It’s one of the most common and frustrating problems – having multiple gamers under one roof competing for access to their favorite titles and totally crushing Wi-Fi bandwidth. Then there’s the medium: if you’re playing on a PC and want to seamlessly switch to the TV, the very idea is a ridiculous fantasy.
Or is it???
We’re always thinking ahead to the future – near and far – and thinking about the ways we can provide the best gaming experiences out there. Which is why we’re incredibly stoked about potentially solving one of the biggest challenges in PC gaming and changing the game completely: how to simultaneously allow players in a household to easily access their full game library and play on any device, even if they want to change screens during gameplay. A tall order, but Alienware is hurtling towards a solution.
We call it Concept Nyx.
Devices and solutions shown are concept designs and not available for purchase. Watch the video here
An R&D project from our consortium of wizards also known as our Experience Innovation Group (EIG), The Concept Nyx solution comes in the wake of other audacious Alienware initiatives that have broken boundaries and elevated the PC gaming experience: from creating our thinnest gaming laptops to date with the Alienware X-Series to bold gaming ideas like Concept UFO. Now we’ve done it again, literally breaking the mold of the PC gaming experience with an eye toward the future.
Imagine you’re on your desktop in your bedroom exploring Night City in CyberPunk 2077. Your roommates are on their laptops and tablets in the living room, battling head-to-head in Rocket League. And your cousin is also over, casually building a new world in Minecraft on her cell phone. Now let’s say it’s time to prepare dinner so you head downstairs and pass the controller to one of your roommates – you can quickly switch to your CyberPunk 2077 experience on the 65-inch TV in the living room and let them takeover exactly where you left off, advancing your game while you cook.
That’s the future of gaming! And it’s starting to take shape today.
How would it be done, you ask? Concept Nyx spotlights the role edge computing could play – where high performance game processing could be done in the home and shared across the local network. Because the processing happens locally (versus needing to travel to and from distant servers), it could offer lower latency, greater bandwidth and more responsiveness – ultimately solving some of the performance shortfalls of current alternatives like cloud gaming. This means multiplayer latency could reach single-digit milliseconds to dramatically decrease any lag of modern-day cloud gaming systems. Pretty cool, huh?
It doesn’t stop there either. We have been looking at how to power four game streams simultaneously, smart switching among devices, and drawing from a central library of all your games regardless of where you purchase them. Gaming on Concept Nyx aims to be as effortless as accessing your favorite music, TV shows and movies. Imagine a simple app loaded on each device delivering instant access to all your games for a more seamless gaming experience across devices in the home. Imagine no more fighting with your family or roommates over game time (you can still fight over groceries and laundry). Wouldn’t it be nice to tear down the barricades so that everyone can game on their own terms?
Alienware loves a challenge. We were founded on a challenge, to create a new market for high-end gaming PCs back when none existed. We’re especially excited about this concept because of its uniqueness as an idea and its potential for the gaming industry at large – we could imagine this appealing to not only casual gamers, but the ok-I’ll-have-a-go gamers, next generation gamers – the whole family. Given our sci-fi bona fides, we’re thrilled to boldly go where no brand has gone before.
As we further develop Concept Nyx, we aim to use each step forward to benefit future products and enhance the user experience. We hope you’re as jazzed as we are to embark on this journey, and we look forward to keeping you in the loop.