By I’ve been messing around with the Asobi Remote Play app on my Steam Machine, and it does something genuinely clever: it lets me stream my PS4 and PS5 games without actually owning either console. All I need is a PlayStation Plus Premium subscription. It’s available right now on the Steam store, so I grabbed it to see how it holds up on the Steam Machine specifically.
Getting Asobi running on the Steam Machine
Installing it is about as simple as it gets: I just searched for it on the Steam store, hit play or download, and I was in. I’ll say up front that the interface isn’t fully optimized for the Steam Machine yet — the game icons in particular are pretty hard to read at a glance. But once you’re past that, the layout makes sense. My own purchased games sit front and centre, with the usual settings menu (including options up to 4K 120) tucked away in the same spot I’d expect. Flick over to the left and I can see every game tied to my PlayStation Plus Premium account. If I already own a game, I just click it, hit play, and I’m streaming.
The bigger idea here is flexibility. If I don’t have a PS4 or PS5 handy, I can still pick up a game on my phone and get it running through Asobi on the Steam Machine. And if I do own a console, the app doubles as a standard remote play client for streaming from my own PS4 or PS5 over the network.
Free tier vs. the premium tier
What’s on offer for free is already solid. The free tier connects to both PS4 and PS5, supports remote play as well as the console-free cloud streaming through PlayStation Plus Premium, syncs app settings and profiles across devices, supports multiple local profiles, and streams at up to 1080p 30fps.
There’s a premium tier planned too, and on paper it’s a decent step up: HDR support, 1080p 60fps streaming with the ability to upscale to 4K 120fps, multiple view modes, a low-latency mode, and a handful of other extras. The catch right now is that premium isn’t actually live — so every one of those features, HDR and the 4K upscaling included, is currently just being offered through the free tier while premium is still coming soon.
Worth trying, with one big caveat
The one thing I’d flag before anyone jumps in: to stream games without owning a PS4 or PS5, you need an active PlayStation Plus Premium subscription, and that’s not cheap. If you’re already paying for it, or you’ve got a console at home you just want to remote play from, Asobi is a genuinely easy way to get PlayStation games running on a Steam Machine. I’ll be keeping an eye on it once the premium tier actually goes live to see whether the extra fidelity is worth chasing.