NVIDIA Gamestream is a service that, with the right hardware, lets you stream your games in 4K from your powerful PC to your living room TV. It was launched in 2013 and worked alongside the NVIDIA Shield TV device. I don’t use this kit anymore, but I have fond memories of it. It was a very good, hassle-free and stable implementation of local streaming that many people preferred over more devices. Common alternatives offered by platforms such as Steam.
It was too good, too pure for this world. NVIDIA announced: (opens in new tab)as far as it goes, GameStream has reached its end of life, and “in mid-February, a planned update to the NVIDIA Games app will begin rolling out to Shield owners. With this update, GameStream functionality will no longer be available in the app.” increase.”
NVIDIA adds that in the future, Shield owners will be able to use Steam Link to stream their games to TVs, and the GeForce Now service will enable cloud streaming to Shield TVs (this is not the same thing). ).
This is a drop in people who use their Shield TV like a cold, mainly because GameStream is one of the core features of the Shield hardware. Announcing the end of support for live services is one thing, but this is another. I’m sure this was a big selling point for many who bought the Shield.
“What is NVIDIA?” Write Shield users on the NVIDIA subreddit (opens in new tab)“This is my primary game mode with the Shield and the 3080. It’s the main reason I own both the Shield and the NVIDIA card, so I can safely say I’m disappointed.”
“Who would actually buy a Shield TV without the ability to remove it?” another responds. “This is pretty nasty. The only reason I bought the bloody stuff. I feel like I can’t remove the feature. Stop supporting it in the future because it’s one of the things they use to advertise.” just do.”
Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, NVIDIA’s announcement seems to be trying to get ahead of this by proposing available alternatives. But there’s no denying that GameStream was Shield’s selling point, and some people probably bought it with an unreasonable expectation that it would “just work” for what they needed it to be.
How about dodging the February update? Nice idea, but NVIDIA says: .”
In other words, GameStream is removed and trying to get Shield to work out of the box will block other functionality until you update it into the future after GameStream and it won’t work.
I can’t help but sympathize with the customer’s reaction to this. This is not just a problem with the Shield hardware itself.You’ll have to buy into the wider NVIDIA ecosystem to use these services, so there will be people out there for whom GameStream was important when choosing a GPU. Not to mention the knock-on effect of moonlight (opens in new tab)which requires GameStream to work.
We have reached out to NVIDIA for further comment. I will update if I have an answer.
