Nvidia has announced that it will shut down its GameStream services on Shield TV and tablets. The feature that has been part of every Shield device Nvidia has put out over the last seven years, has been a marquee selling point for the hardware.
GameStream allowed users to stream games from an Nvidia-powered desktop or laptop to their TV at 60fps and 4K. The company has said that the feature will be removed completely with an update due out in February 2023.
For now, Nvidia is recommending people switch to Steam Link, which is a similar service by Valve software, or the open-source alternative Moonlight, both of which, the company says work well with the Android-powered Shield TV and tablets.
This sudden removal of the feature brings up a lot of interesting questions about modern technology, and how much control we have over the devices we pay money for.
GameStream is nearly a decade-old streaming service we are talking about, one that was marketed heavily on launch and one that will disappear from hardware people bought and paid for, based on the promise of the service.
The reason people preferred GameStream over other services was that it was easy to use and ran on a local network in your home.
Alternatively, users can refuse the update but Nvidia says that GameStream will no longer be supported and will "eventually stop working."
Nvidia axing the GameStream feature could move resources around to GeForce Now cloud streaming, which is a monthly subscription service by the company that streams games over the cloud.
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