Nvidia Shield Game streaming has changed (newer games, steam cloud gaming etc?)

Aftermath · Jul 13, 2018

I'm talk8ng about the Shield Console/Android Box

so I discovered by accident today through a Facebook group when someone was discussing streaming newer games on their shield, someone was telling them how to log on steam and just play the game, I was under the impression that you could only do that streaming from your own P.C,

So what they have done is upgraded the Shield version of the Geforce Now streaming service more inline with the PC/Mac version so you have access to newer and current games to stream (if you remember the choice before was quite limited, now you can link to Steam and Uplay to stream the games from Nvidias Cloud too)

Earlier I saw Far Cry 5, Assassins Creed Origins now avilable to play if you own it on Steam, fortnite was there from Epic too etc

Previously I think the newest games on Geforce streaming was like the Witcher 3 and Tomb Raider? I was able to browse through all 138 steam games but unsure which games work (some do not and give an error about the gamepad edit: turns out you can still launch those, just use a mouse to bypass the warning)

It's a bit buggy as its in beta I believe it was introduced this week , I had Battlefront 2 (2005 edition) up & running but it needed the keyboard & mouse, but the gamepad games should work just fine for most games, also if you hold Start down for a few seconds on the Nvidia Gamepad you get a Virtual Keyboard mouse to Navigate the Menus of the games that need that KB/M combo thing still

Please excuse photo quality these were taken early this morn, this is how Steam looks, all these are my games with a few thrown in advertising to buy, like FF 15 and the Cod games, all others I own on steam. NO P.C connected to my Shield, all playable now through the Cloud

Geforce Now Menu

Quasicat · Jul 13, 2018

I literally only ever use mine for Plex and RetroArch. I haven't had a chance to play with it since the new update to Oreo 8.0. I need to check this out. Thanks OP!

brainchild · Jul 13, 2018

If NVIDIA SHIELD has the same streaming as GeForce NOW on PC then that is a game changer. I'm actually gonna get one if true.

Aftermath · Jul 14, 2018

Added Pics to the OP, also Damn shame but looks as though they removed the Game recording/live streaming feature from the system with the latest update

dialogic · Jul 17, 2018

I've been using this on my Shield TV for the past couple of days. It's actually quite amazing how well it works. The list of officially supported games is small (roughly 225 games, listed here: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/products/geforce-now/supported-games/), but so far I've tried several unsupported games from my Steam library and they have all worked flawlessly. Caveats being that an unsupported game must be redownloaded and installed to the Nvidia cloud every time it is launched, and your progress will be saved only if the game uses the Steam cloud saves function. Aside from those quirks we're basically looking at the long-fabled Steam box here, with graphical capabilities far surpassing the internal hardware of the Shield.

It's really kind of a game changer to see gameplay streamed at this quality. I played a couple hours of Doom last night at ultra settings, over 5 GHz wifi, and 99% of the time I couldn't tell I wasn't playing a local game on a console or PC. There were lag spikes/dropouts the other 1% of the time, but the system recovered quickly. I'm sure wired ethernet would be better. Nvidia says the beta will be free for at least the rest of this year. I'm a little concerned about what pricing might be like when the beta ends -- initially they proposed an hourly rate for gameplay that would be a little rich for my blood ($25 for 20 hours, I believe), but they've said that's not likely to be the pricing scheme they go with.

brainchild · Jul 17, 2018

dialogic said:
I've been using this on my Shield TV for the past couple of days. It's actually quite amazing how well it works. The list of officially supported games is small (roughly 225 games, listed here: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/products/geforce-now/supported-games/), but so far I've tried several unsupported games from my Steam library and they have all worked flawlessly. Caveats being that an unsupported game must be redownloaded and installed to the Nvidia cloud every time it is launched, and your progress will be saved only if the game uses the Steam cloud saves function. Aside from those quirks we're basically looking at the long-fabled Steam box here, with graphical capabilities far surpassing the internal hardware of the Shield.

