Gosh, wouldn’t it be nice to play a little Bloodborne tonight? Shame my wife will be using the TV. If only I had a way to stream the game from my PlayStation 4 to another device. How about a hacked version of the PS4 Remote Play app that works on Android phones and tablets — and my Nvidia Shield? Yes. Yes. That will do nicely.
Over at the XDA-developers forum, an intrepid and generous user by the name of Twisted89 has successfully ported the official Sony PS4 Remote Play app to other phones and tablets. It’s a beautiful thing. Users are reporting that the app — normally exclusive to Sony Xperia devices — now works on the Samsung Galaxy S4, S5, Note 4, HTC One M9, Nexus 5, 7, 9 and 10, and Nvidia Shield and Shield Tablet.
I can also personally confirm it works with both versions of the Moto X.
These devices don’t need to be rooted or anything. You just install the app, pair it with your PlayStation 4, and you’re ready to start slaying demons. It streams pretty well! You can even wake up your PS4 with your phone from another room of your house if you leave the console in Rest Mode. And the best part is that Twisted89 has coded native support — read: you just plug it in — for your actual Sony gamepads.
Here’s a Moto X connected to a Sony DualShock 4 with a standard USB-OTG adaptor. Sure, it’s a little cumbersome, especially if you don’t have a controller clip.
And you probably don’t want to play with the touchscreen, whose controls will either get obscured by your thumbs or — in portait mode — give you a crazy-tiny picture.
You could root your phone, and buy the Sixaxis controller app to pair wirelessly. Or you could buy an Android game controller with a built-in clip. But for me, this is where the Nvidia Shield comes in. The app also natively supports the Shield’s built-in controller, giving you everything in one package. The only other way to get everything in one is to buy a PlayStation Vita, and even it doesn’t have trigger buttons.
Of course, streaming games is still a finnicky matter. You’ve got to have a great Wi-Fi router and/or direct ethernet connections for best results.
Yes, I should definitely blame my Wi-Fi router for every untimely death in Bloodborne.
But seriously, it’s way more playable than I expected — there’s even a 60fps streaming option in the settings menu — and you don’t have to pay a thing to give it a go. You can download the app right here, and give it a try for yourself. [XDA-developers]