The Steam Deck can now tap into PlayStation cloud streaming without a PS5 or a PS Portal, thanks to a new app called Asobi: Remote Play — and for Sony, that’s usually a £200-plus privilege.
Asobi has opened a public playtest that lets Steam Deck, Steam Machine, and other SteamOS or Linux users stream games directly from the PlayStation Plus Premium cloud library. If you already pay for Sony’s highest subscription tier, you can now pull those titles straight onto Valve’s handheld with no console in the house.
What Asobi: Remote Play actually does
Remote play on Steam Deck isn’t new. For a while, apps like Asobi have let you stream from your own PS4 or PS5 over your home network. The PS Portal is built around the same idea. Your console does the heavy lifting; your handheld is just a video and input pipe.
What’s new — and why this matters — is that Asobi now talks directly to PlayStation’s cloud streaming backend for PS Plus Premium users. With an active subscription, you’re not mirroring a console in your living room. You’re streaming from Sony’s servers straight to a Linux-based handheld.
In practice, that means Steam Deck owners can treat PS Plus Premium a lot more like a cloud platform instead of a home extension of their console. The Deck becomes a thin client for the entire cloud catalogue rather than just a relay for hardware you already own.
How the Steam Deck gets “PS Portal” powers
On paper, Sony already sells you this flexibility. The PlayStation Portal is pitched as the handheld answer for remote access to PlayStation games via cloud and console streaming, and it leans heavily on the PS Plus Premium tier to work beyond your home setup. Right now, though, the Portal itself sits at around £220.
Asobi doesn’t replace that experience outright — it isn’t a Sony product, has no official tie to PlayStation or Valve, and lives entirely outside the PlayStation hardware ecosystem. But functionally, for someone who already owns a Steam Deck and pays for PS Plus Premium, it gets very close to what makes the Portal compelling: handheld access to the PS Plus cloud library without shelling out for a console.
The key difference is that Asobi’s new trick doesn’t require a PS5 at all. PS Plus Premium cloud streaming handles the compute, and the Steam Deck becomes your portable screen and controller for games ranging from big first-party hits to third-party blockbusters, all piped from Sony’s servers.
Inside the public playtest
Developer Ichenzo announced that Asobi: Remote Play has entered a public playtest focused on Steam Deck, Steam Machines, and other SteamOS or Linux devices. If you previously signed up, invites are going out by email, though the developer warns there are plenty of registrations, so it may take time to reach everyone.
During this playtest period, every premium feature is unlocked at no extra cost. That means:
- Streaming up to 60fps
- HDR support
- Controller haptics
- 4K upscaling
- Manual bitrate control
Once the app leaves testing, the free tier will reportedly fall back to a 1080p/30fps limit. The developer hasn’t yet revealed how much the full premium tier will cost when it launches on the Steam Store.
There are a couple of practical perks too. You don’t have to drop into desktop mode on the Steam Deck or juggle extra launchers; the app is built to live comfortably inside Steam. A Windows version is also in the works, though it’s only described as coming “soonish,” so for now this is chiefly a win for Deck and Linux handheld owners.
What you still need from Sony
This is not a way to dodge Sony’s subscription model. To unlock cloud gaming inside Asobi, you still need a PlayStation Network account with an active PlayStation Plus Premium subscription. The app is essentially a new front-end for services you’re already paying Sony for, not a free ticket to the library.
If you don’t subscribe to PS Plus Premium, Asobi continues to work in its older role: remote streaming from your own PS4 or PS5 over your home network. That feature remains available without the premium tier, just as it has been for years, with the new cloud access sitting on top for those who pay for the highest subscription level.
It’s also worth underlining that Asobi is completely unofficial. Sony can change how its cloud streaming works, update authentication, or otherwise tweak the service in ways that may affect the app at any time. Right now, though, it’s filling a gap Sony itself hasn’t prioritized: treating Steam Deck and other Linux handhelds as first-class targets for PlayStation Plus cloud gaming.
Steam Deck vs PS Portal: who is this really for?
Asobi’s new cloud streaming capability sharpens the overlap between the Steam Deck and the PS Portal, but the two still chase different players.
The PS Portal is the straightforward choice for someone who lives entirely in the PlayStation world. It’s tuned for Sony’s ecosystem, built to match the look and feel of a DualSense, and sold as a dedicated extension of your console and subscription. It’s appliance-simple: sign in, tap your game, play.
The Steam Deck, on the other hand, already behaves like a tiny PC. It can handle local Steam games, emulators, and now — with Asobi in the mix — PS Plus Premium streaming on top. For someone who likes to tinker, swap launchers, and live in multiple ecosystems at once, it’s a far more flexible bit of hardware.
Where this really stings for Sony is optics. Right now the company sells hardware at roughly £220 that, in broad terms, offers a subset of what a Deck owner can approximate with a third-party app layered onto a device they already own. The PS Portal still has advantages in simplicity and official support, but Asobi makes the price gap between “PlayStation handheld” and “Linux handheld plus cloud” feel a lot more obvious.
What this could mean for PlayStation on PC-style devices
Even as an unofficial project, Asobi: Remote Play hints at a future where PlayStation’s highest-tier subscription service behaves more like a true cloud platform, one that isn’t always tethered to a console. Sony has already moved in that direction by allowing PS Plus Premium cloud streaming to stand in for owning a PS5 outright. Apps like this simply extend that idea to new kinds of screens.
For hybrid devices like the Steam Deck and Steam Machines, this blurs old lines. These handhelds started life as ways to bring PC libraries on the go. Now they’re quietly turning into portals for console ecosystems too — Xbox via various cloud services, and increasingly, PlayStation through workarounds like Asobi.
If the experience proves stable and players actually use it, there are two possible outcomes. Either Sony decides this audience is worth courting with official support for PC-style handhelds, or it tightens the technical and legal screws around third-party apps that speak to its cloud.
For now, it’s a small but meaningful win for players who straddle both platforms. If you already pay for PS Plus Premium and own a Steam Deck, this playtest is essentially a free trial of a feature Sony still pushes dedicated hardware to deliver.
What This Means
Asobi: Remote Play doesn’t suddenly turn the Steam Deck into a sanctioned PlayStation handheld, and it depends entirely on a PS Plus Premium subscription to be useful. But it does show just how far a flexible, open handheld can stretch when developers are willing to do the work.
Sony still charges around £220 for the PS Portal, promising cloud-enabled access to games without a PS5. With Asobi’s playtest live, Steam Deck owners can now chase a very similar outcome from hardware they already have, all while Sony picks up the subscription revenue and a solo developer juggles the technical heavy lifting.
If nothing else, it’s a clear reminder: when the hardware is open and the service runs in the cloud, players will find a way to put the two together — even if the platform holder doesn’t get there first.
Photo: Liam Dawe/GamingOnLinux / BY-SA via Openverse
