleasure, so hit that "Read More" button and check it out!
Let's be real here: we live on a beautiful planet. While some of our fascinations lie in what is beyond our rock in space, I think that we should take the time to appreciate what we're standing on. It is quite impossible that any one person can see all that this world has to offer, which is why Google Earth is so cool. Today marks the next step for exploring our homeworld by adding the virtual reality element with the appropriately named Earth VR.
Let's state this now: Counter-Strike is awesome. Many an hour has been wasted passed playing the legendary first-person shooter mod for Half-Life, and now even more hours can be whiled away, as the game has come to Android.
HTC raised more than a few eyebrows when it announced the Vive, a VR headset that ostensibly competes with the more well-known Oculus Rift. But far from being some one-off excursion like the Re Camera, the Vive has gained critical acclaim from those who've had access to its pre-production developer units, and HTC's partnership with Valve gives the company an in with one of the gaming industry's most influential players. At CES 2016, HTC revealed a new model, the Vive Pre, with some very interesting additions to the original.
Steam is the #1 gaming market for PCs, and the desktop client is quite robust (and big enough that performance-minded gamers complain about its RAM and processor footprint). The official mobile version of Steam has been slowly catching up to the desktop in terms of features, and today's update to version 2.1 is the biggest that's come in a long time. A laundry list of tools from the desktop and web versions of Steam are now available in the Android app, no pop-out required.
Last year the buzzword at Mobile World Congress was "wearable." The fervor from that market trend still hasn't died down, but hot on its heels is "virtual reality." Despite a less than fantastic position in the smartphone space, HTC seems intent on expanding into virtual reality to compete with the likes of Microsoft, Google, Oculus Rift (and by extension, Facebook), and Samsung. Say hello to the HTC Vive... or possibly the Re Vive, depending on which HTC promo you go by.
At the pace that NVIDIA and Valve are publishing older PC games for SHIELD devices, we might see Half-Life 3 come as a SHIELD exclusive. (In 2035.) But today, you can play the third stand-alone Half-Life shooter on your SHIELD Tablet. Half-Life 2, Episode One (the oddly-named sequel to the original Half-Life 2) is now available on the Play Store for $7.99. You'll need a SHIELD Tablet to purchase it and an official SHIELD controller to play it.
Valve's Portal and Half-Life 2, despite being quite old in terms of PC games, are two of the best showcase titles for the SHIELD right now. Naturally NVIDIA (which publishes both games in the Play Store) is eager to highlight them for the shiny new SHIELD Tablet. Actually, it's not shiny - the tablet is quite matte. But anyway, both games have been updated with SHIELD Tablet support, a week before the device is released.