Razer PC Remote Play, a cloud streaming service based on open-source Moonlight, has finally launched and we've put it to the test
There are a handful of major game streaming apps on the market but not all that many accessible ways of streaming your entire rig to your phone. Razer has just launched an app to fix that problem, and really hopes you pair the app with its controllers, the Kishi Ultra or Kish V2 while you do so.
The new Razer PC Remote Play app is built on Moonlight, which is an open-source PC streaming software, originally using Nvidia's streaming protocol. You have previously been able to get Razer's build for the app via Github, but this week marks the launch of the app into both Apple and Android app stores.
This is all to say that, while you have previously been able to stream your full PC to your phone, tablet, etc before, it hasn't quite been as easy as this.
To set up Razer PC Remote Play, you have to download Razer Nexus and PC Remote Play apps on your phone, get Razer Cortex on your gaming rig, enable game streaming, and link the two up. You need to be on the same Wi-Fi network when you first set the two devices up but can connect wirelessly from any hotspot after the first time.
Impressively, when I booted up the app, it detected that my iPhone 15 Pro Max had a refresh rate of 120 Hz and set it to run games at that refresh rate. This is a neat bit of tech and, when run in an optimised mode, it even turns off the screen of your rig, only showing an image on your extra device. That device could be a phone on the go, a tablet in another room, or even a different laptop or PC.
I sent my colleague Nick on the journey of testing out PC Remote Play and he told me "The app's pretty clunky to use, to be honest, and with all the Razer stuff running in the background, it makes my main PC quite janky". However, he did say the set-up was smooth and streaming to his phone looks pretty great, if laggy—the above stream is with the bandwidth set to 30 Mbps. As a proof of concept, Nick told me the app has potential.
This isn't Razer's first move into cloud gaming. The Razer Edge is a (now discontinued) gaming handheld, that hooks up to a Razer Kishi controller to play games on. Effectively a glorified Android tablet with a Snapdragon G3x Gen 1 chip, you can play mobile games on it, or use it as a dedicated streaming device. You could even buy it directly from Xbox, which encouraged users to use the Xbox cloud streaming platform built into Game Pass.
I'm currently writing this in a different country than where my main rig is located so I was unable to actually link the app to my device. However, I could get some genuine use out of an app that cleanly allows streaming. Hardware overlord Dave swears by GeForce Now but I haven't quite found the right game streaming service for me. The two services are different but the end result is still playing a beefy PC game on the go.
If my internet connection can handle it, this one will be going on my to-do list when I'm back home.
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