The Supply of Steam Link Hardware Is Almost Gone

cageymaru

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Apr 10, 2003
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Valve has announced that the Steam Link is sold out in Europe and supplies in America are nearly depleted. Valve will continue supporting the existing Steam Link hardware in the future. The Steam Link App seems to have taken precedence over the hardware as it features on-screen touch controls and runs on smartphones, tablets, and televisions.

The supply of physical Steam Link hardware devices is sold out in Europe and almost sold out in the US. Moving forward, Valve intends to continue supporting the existing Steam Link hardware as well as distribution of the software versions of Steam Link, available for many leading smart phones, tablets and televisions. Click here to find out more about the Steam Link App.
 
Good thing I have an Nvidia Shield. I've been meaning to pickup one of those Steam controllers though.
 
I got a Steam Link when it was like $10 shipped. It's okay and works well (video quality is pretty good and latency is excellent comparing to my i5 2nd gen mini media PC) but seems to be losing pairing to my Xbone controller. Not sure I would have paid more for it but for like under 20 bucks I think it's a pretty decent device. I have it hidden away in my media rack.
 
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Got a couple of them myself, use one regularly the second is still in box. Just can't pass up those sales where they almost give them away.
 
Hated this device, switched to a Shield TV a year ago and I love it minus Hulu Live not working.
 
I have one that I rarely use, but it's still a pretty awesome little device to have for the bedroom/office. I hope they choose to keep support for it
 
I bought one for $2.50 when it was on sale, very happy I got it and I use it all the time. Generally I'm playing with my wife, I'm in the decked out home theater and she's streaming off my office PC to our relatively decked out living room.

I always wanted one, but couldn't justify the $50 when laptops I already own accomplish the same thing.
 
Also, Shield's great, I have one so I could play Atmos audio(no one else had an offering). I just consider it extremely expensive for what it does and wasn't pleased that I couldn't' find a cheaper alternative. Basically paying $150 above a Roku/Fire/Chrome/whatever for Atmos and ability to stream games. And I already had purchased the latter for $2.50.
 
It's too bad they are discontinuing the hardware. Having a remote gamepad/mouse was a nice option when you broadcast to a projector.
 
The SteamLink really works great for me. I found the purpose built device to be more reliable than the app built into my smartTV. I'm hoping this is just a pause before eventually releasing a new version of the SteamLink that supports 4k.
 
I think it's actually good tech and would benefit from them doing some more Polish. There's so much great ecosystem there already. Like the controller profiles thing, very nice. I bought one recently when it went on sale, but some games you would anticipate to play well with gamepads, don't. It's weird.

Also, my main rig being Linux hasn't been a problem with interfacing, so that's pretty cool. And I'm using my 802.11ac wifi and I haven't noticed any frame drops or input lag or anything. Helps I'm using a UAP-AC-PRO though ;P
 
I think it's actually good tech and would benefit from them doing some more Polish. There's so much great ecosystem there already. Like the controller profiles thing, very nice. I bought one recently when it went on sale, but some games you would anticipate to play well with gamepads, don't. It's weird.

Also, my main rig being Linux hasn't been a problem with interfacing, so that's pretty cool. And I'm using my 802.11ac wifi and I haven't noticed any frame drops or input lag or anything. Helps I'm using a UAP-AC-PRO though ;P

nice AP, i use the lite version and even that felt leagues better than any wifi routers i have used in the past.
 
I'm not shocked since they have been practically giving the thing away.

I paid full price for one and it's a cool piece of kit that I rarely use. I wish they had a hulu and netflix app for roku like functionality, it would still be connected if so.
 
The important part is the bottle of "Horse Tranquilizer" in the image. :D
 
I have one in the living room and one in the bedroom with the main PC in my office and they work flawlessly on 5gig wireless. Since we don't console game this device was exactly what we needed. Note, you are not going to play anything competitive online using these. We primarily use the Link for single player or couch coop games.
 
I love Steam Links. It's a fairly slick little package. I bought two of them when they were on sale. We use a combination of these, actual game-capable PCs, and I have a Shield TV in the bedroom that my wife and I stream to for video, and games for me. All of these, and even just the software streaming in the Steam client work very well.
 
I bought one and tried it but it was just not practical to me to use. SO it is sitting somewhere...
 
I wanted to use the Steam Link app to run Sid Meiers Civilization VI on my tablet from anywhere in my house.

Sad part is, they implemented the touch controls in a way that makes that very difficult to do.

