PNTS NEWS

Checkout the Latest News in Gaming and Tech Culture

[pntsnetworknews]

MAY 2019 NPD MAKES 21 YEAR HISTORY!!!

Not how you think though...

According to ther latest NPD post from Matt Piscatella on Twitter and Youtube, it was a “tough” month, with spending down “11%” when factering volume from last May.

Also according to Matt, this has been lowest spending using the regions NPD tracks for this data since 1998.  That would be a 21 year low!

The only thing off-setting this volume from being even worse is the continued performance from the Nintendo Switch.  Per this report, it is the only platform with hardware and software growth YoY in May. 

Catch the complete report here

[pntsnetworknews]

Valve “stealthily” releases remote play beta for steam.

And it works...

So a few days ago from this writing, I came across an article that mentioned Steam Remote Play. I originally chalked it up as the Steam Link in network/ in-house sessions offered by the Steam PC gaming platform, still in beta.  I’ve been testing this feature out on my various devices (phone and Firestick). I found it quite enjoyable. BUT HOLD ON... that’s not what this is!

Per the very informative article via Kitguru.net this Steam Link beta has now been opened to remote stream to Samsung Tvs AND outside your home network!

You have to be close to a data center owned by Valve (unfortunately I have no source to tell where these are located). I not knowing if I fit into this category, I still wanted to try out. I made the necessary updates per the phone app, which then updated Steam on my PC and KABOOM. Afterwards, from 2 .5 miles away from my home, I was able to connect remotely and play games.

The application said I had a “slow” 5 MBPS connection. With that, the touch screen controls were spot on with hardly any lag noticed (I’m not a lag spot guru... I guess, nonetheless).  However, with my bluetooth iPega PG-9087 controller the lag was noticable, but not horrible. 

In it’s current state, the process appears to struggle at first working with peripheals blue toothed to your device, when out of network.  You have to wait several minutes for everything to “sync” and work in a playable state. I was however playing a game not optimized for Steam’s big picture mode Borderlands 1). Big picture mode is whats used to conduct the streaming from your original steam installed hardware. In addition, keep in mind this is still in beta.

That said, we’ve had Stadia via Project Stream put something in our hands via streaming and now Valve with Steam Link. Microsoft has announced a beta would be active in October 2019. We are aware of no details on scope at this time.

~ Provided by MM2K

[pntsnetworknews]

PNTS Network News is here!

Welcome to the PNTS News Blog. Here you will see periodic news associated to gaming, tech and any other PNTS content.  Enjoy and let us know your thoughts always.  [email protected]