Alienware’s Concept Nyx is all about on-the-go gaming in the home

As much as we like gadget-makers turning up to CES with things we’re actually going to be able to buy in the coming months, the annual Vegas extravaganza is also always full of weird and wonderful concept tech. 

You can always count on Alienware to show off a prototype or six, and this year is no different. The one that caught our eye is Concept Nyx, Alienware’s vision of how PC gaming in the home could look in the next few years. 

It’s a pretty simple (and at this stage typically vague) idea. Streaming is still being touted as the future of gaming, but Alienware’s concept isn’t interested in streaming games from far-flung cloud servers, but rather doing it locally near your router. You’d be limited to gaming at home, then, but Concept Nyx imagines a world where you can hop seamlessly between screens and devices via an app, much like you currently do with TV and movie streaming apps. 

You might be playing The Forgotten City on your bedroom desktop PC, for example, before pinging it to the living room TV and swapping the desk chair for the sofa. 

Of course, this sort of thing is already possible through services like Nvidia’s GeForce Now or Steam’s Remote Play Anywhere Feature, but with Concept Nyx Alienware wants to promise not only lag-free, low-latency performance, but also the ability to host up to four local streams at once, which could be any PC games you own, regardless of where you purchased them from. No bickering about which game is getting booted. If you’re not interested in Fortnite, you can play Rocket League in a different room using the same software. In theory anyway. 

Again, Alienware is being as non-specific as you’d expect with prototype hardware and software. We have no idea what the device you’d need to handle all that processing would look like or how much it would cost, or whether the bizarre, spaceship-like controller Alienware demoed Concept Nyx with would be required to play games. 

Still, it’s definitely an interesting idea and one worth keeping an eye on. 

Matt Tate Contributor

About

I'm fascinated by all things tech, but if you were going to leave me on a desert island, I'd probably ask for my Nintendo Switch, a drone, and a pair of noise-cancelling cans to block out the relentless seagull racket. When I'm not on Stuff duty you'll probably find me subscribing to too many podcasts, playing too many video games, or telling anyone who will listen that Spurs are going to win a trophy this season.

Areas of expertise

Video games, VR, smartwatches, headphones, smart speakers, bizarre Kickstarter campaigns