Sony’s PS Remote Play app has been a handy way to lug your PS5 and PS4 games to another room of your house for years – with clients for PC, Mac, iOS, Android and, from 2020, the PS4 itself. I played for hours Yakuza And Genshin impact from the unofficial Steam Deck version.
As of yesterday, it also works on a $50 Google Chromecast! But it took me a long time to find and install the app, and I suspect it won’t be a great experience for everyone.
The good news: it works and works quite well if you have your PS5 connected to your router with an Ethernet cable. You can stream from a PS5 or a PS4 and play with the PS5 or PS4’s gamepad, both of which easily pair with your Chromecast via Bluetooth. You can enable both HDR and high frame rate mode. It’s definitely not 4K, but I’m guessing I’m looking at 1080p at 60fps when streaming from my PS5.
The app easily found my PS5 and started it remotely over the internet by simply logging into my PSN account with a handy QR code – and it gave me a handy menu to disconnect (and put my PS5 back to sleep) ) when I press the home button on my controller.
But there’s an annoying amount of audio lag, some input lag, and some visual stuttering even with an ethernet cable and game mode on my TV – and if you’re trying to get it to work over a pure Wi-Fi network, well… I guess not on!
With ethernet connected to the PS5, I was able to play a rhythm game like Pestlebad, while holding the controller three feet away from a Chromecast connected to my PC monitor, I could definitely see myself playing less intensive games like Yakuza in this way.
But with a Chromecast behind my TV trying to connect to my PS5 via Wi-Fi and my DualSense via Bluetooth at the same time, the input lag became unbearable as I started putting distance between myself and the screen. Even just a few feet away, my Pestle space bug died over and over again. There are zero games I could comfortably play on my couch 10 or 10 feet away. Even navigating the PS5 menus was a chore.
If you connect the PS5 to ethernet, I think so power But you can get away with a living room scenario. To me, it felt like it overcame enough of the Bluetooth lag to make non-action games bearable.
I suppose you could always buy an ethernet adapter for your Chromecast as well.
Know that Sony still randomly pairs PS Remote Play with its own DualSense and DualShock controllers on the Chromecast, just like with other clients, even though the service still doesn’t support any of their fancy features: no DualSense vibration, no adaptive triggers, not microphones. None of them worked Astro’s playroomalthough Sony has apparently found a way to ship them to the upcoming PlayStation Portal streaming handheld.
The lag isn’t just Sony’s problem, by the way: other game streaming services on Chromecast also have audio lag, and Bluetooth controllers can certainly have trouble connecting to a device behind a TV. The $50 dongle isn’t really a gaming gadget.
But Sony could have solved most of my problems by letting me use a DualSense controller connected to my PS5 by default while just streaming the visuals. I’ve done that before using Remote Play for less lag and full DualSense functionality from another room in my house. No dice rolling here: the moment I log in from another controller, the Chromecast loses its PS5 connection, as you can see in the image above.
Maybe Sony decided that if you’re close enough to the TV to connect a controller directly to the PS5 sitting underneath, you might as well use that TV. I respectfully disagree.
If you want to try out PS Remote Play, you may not be able to find the app of your Chromecast, because it didn’t show up in any of my searches. It also doesn’t easily appear in a Google Play search as of this morning. But if you navigate to this link in a browser with a logged in Google account, you can remotely install it on your Chromecast that way.