Stream PC titles to laptop/PS3

By Robert Purchese Published 29 October, 2007

Brain-box reveals new tech.

StreamMyGame has revealed fresh technology that will let you remotely play games installed on your home PC.

Using a small application you can record, broadcast or stream titles across the Internet or a LAN, and access them on anything from your laptop to your PS3. A bit like you are living with robots in the future.

Effectively you allow a remote user to take over control of your PC, allowing much lower-end computers to play the latest and greatest games.

The performance is described on the website as "almost identical" to playing it on the native machine, although naturally your speed of connection plays a large part in determining it.

Your friend whose computer you are streaming the game from can take over at any time, too, introducing a fancy kind of coaching tool if you are having trouble or if you just want to learn a trick or two.

So far only LAN streaming is supported, though, and features like broadcasting game demonstrations across multiple computers at an event or recording yourself shooting others in the head are being talked up.

Broadband integration is expected later in the year, alongside support for Linux-supporting machines like the PS3 and digital receivers.

It sounds intriguing, and is also one step closer to what EA bigwig Gerhard Florin was harping on about a couple of weeks ago - saying content streamed to hardware like Sky HD boxes would be the future of games.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (25) Latest comment 4 years ago

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  • JediMasterMalik #1 4 years ago

    Interesting, still not clear on what's streaming to what though.

  • symmetry #2 4 years ago

    Heh, I was doing this ages ago. I used to play Eve at work by VNC'ing into my home PC and playing it on that.

    A little laggy yes, but if you're only doing trade runs, it's not a problem. Also really helped to get the next skill training while at work :)

  • hula hoops #3 4 years ago

    Wow .. this has big potential.

    Imagine, if you have some very powerful computers and many games. You can effectively lease them to others for a certain a mount of time.

    If the performance is 'more or less equal' to playing the games directly then this could lessen the pressure of keeping your pc hardware up to date.

    Very interesting ...

  • DodgyPast #4 4 years ago

    Been wanting this for so long.

    The only real worry for me will be the lag between your controller and the return of the updated display.

    Would also be great for those of us who have PC's set up as media center PC's that'll play anything since we can consider moving them out of the living rooms.

    If they can get something like this onto the PS3's hard drive then I'll be 100% sold..... can play my console PC games and media in the living room, but sit at the desk in my bedroom and play my RTS / strategy games.

  • Red-Moose #5 4 years ago

    This is awesome, I'll finally be able to play X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter on my Amiga!

  • skillian #6 4 years ago

    This is the future of video games, I am sure, but I don't think it's quite there yet.

    Put it this way, I don't think you'll be playing PC games on a PS3 while the PS3 is actually still around. I'd love to be proven wrong tho.

  • GamesProgrammer Verified Games Team Programmer, Eutechnyx Ltd. #7 4 years ago

    If this was done over the internet presuming it was fast enough, would it not count as piracy?

  • Inspirius #8 4 years ago

    One interesting point here is that for most games you will still need to have the CD/DVD in the drive for the copy protection check. Making this service not quite as good as it could be.

    Of course you could install those naughty no-cd cracks...

  • Schiraman #9 4 years ago

    Wow, interesting stuff - though I doubt it'll be very practical over the net until broadband speeds increase quite a bit, unless you're playing something turn-based or similarly slow-paced.

  • Feet #10 4 years ago

    Essentially this is just a VPN then?

    I might use it depending on the connection quality and security I guess.

  • PearOfAnguish #11 4 years ago

    Probably not going to work very well over a net connection, but could be great for a media centre and wired network.

    "One interesting point here is that for most games you will still need to have the CD/DVD in the drive for the copy protection check. Making this service not quite as good as it could be. "

    That's not the point of the service, it's meant to allow you to play games remotely, not remove disc authentication.

  • SeesThroughAll #12 4 years ago

    This is just like Remote Play, except that the client is the laptop/PS3, and the app is running on the PC.

  • zuljin #13 4 years ago

    @Inspirius
    "Of course you could install those naughty no-cd cracks..."

    Supreme Commander doesn't require the disk. Not all companies have this cd in drive policy.

    As someone who has a pathetic home pc, and a fantastic work pc, I can't wait till this gets released.

  • hiddenranbir #14 4 years ago

    Isn't this just a regular remote desktop connection?

  • spitfire1945 #15 4 years ago

    Playing through SKY HD boxes gives me the shivers, though!!!

  • udat #16 4 years ago

    I've tested a system like this at work, called G-Cluster, which lets you play Quake and the like on a set top box with no CPU to speak of...

    It seems to thrill the Sales and Marketing crowd, and looks impressive, but as soon as anyone (like myself) who plays games regularly tries it they hate it. The lag between the controller input and game response is unacceptable for any kind of reaction based gaming.

    Also, it has huge problems with scalability when deployed on large networks, but that's another story.

  • FooAtari #17 4 years ago

    Im sure this is the future, but I dont seen it comming any time soon. Jesus controling my desktop on a lan isnt even smooth. Sure its perfectly useable but its not like you are sitting at the computer you are controlling. But in Vista you have to disable aero or its pretty unusable.

    I think it will be a while before PC and network technology will be at a level where this can work...

  • drxym #18 4 years ago

    New tech? This is just a dumb remote terminal, something which has been done countless times before.

  • skillian #19 4 years ago

    The difference in posts here - some saying it's old and been done before, some saying it's not ready yet but will be good in future - illustrates that there's some confusion about what it really does.

    As far as I can tell from the website, it's ready to go now - anyone tried it yet? I might give it a try this week (I have a nice gaming PC in the bedroom, and a much slower machine with onboard GFX in the lounge).

    It's a shame that the free version will only play in resolutions up to 640 x 480, but it will be interesting to test out nonetheless.

  • Scythe #20 4 years ago

    hang on, does anybody realise the implications of this? Let me make an observation:
    Bang goes the issue with console exclusives. Halo1+2, Bioshock and Gears are available on the PC. Halo3 will be in the near future. Which means those games are now playable on the PS3.
    Any news on this and the 360 or has MS's closed system put paid to that? If not, as soon as an emulator is available, MGS4, GoW and so on could be seen (indirecly) on the 360 too.

    Not too sure on the 360 situation but, considering the PS3 is specifically mentioned this could spell big implications in the 360/PS3 exclusive situation (not that GoW, Bioshock or Halo1-3 are in the first place as a game out on more than one system, including the PC, can't really be called an exclusive).
    Edited by 1 at 29/10/07 @ 18:26

  • Freek #21 4 years ago

    Yeah, but you have to own the console, the game and a PC to make it work.
    So if you already own it, why the hell bother with the streaming nonsense?

  • db3 #22 4 years ago

    This is just like remote desktop connection...what a load of bollox.
    Completely unsuited to gaming....unless you want to play 'The Hobbit' :)

  • BadBoyBonner #23 4 years ago

    You wait....time passes

  • yagisencho #24 4 years ago

    Hm...I can see a market for this, but it doesn't sound like it's for hardware enthusiasts. Instead of buying a 5,000 USD computer, a person could buy the dumb terminal and subscribe to a game service. Potentially big money for the consortiums who put it all together. In five years, I can see ISPs making a pretty penny off of this. 'Game Cable', et al.

  • smelly #25 4 years ago

    Steaming games?

    If you think dvd games take a long time to load...