See, Civ VI has native touch controls when run on Windows 8 or greater. The Steam Link App will use touch controls to emulate either keyboard or mouse, but it doesn't (or at least didnt the last time I tried it) pass through touch controls to native touch enabled games, which is a pity.

That's the only application I saw for Steam Link.
 
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I wanted to use the Steam Link app to run Sid Meyers Civilization VI on my tablet from anywhere in my house.

Sad part is, they implemented the touch controls in a way that makes that very difficult to do.

See, Civ VI has native touch controls when run on Windows 8 or greater. The Steam Link App will use touch controls to emulate either keyboard or mouse, but it doesn't (or at least didnt the last time I tried it) pass through touch controls to native touch enabled games, which is a pity.

That's the only application I saw for Steam Link.

That actually seems like something you should feed back to support if you haven't already.
 
That actually seems like something you should feed back to support if you haven't already.

Most companies never listen to customers suggestions, so I didn't even consider this. I guess I could give it a try. Do you know where I would go to contact them?
 
Most companies never listen to customers suggestions, so I didn't even consider this. I guess I could give it a try. Do you know where I would go to contact them?

Some do some do not. Many companies are moving more toward minimum viable product type of development so feedback starts to become essential. IMO it never hurts

https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithSteamLinkApp

Could try that link and take the route of it isn't working as intended instead of a suggestion. Would at least get a support agent to look at it and maybe even have to ping the dev team for an answer.
 
Can't say I'm surprised. I bought one and thought it worked well (wired - not wireless). However, I don't think I've touched it since last Christmas.
I know a few other people that bought these and don't think they use them either.
 
The App is am much better idea, can be installed onto anything running Android.
 
The App is OK, but I use the Steam Link every day. It's on the bedroom TV (doesn't know what a network is) and, with a Steam Controller I can watch or play anything I can on any PC in the house. The wifi works fine on my AC network. I've even got it to work remotely using CLient-to-Site VPN, though latency does take a hit depending on the remote connectivity. Locally, lag is essentially zero. I played most of Witcher 3 and all of Castlevania:LoS using it, while never having an issue with latency or drops.

For those that don't know, you don't need an app or whatever to watch Netflix or the like, just minimize Big Picture (Power > Minimize) and you can do whatever on the computer it's connected to. You can watch or play anything available on the PC, even fire up MPC and watch things you've ripped to drive. Hell, I've launched the Blizzard app and played Overwatch on it, though I'd prefer a real keyboard and mouse for shooters. The KB/M emulation is pretty damn spiffy, and the keyboard using the touch pads has never given me a problem. It even supports multiple monitors, though the keyboard only pops up on the primary. I'd say the fact that they let you plug any keyboard, mouse, or controller into it pretty special these days, as they could have easily tried to lock it down.

The hardware is pretty meh, fair enough, but the integration and user experience has been top notch for me. Loosing the ability to use different peripherals and non-smart displays is a step backward in my opinion, but I'm used to being the niche case.

I have a spare, but may grab another just in case.
 
The app is awesome, can check emails/etc on my main PC at native resolution on my V10 (1440>1440).
Device itself is great for lazy bedroom gaming on an old 1080p screen but I use the app more, they are sold out in NZ a while ago, I bought the very last two in stock in the country lol, one fetched a healthy price on auction!
I'm looking at making a more powerful android box in future when I move to 4k to use the app more.

anybody know of anyone hacking these and putting android on them or something?
They run an ARM chip and linux already lol
 
I got one last year when they were bundled with the controller.

Never used it. Controller is ok. I use it occasionally
 


you can play emulators.

i'd like to have streaming apps on it so i can retire my ps3.


I cant watch that at the moment, but are they installing them directly onto the device itself? Or streaming them?

I'm pretty sure you can play any game (emulated or otherwise) on the device using in-home-streaming if you add it to your library.
 
I cant watch that at the moment, but are they installing them directly onto the device itself? Or streaming them?

I'm pretty sure you can play any game (emulated or otherwise) on the device using in-home-streaming if you add it to your library.

i believe he is streaming retroarch through steam link
 
Yup brings the final price to about $10 which still is pretty good. I grabbed another just because why not lol

I bought a third also just because. :D I'll either pop it on a spare monitor somewhere, (I have three highly-game-capable PCs to stream from) or I'll give it to my brother or something. I should have bought a couple of them really. If I had four of them I could stream a four player Q3A match to the living room without needing PCs in the room. :D (I have a half copper half fiber network in the house, so no latency issues.)
 
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