In brief: Companies have been calling streaming services "the future of gaming" for years, and although we now have the likes of Microsoft's xCloud, Google Stadia, and Nvidia's GeForce Now, that claim still feels unlikely, to say the least. But Alienware's Concept Nyx is a new take on the idea of game streaming, one that puts the server in your own home.
As part of its CES 2022 lineup, Alienware is showing off Concept Nyx. The idea is pretty simple: it's a powerful computer for a user's home that can stream games to different devices. It pulls in user-owned titles from Steam, Epic Games, etc. using Dell's own propriety software.
In the demo, Alienware showed Cyberpunk 2077 moving seamlessly between a smart TV, a laptop, and a PC while using the same controller. The company is working on being able to stream four individual games simultaneously, all without experiencing the sort of latency often found on standard streaming services, as well as improved graphical fidelity. However, there are reports of the performance in the demo being less than perfect.
Alienware is currently reluctant to discuss the hardware specs of the Nyx server, which looks like a massive desktop PC. The demo used controllers from Alienware's Switch-like Concept UFO portable gaming PC it showed off in 2020, though there may be new designs in any final product.
Streaming games from home isn't a new concept---Steam's Remote Play Anywhere has been around for a while now---but running four games at once and being able to play titles from platforms beyond just Valve's is intriguing.
There are plenty of questions over Nyx: how much will it cost? What sort of home network will be required for optimal use? Who's the target audience? And this is just a concept, so there's no guarantee it will ever become an actual product.