NVIDIA is removing GameStream service from Shield products
Shield TV products officially advertised as “Streaming Media Player” will soon lose one of its core functionality, NVIDIA announced.
NVIDIA Shield TV and Shield TV Pro are among the most popular Android Set-Top boxes, but also one of the most expensive ones. Those devices are based on powerful Tegra X1+ with built-in 256-core GPU. This means compelling hardware to play Android games on the device itself, but also enough power to stream any type of media from cloud and local services.
The support for local game streaming called GameStream will soon be removed, though. NVIDIA announced that starting mid-February an update to ‘NVIDIA Games’ app will remove the functionality to stream games from local PCs. This service utilizes the power of GeForce GTX/RTX GPUs to stream games to the Shield TV products at high quality (4K 60FPS) and low latency, even wirelessly.
Owners of Shield TV products have just started receiving emails informing them of GameStream End of Service. NVIDIA recommends to use Steam Link of GeForce Now instead, but this means either using Steam app exclusively or paying for cloud-based service to receive similar stream quality.
GameStream End of Service Notification, Source: NVIDIA
NVIDIA is still selling Shield TV boxes and advertising the GameStream service as supported, although it will be removed in less than 2 months:
GameStream End of Service Notification, Source: NVIDIA
The GameStream service was a great addition to a relatively niche product such as Shield. Redditors recommend switching to Moonlight or Sunshine alternatives, but it is not clear how the removal of GameStream will affect those projects.
It is worth noting that at the same time NVIDIA is removing the local streaming service from their software, AMD is expanding the support for AMD Link streaming service with AV1 RX7900 encoding and even 4-player support on one gaming PC.
Source: NVIDIA via Reddit