If you've wanted to buy a Valve SteamLink streaming device for some time but always considered the $50 cost a bit too much, now's your chance. For the next few days, Valve is selling the Steamlink for as little as $1. That's a 98 percent price drop and represents the best deal we've ever seen for the little streaming device. The only downside is that you do need to buy it as part of a bundle with 2D anime sidescroller, ICEY.
Still, even when bundled with that game the whole thing is still less than $9, that's a huge discount on both the game and the Steamlink.
For the uninitiated, the Steamlink acts a little like Nvidia's Shield, but exclusively with Steam. It lets you stream Steam games to any display you like, as long as you can connect an HDMI cable to it. It works over wired and wireless connections and can let you play your favorite Steam games in your living room or anywhere you like really.
It works better over wired connection and there is sometimes a stutter, especially in older games that were around before streaming was as popular as it is today, but it works well and features support for a myriad of gaming controllers, so if you'd rather use an Xbox 360 gamepad for whatever you're playing in the lounge, it can do it.
The Steamlink features various controls for adjusting the quality and speed of your stream, helping you find the middle ground between quality and performance and for those with powerful local networks, the end result is much the same as you would have playing directly on your PC. You don't want to play something with fiddly interfaces, or something that relies on fast-twitch movements in competitive play - Steamlink does add around 100ms of input lag - but for just about anything else, it works great.
I'm quite partial to a game of Kingdom: New Lands on mine.
