Steam Link and Steam Controller now available to Pre Order

I've finally resurfaced from a solid week of Link gaming :)

Overall, I'm very impressed. For the majority of games, it's like being sat in front of your PC. No lag (imperceptible for the most part), superb image quality, and everything just, works, you know?

It takes about two minutes to set up, plug it in, it scans for anything running Steam on your network. Hit connect and then enter the code on your source PC. Steam Big Picture has come along leaps and bounds since I last tried it. The UI has been redesigned, and it's much more fluid and easy to find things. The filters section is a little basic, as the selections aren't cumulative, you can pick multiple filters, and it adds these to the results displayed, rather than combining them. A particular pain for me as I set my games to hidden when I'm not playing them, and I don't seem to be able to change the category from inside BP. Apart from that, no issues.

Xbox One controller works out of the box, but I bought a wireless adapter yesterday hoping for a miracle, but no such luck. Hopefully a firmware update will add support for it.

The games I played were:

Res 4
Fallout: NV
Rocket League
Chivalry
Tomb Raider
Duck Game
Metro: Last Light
PES2016

I didn't try any competitive shooters, it isn't what it's designed for, so I tried to keep it to games I generally play. All settings were set to beautiful, and hardware encoding / decoding was enabled. I game on a 4670k @ 4.3Ghz and a Titan X at stock.

Everything worked perfectly, with no perceptible input lag or delay, bar Rocket League. I don't have the words to describe how this felt, it just felt... odd. The input lag was worse than in other games, still low, but I take RL quite seriously, so it was wiped from the list of games to play on the Steam Link.

I'd recommend having VNC set up on your gaming PC too and some way of accessing it, if you're elsewhere in the house. Practically all games support controllers nowadays, but a number of them still use the splash screen launchers that you need to get around, and the Link didn't like streaming my desktop to downstairs. I have three monitors of different resolutions, and it was trying to stream all three to my 55" TV downstairs. Messy. Steam controller would be another option I suppose.

All told, I'm over the moon with it. My PC is now truly the entertainment centre in my house, and there's finally a small, powerful streaming box that doesn't cost a fortune. Best purchase in a while!
 
Worthy said:
Everything worked perfectly, with no perceptible input lag or delay, bar Rocket League. I don't have the words to describe how this felt, it just felt... odd. The input lag was worse than in other games, still low, but I take RL quite seriously, so it was wiped from the list of games to play on the Steam Link.
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This is great to hear that its not just me!

The stats show 60fps and almost 0 input and display lag, yet it feels like its playing stuttery and laggy.

Considering its a game used to promote the Link, and pretty much the perfect casual sofa game, its a real annoyance :(

Whats your setup? I'm on a i5 3570K and nVidia GTX970, running Windows 10.


Klunt Bumskrint said:
Any reviews on the link yet?
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ukxenon said:
i want to see a good to honest review on it before i even think about it
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When it works, its brilliant. The problem is there doesn't seem to be any consistency or reason to why it sometimes doesn't.

However, its cheap enough to give it a go anyway. I'd recomend getting one regardless.
 
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Can anyone tell me if the Link will work (from Windows PC to iPad Air) with an Apple iPad Air.

Google is not helping me much...

As far as I can tell Steam needs to be on the machine that gets streamed to so iOS would not be an option?
 
I'm not sure what you are trying to do here. The link is its own steam running device that plugs into TV etc and so you would stream from Windows PC to Link.

Are wanting to play games using your PC but output to display to the Ipad ? Maybe one day Valve will update the mobile steam clients (iOS/Android) to allow streaming to them :D

Edit: I guess you can already stream to Android if you have a Kepler+ Nvidia card using Moonlight app and iOS version is underway I believe.
 
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I'd really like Valve to release a streaming only client that can be run without admin rights or installation so I can run it from my work laptop... Ideally I'd like an independent 3rd party bit of software that does what home streaming is doing but can run any game from any provider.
 
stooeh said:
I'm not sure what you are trying to do here. The link is its own steam running device that plugs into TV etc and so you would stream from Windows PC to Link.

Are wanting to play games using your PC but output to display to the Ipad ? Maybe one day Valve will update the mobile steam clients (iOS/Android) to allow streaming to them :D

Edit: I guess you can already stream to Android if you have a Kepler+ Nvidia card using Moonlight app and iOS version is underway I believe.
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Ah okay so you stream to the Link from the PC and the Link plugs into a TV via HDMI...

Not ever owning an Apple device (which is making this a little confusing!) there only looks to be a "Lightning" port on the AirPad. So if the Link outputs using HDMI I would need to hope there is some sort of HDMI to Lightning adapter out there.

Apologies if this is way off the mark lol :P
 
I finally got around to setting this up. My rig is a bit dated now with a [email protected], 8gb ram and a 2gb 7850@1200/1450. Only played Civ5 so far and it works really well. Hardware encoding on, set bandwidth to unlimited and running 1080p.
 
I just installed and then played Stick of Truth through the Link solidly for a couple of hours. Apart from having to wander upstairs to move the mouse out of the centre of the screen it was perfect.

It wasn't until I turned it off that my GF realised I was streaming it and not playing it on 360. This is much more like I was expecting.
 
Anyone know if you pre-order the link whether you get always get a Gift copy of Rocket league or does the game automatically get added to your account if you don't already have it?
 
Devious said:
Anyone know if you pre-order the link whether you get always get a Gift copy of Rocket league or does the game automatically get added to your account if you don't already have it?
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You always get a copy. I already had it but I still had another copy added to my library for gifting or whatnot.
 
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