It's really kind of a game changer to see gameplay streamed at this quality. I played a couple hours of Doom last night at ultra settings, over 5 GHz wifi, and 99% of the time I couldn't tell I wasn't playing a local game on a console or PC. There were lag spikes/dropouts the other 1% of the time, but the system recovered quickly. I'm sure wired ethernet would be better. Nvidia says the beta will be free for at least the rest of this year. I'm a little concerned about what pricing might be like when the beta ends -- initially they proposed an hourly rate for gameplay that would be a little rich for my blood ($25 for 20 hours, I believe), but they've said that's not likely to be the pricing scheme they go with.

Sounds just like the PC version. So how do you access the unsupported games? Does it just allow you to log into the steam client like it does on PC?

I don't mind having to download the games every time since NVIDIA'S download speeds are pretty fast, and I have unlimited data usage from my ISP.

I'm gonna get several shield tablets so that my kids and I play together. Can't wait!

dialogic · Jul 17, 2018

Yep, that's exactly right — you launch the Steam client just like any other GeForce Now game, log in (the first time only, if you let it save your information), and launch anything in your library from there.

I agree that installing an unsupported game generally isn't that big a deal; a 2.5 GB game only took a minute or two to download and install. Obviously some games are a lot larger, though.

I feel like this is giving new life to my existing Steam library, and it's already got me to spend a little money on PC games that I've avoided because my laptop wouldn't play them well enough. If the pricing is right I will likely stick with this service for a long time.

FeedMeAStrayCat · Jul 17, 2018

I use this service on my PC (with my lil Alienware Alpha R1), but one issue I have is that save games don't transfer over to your normal Steam account, unless I'm missing something. For example, I played Subnautica for like 30 hours on this service, but can't access it via my locally downloaded version of Subnautica (not a big deal anyways for this particular instance, I'm done with the game... for now).

What I did NOT realize is that any game could be played on this, it just needs to be "redownloaded" each time. That is very intriguing.

I wish I did have ethernet running to my Alpha, though, as the Wifi from my router isn't quite strong enough to produce great results all the time. When this does work, though, it works nearly flawlessly and can be very impressive.

dialogic · Jul 18, 2018

FeedMeAStrayCat said:
I use this service on my PC (with my lil Alienware Alpha R1), but one issue I have is that save games don't transfer over to your normal Steam account, unless I'm missing something. For example, I played Subnautica for like 30 hours on this service, but can't access it via my locally downloaded version of Subnautica (not a big deal anyways for this particular instance, I'm done with the game... for now).

What I did NOT realize is that any game could be played on this, it just needs to be "redownloaded" each time. That is very intriguing.

I wish I did have ethernet running to my Alpha, though, as the Wifi from my router isn't quite strong enough to produce great results all the time. When this does work, though, it works nearly flawlessly and can be very impressive.

Hm, that's disappointing to hear that the saves don't carry over. I'd assumed that since they were in the Steam cloud that you'd be able to pick up where you left off on any device. Maybe your Subnautica isn't cloud-enabled for some reason? I haven't tested it yet myself so if my results are any different I'll post here.

brainchild · Jul 18, 2018

FeedMeAStrayCat said:
I use this service on my PC (with my lil Alienware Alpha R1), but one issue I have is that save games don't transfer over to your normal Steam account, unless I'm missing something. For example, I played Subnautica for like 30 hours on this service, but can't access it via my locally downloaded version of Subnautica (not a big deal anyways for this particular instance, I'm done with the game... for now).

What I did NOT realize is that any game could be played on this, it just needs to be "redownloaded" each time. That is very intriguing.

I wish I did have ethernet running to my Alpha, though, as the Wifi from my router isn't quite strong enough to produce great results all the time. When this does work, though, it works nearly flawlessly and can be very impressive.

dialogic said:
Hm, that's disappointing to hear that the saves don't carry over. I'd assumed that since they were in the Steam cloud that you'd be able to pick up where you left off on any device. Maybe your Subnautica isn't cloud-enabled for some reason? I haven't tested it yet myself so if my results are any different I'll post here.

Don't have a shield yet but the PC version still uses cloud saves, so I'm not sure what the problem is.

