With both next-generation game consoles ready to record and share footage right out of the box, there's no reason PCs shouldn't have the same capability. Well, now they will.

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The Shield, Now Streaming 60 FPS PC Gaming To Your TV

Streaming PC games directly to Nvidia's Shield handheld is pretty cool, and the beta service has gotten progressively better since the system launched in late July, but there is a better way...

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October 28 sees the launch of GameStream, the official name for the Shield streaming technology, officially coming out of beta. The updated service now streams more than 50 popular games, including upcoming titles like Batman: Arkham City and Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, across a wireless connection without noticeable lag at 60 frames-per-second. ASUS, Buffalo, D-Link, and NETGEAR are all readying wireless routers marked "GameStream Ready" for release, and enhanced onscreen controls will mean we'll no longer have to walk over to our computers to deal with Steam dialog boxes.

But wait, there's more...

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Plug your Shield into your television via HDMI, connect a Bluetooth controller like the Nyko PlayPad Pro, and stream PC games to your television from your GeForce GTX gaming PC.

Okay, so we're connecting a controller to a controller in order to play wirelessly. It's a bit convoluted, but it's also a cheap-ish PC streaming solution, the sort of thing Valve's recently been chatting up a lot. Plus, since the Shield uses most of the same innards as Nvidia's Tegra tablet platform, this functionality could easily be ported to any Tegra 4-powered device in the future.

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GameStream won't be limited to yuor own PC for long — eventually it will support gaming through Nvidia's GRID cloud gaming service as well.

What Next-Gen Consoles?

With the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One coming out next month, some PC gamers might be worried about their PC's capabilities as compared to the next-generation consoles. If anything, Nvidia's announcements today help reinforce that which has always been the case — there's no gaming platform as versatile as the good old PC.