Blade launched its Shadow game streaming service in the United States earlier this year, essentially allowing you to pay a monthly fee for access to a remote gaming PC that you could load up with games and stream anywhere.
One way to do that would be to stream games over the internet to a PC or mobile device running a Shadow app for Windows, Mac, or Android. Another is to use a dedicated set-top-box and, appropriately enough, the first model was called the Shadow Box.
Now it’s out of stock, but Blade has introduced a follow-up called the Shadow Ghost. It should be available later this year for the same $140 price as the company’s original box.
Like the original Shadow Box, the new model supports 4K games at up to 60 frames per second, or 1080p games at up to 144 frames per second. But the new model has the following improvements:
- It supports 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1
- It uses 3 times less power
- It’s a silent device with no fans or other moving parts
- It’s smaller and lighter
The Shadow Ghost measures 7.2″ x 4.8″ x 2″ and weighs about 7 ounces. It has a Gigabit Ethernet jack, two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI 2.0 port, and a 3.5mm audio jack.
It has a 36W (12V x 3A) power supply, but the company says it consumes just about 5W while you’re streaming games, which could cut down on your energy bill since that’s about a third as much power as the Shadow Box, and far less than a full-fledged gaming PC or console.
That said, you will need a relatively speedy internet connection to use the service… and a willingness to pay $35 per month to rent a virtual gaming PC with an Intel Xeon octa-core processor, NVIDIA GTX 1080-equivalent graphics, 12GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VELrEDsN4xc
via Engadget
Parsec allows you to use a $40 raspberry pi 3, and costs $5+$.50/hour each month.
But don’t you need to own a 2k gaming rig to run games then since parsec needs a source?
No, you don’t need your own gaming rig. Just something that is capable of streaming. Generally I think that Shadow is a far better deal then Parsec.
Doesn’t really appeal to me, as I already have a gaming PC. However, their pricing is actually really good value if you are someone that wants to game, but wants to avoid buying/building a gaming PC.
The specs they offer would cost you over $2k to build or buy.
Considering you only get a couple of years of peak performance of gaming from a PC (before it’s obsolete), you could pay for this service for 4 years and still come out cheaper. And that doesn’t even factor in the cost of electricity you would avoid using.
Sometimes I wish I could rent my gaming rig and Steam library to someone when it is not in use. I would not be surprised if Steam allows this in the future (they get a cut of the rental fee).
Microsoft is working on a game-streaming service that will deliver “console quality gaming on any device,” Phil Spencer, executive president of gaming at Microsoft, announced during Microsoft’s E3 press conference (2018).