Dorfdad · Jul 18, 2018

dialogic said:
I've been using this on my Shield TV for the past couple of days. It's actually quite amazing how well it works. The list of officially supported games is small (roughly 225 games, listed here: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/products/geforce-now/supported-games/), but so far I've tried several unsupported games from my Steam library and they have all worked flawlessly. Caveats being that an unsupported game must be redownloaded and installed to the Nvidia cloud every time it is launched, and your progress will be saved only if the game uses the Steam cloud saves function. Aside from those quirks we're basically looking at the long-fabled Steam box here, with graphical capabilities far surpassing the internal hardware of the Shield.

It's really kind of a game changer to see gameplay streamed at this quality. I played a couple hours of Doom last night at ultra settings, over 5 GHz wifi, and 99% of the time I couldn't tell I wasn't playing a local game on a console or PC. There were lag spikes/dropouts the other 1% of the time, but the system recovered quickly. I'm sure wired ethernet would be better. Nvidia says the beta will be free for at least the rest of this year. I'm a little concerned about what pricing might be like when the beta ends -- initially they proposed an hourly rate for gameplay that would be a little rich for my blood ($25 for 20 hours, I believe), but they've said that's not likely to be the pricing scheme they go with.

I have had to search for some games that seem to be installed on the service but officially listed. GTA San Andreas is one that plays excellent but you have to manually search and add it one time

Carn · Jul 18, 2018

Cool. I'm still eying a Shield, but mostly to use for media playback and Plex, but this is looking more and more interesting. The current models have been out a bit, is there any news of a new/revised box coming?

dialogic · Jul 18, 2018

Carn said:
Cool. I'm still eying a Shield, but mostly to use for media playback and Plex, but this is looking more and more interesting. The current models have been out a bit, is there any news of a new/revised box coming?

I haven't heard anything about a revision, but you're right that they've been out for some time so it could be in the works. Honestly for media playback it is extremely capable; butter smooth with everything I've ever asked it to play. In terms of gaming, it's using the Tegra X1 processor, same as the Switch, but has 3 GB of RAM to the Switch's 4. It's definitely a good emulation machine (though there's not quite enough juice for Dolphin in my experience), and if you intend to use the GeForce Now service the hardware doesn't really matter much.

Kuosi · Jul 18, 2018

It'll be a paid service as mentioned, not exactly cheap one either

Trojita · Jul 19, 2018

Do you guys actually like your Shield Controller?

Crayon · Jul 19, 2018

Well. That's pretty neat. I like the sheild.

ContraWars · Jul 19, 2018

I have a Shield TV Pro. It's garbage IMO. Input lag from the controller. I bought both the exclusive HD Metal Gear Solid ports for it and it won't even install them completely. The remotes desync all the time. You need to charge their internal batteries to max before updating the firmware is possible at all, and it's a pain in the ass that dies quickly like a Playstation controller. There's no optical audio output for surround sound and you need to rely on HDMI pass-thru or a USB solution.

It's the best "android box" but just a big pain in the ass to deal with for gaming.

dialogic · Jul 19, 2018

Trojita said:
Do you guys actually like your Shield Controller?

I don't have the Shield controller. I use my Wii U pro controllers with the Mayflash USB PC adapter, which works great.

ContraWars said:
I have a Shield TV Pro. It's garbage IMO. Input lag from the controller. I bought both the exclusive HD Metal Gear Solid ports for it and it won't even install them completely. The remotes desync all the time. You need to charge their internal batteries to max before updating the firmware is possible at all, and it's a pain in the ass that dies quickly like a Playstation controller. There's no optical audio output for surround sound and you need to rely on HDMI pass-thru or a USB solution.

It's the best "android box" but just a big pain in the ass to deal with for gaming.

I don't have any of those problems. I have the newer remote, which uses removeable batteries. Though I've never experienced it, I've read that some people have issues with their remotes that often are attributed to having unshielded USB 3.0 devices too close to the Shield, which causes interference.

ContraWars · Jul 19, 2018

dialogic said:
I don't have any of those problems. I have the newer remote, which uses removeable batteries. Though I've never experienced it, I've read that some people have issues with their remotes that often are attributed to having unshielded USB 3.0 devices too close to the Shield, which causes interference.

I bought the 2017 Shield TV Pro last October, and it came with the old remote with the headphone jack and USB port.

The Shield Remote & the Shield Controller were both DOA in the box and needed to be plugged into a USB cable for 2 days before they would even hold a charge enough to allow me to update the firmware on them, without a nag screen warning about it.

