Alienware unveiled a Skunkworks project called Concept Nyx at the CES show in Las Vegas this week, revealing what looks like a gigantic PC tower that would function as a game server for an entire household. The concept was created by the company’s “consortium of wizards” it calls Experience Innovation Group (EIG), and it aims to allow everyone in a house to stream any game they want on any device of their choice, all at the same time. . It’s a lofty goal indeed, and something Alienware calls “the future of gaming”, but like all concepts that are shown at CES (cough, Razer), there’s no indication that it actually exists, even in Alienware’s lab. Still, it’s fun to consider its possibilities.
According to Alienware landing page for the concept, here’s how it works. You come home from work and, like any rational adult, you want to film some stuff to unwind a bit before bed. The problem is that your kids are playing Minecraft; one on your PC and the other on a tablet. With Project Nyx, you can just sit back on your couch and start playing a game on your TV with a controller, without interrupting any of the kids’ adventures. In the midst of all this, your spouse might also start playing a game on their laptop, all powered by the same computer; the monolith of Nyx. Then your kids announce they’re going to bed, so you put down the custom Nyx controller, and hop over to your main PC and pick up your game where it left off. You can even send a request to your spouse to join your game, and it all happens seamlessly, with no latency, of course.
Concept Nyx includes an all-new controller designed by Alienware.
Alienware describes the problem they’re trying to solve this way, “How to simultaneously allow gamers in one household to easily access their full game library and play on any device, even if they want to switch games. screen during the game”. To achieve this they are looking at Edge computing, which takes the processing power required for gaming out of the cloud and brings it closer to where the player is, so it’s the opposite of streaming services like GeForce Now and Google Stadia. Processing would be done entirely locally, on the Nyx tower, and then streamed over the network to multiple clients with low latency. Even more pie in the sky: Alienware says anyone in the house will be able to access any game, regardless of where it was purchased, all through a custom app that should be installed on each device. The company says its technology would allow up to four games to be streamed simultaneously, but there’s no mention of hardware specs, internet speed requirements, or what the CPU and GPU actually power.
Like any concept shown at CES, there aren’t many details available, like when it might launch or what it will cost, so take all that information with a large grain of salt. Companies like to show off these futuristic projects just to grab headlines, but very few of them end up on store shelves. Still, what’s interesting here is how Dell and Alienware are taking gaming in the opposite direction from where everyone else seems to be heading, which is towards cloud-based streaming solutions. . Whether or not it will become a working product remains to be seen. Maybe they will decide at some point that it is not profitable and they will delete everything.
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