Alienware is showing its Concept Nyx at CES 2022, which sees a future in which loading and playing games on a multiplicity of screens may happen as quickly as streaming music and TV shows. The concept is straightforward at first appearance (though certainly complex beneath the surface): using Nyx software, all of your PC games would be able to be wirelessly streamed to a number of displays at home, independent of where you purchased them.
Assume you’re playing Cyberpunk 2077 on your PC screen but want to sit on the living room couch and see it on a big screen. The concept is that whenever you push a button in an app, the game would wirelessly shift screens, allowing you to monopolize the TV or move your game beside another in split view mode. Alienware aspires to be able to release up to four games at once. Alienware showcased Nyx at The Edge using repurposed Concept UFO controllers from CES 2020, which were mounted to a Switch-like tablet.
Nyx requires a machine powerful enough to run numerous games at once, as well as network capabilities to manage the distribution of low latency streams, during the conceptual phase. It’s unknown when Alienware plans to deploy its own gear, how much it will cost, and whether what Nyx promises to achieve will be a paid service. Alienware definitely has a lot of questions to answer.
However, in comparison to Google Stadia and Amazon Luna, Concept Nyx appears to be meant to make previously acquired PC games easier to access and play, with a similar level of device interoperability and, possibly, less compromise in quality. visual. In some ways, it’s eerily similar to what Valve already provides with its Remote Play Anywhere function – it’s free to begin with. However, Nyx hopes to differentiate itself by handling many streams at the same time and extracting games from multiple platforms.
It was reassuring that Alienware was able to successfully conduct the Nyx demo for us, switching from display to display in seconds between swings. But, to discover if it’s ready for the real world, we’ll have to test it at home rather than in a controlled laboratory.