After sorting that out, I installed some emulators and stuff which all had input lag. I got Adventures of Mana going on it from my Phone and played that for a few minutes. I bought the Shield ports of MGS2 HD and later MGS3 HD, and both of them can't be refunded via Google. I never played them, because they install and disappear at around 50-70% while downloading the games. I factory reset the thing, and still nothing.

I blindly went at it for the GameStream support it offers natively from Nvidia GPUs, since I have a Steam account with 1342 games, and the officially supported games list I could stream on the LAN was a pittance. Ridiculously small list, and almost everything they show up front is for their online streaming subscription service I want nothing to do with.

As a PC gamer, I will never buy an Nvidia product again. I would rather limit my upgrades and future PC builds with the top-end AMD card of the day. That's how much I feel fucked over by the Shield Pro purchase. I'm totally done with brand. I'm also getting older and don't have the time to give PC gaming much attention anymore anyway.

I know there are other streaming options for it; but as a console, out of the box, at what, $400 CAD? To me, it's the worst piece of shit I've ever bought, and I say that as someone who backed the Ouya.

phant0m · Jul 20, 2018

I love my ShieldTV, but the controller it came with is complete trash. Remote itself isn't bad but dies too quickly. I just use my harmony remote which has been going on the same set of batteries for over a year.

Wish there was a controller that worked wirelessly without needing an adapter. Until then, it's just a TV box for me.

Cassius Bright · Jul 20, 2018

phant0m said:
I love my ShieldTV, but the controller it came with is complete trash. Remote itself isn't bad but dies too quickly. I just use my harmony remote which has been going on the same set of batteries for over a year.

Wish there was a controller that worked wirelessly without needing an adapter. Until then, it's just a TV box for me.

I dunno, I kinda like the controller from the 2017 model. The start button is in an annoying place but that's my only real gripe.

As for the OP, yep, you can now play any Steam game you own on the Shield. I've been playing Skyrim and New Vegas at 1080p60 and it's pretty amazing. I get some packet loss which is annoying but that's probably down to my router and wifi.

The Shield is also amazing as a Kodi and emulator box.

phant0m · Jul 20, 2018

DozyHoneyBadger said:
I dunno, I kinda like the controller from the 2017 model. The start button is in an annoying place but that's my only real gripe.

I've heard this, but I sadly got my Shield in 2016.

Deleted member 34873 · Jul 20, 2018

DozyHoneyBadger said:
I dunno, I kinda like the controller from the 2017 model. The start button is in an annoying place but that's my only real gripe.

As for the OP, yep, you can now play any Steam game you own on the Shield. I've been playing Skyrim and New Vegas at 1080p60 and it's pretty amazing. I get some packet loss which is annoying but that's probably down to my router and wifi.

The Shield is also amazing as a Kodi and emulator box.

That's pretty cool. But useless if I want to use mods, I presume?

Tickling · Jul 20, 2018

This has me really interested signed up for the beta and hope to hear soon

Cassius Bright · Jul 20, 2018

cwistofu said:
That's pretty cool. But useless if I want to use mods, I presume?

My Skyrim mods all work fine as do saves.

Aiii · Jul 20, 2018

Trojita said:
Do you guys actually like your Shield Controller?

I mean, it's not the worst controller in the world. The sticks and buttons are fine, it's bulky, but that's about it.

I have the older model though.

Chas Hodges · Jul 20, 2018

Not read this whole thread, but I updated my box last night and found the new UI is absolutely horrible, AND the old 'long press' command which let you start streaming to Twitch / Youtube, capture video and screenshots has been removed completely.

I also felt that performance in Retroarch had got worse, though that could just be psychosomatic as I was so pissed off at other features being removed.

Chas Hodges · Jul 20, 2018

On a more positive note, for those experiencing input lag, consider using a wired controller rather than the bluetooth controller. Android Bluetooth polling is all over the place, and a wired USB connection makes a massive difference. From experience, the Shield pad itself was actually the most consistent performer, but my 8bitdo pad is miles better.

Nvidia Shield Game streaming has changed (newer games, steam cloud gaming etc?)

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