Both Nvidia and Valve have expressed interest in improving the GeForce Now experience on the Steam deck (opens in new tab). Game streaming services already operate on Valve's handheld consoles, but require the user to launch a browser, which can make the controls quite funky; Steam's native apps could be an easier streaming experience on the device. could be the answer to making it easier to.

Andrew Fear, GeForce Now Product Manager at Nvidia, confirmed that both Nvidia and Steam are interested in streamlining the GeForce Now experience on Steam Deck.

"There is currently no native app for the Steam Deck. You'll need to use the Chromium browser to get it to work." I think both Nvidia and Valve are interested in making [GeForce Now on Steam Deck] better. However, there is no announcement that native apps are coming to Steam."

Other streaming-first handhelds, such as Razer's Edge (opens in new tab) and Logitech's G Cloud (opens in new tab), already have native apps thanks to Nvidia's GeForce Now Android app. The Steam Deck, a Linux machine, unfortunately does not.

The Steam Deck's GeForce Now experience has improved since we first tried it on the console, but it is far from a polished option; GeForce Now runs within the browser and is not always easy to navigate on the Steam Deck's small screen. Control schemes may also be tricky, given that Deck's controls may behave differently in the browser environment.

Also, if you are wondering why you would want to stream with Steam Deck, it is primarily a consideration to save battery power or to access unavailable and overloaded games. Streaming greatly reduces the load on the Steam Deck's hardware and allows the device to run longer. Similarly, in order to play "The Witcher 3" in full ray-traced graphics on the Steam Deck, it must be streamed from the cloud.

Fear also suggested that Nvidia is willing to support racing wheels in its streaming service, but nothing concrete is being said about this right now either.

Nvidia has just announced a major upgrade to the top tier of its GeForce Now service. The new Ultimate tier will offer players RTX 4080 in the cloud (opens in new tab) for $20/month (£18/month/€20/month). This will offer a new 240Hz competitive game mode, ultrawide support, and 4K at 120fps.