My game consoles are hooked up to a big TV in my basement. It’s a great setup, but it’s also not always the most convenient spot for them to be. And my gaming PC is also my work PC, and since I’ve been working from home for going on 18 months, my home office isn’t exactly where I want to be spending my free time. Thankfully, I’ve discovered that there are some ways to bring my games to me, wherever I am, while still leaving them exactly where they are.
With PC games, if you use the PC game marketplace Steam, you can use its feature Steam Link to play your games on other devices. The Steam Link app is available all over the place - on iPhones and iPads, on Android phones, on Android TV and Fire TV streaming sticks, on Samsung Smart TVs, even on other computers. You just download the app, and you can play your PC games on any of those screens. There’s very little lag, and it works with just about any controller, or you can use on-screen touchscreen controls.
You can get a similar experience if you have a PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5. On PCs, smartphones, and tablets, you can install Sony’s Remote Play app. You can then hook up your PlayStation controller directly to your device, and use it to play the games from your console, just as if you were sitting in front of it.
If you have Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which is a subscription service that lets you download a number of PC and Xbox games, it also buys you access to Xbox Cloud Gaming. Instead of using your own PC or console like Steam and PlayStation, this service actually uses hardware that is sitting inside a Microsoft data center. The downside here is that you’re limited to the selection of games made available by Microsoft, but even so, it’s a generous selection that gains new titles monthly, so you should be able to find something you’ll enjoy.
