Can Fire Tv Stick Gaming Run PS5 Remote Play?

I recently had the chance to test gaming on the Fire TV Stick (using PS5 Remote Play). Although the Fire TV Stick does support the Remote Play app, the experience largely depends on the connected network. I’m using a decent Wi-Fi connection at home. Though generally solid, there is the occasional lag and even the odd delay between input and the TV reacting. That makes games that require fast reactions to be quite challenging to play. Generally speaking, casual games may just about work, but action-oriented games and fast-paced competitive games won’t. Gaming on the Fire TV Stick will work best via a wired connection to the console or by using a more powerful streaming media player, such as the Shield TV.

I can be grateful for the convenience of playing to a secondary screen with ‘Demon’s Souls’ and ‘Returnal’ for example, but the limitations of the Fire TV Stick hardware are obvious. It’s just not powerful enough to handle the high-bitrate streams and the resultant lag etc. that are pumped out by the PS5. If you’re still intent on trying this then ensure your PS5 is connected via Ethernet and your Fire TV Stick is set to the 5GHz band of your WiFi router. Even then, be prepared for the occasional drop in performance.

Note: Although this works, the experience is far from ideal. The app installs fine from sideloaded APKs (not available via Amazon Appstore), but after initial setup (inputting your PSN credentials, linking to your PS5, etc.), one of the major problems that proves very problematic in gaming – input lag – rapidly becomes apparent, even when fired up via the “fastest” 5GHz Wi-Fi connection. consider really any serious gaming – particularly that with precise control (such as platformers, fighting games like ‘Street Fighter 6’, and more recently-released RPGs like ‘Final Fantasy XVI’… etc.) – and you’ll find that the base-grade hardware within Fire TV Sticks (even those various various sequel models designed with ‘gaming’ in mind etc.) can’t possibly manage the required near-real-time decoding of video of the nature being pumped across the connection to in order to deliver an entirely “satisfactory” gaming experience.

It is worth noting that some of the DualSense controller’s features and functions won’t work properly on the Fire TV Stick, such as the adaptive triggers and haptic feedback in the controller’s grip. Playing on the device is generally a stripped down version of the regular PS5 experience, and it’s generally better suited to playing long-form RPGs, adventure games, and other turn-based style games rather than fast-paced, competitive FPS titles.

However a good alternative would be to use a laptop or tablet to play PS5 Remote Play with the official app. The Fire TV Stick is fun to use for occasional gaming, but it is not a reliable replacement for playing games on a TV. Only if Amazon is going to optimize the app for Fire OS or adds more power to the Fire TV Sticks in the future, it will become a worth alternative.

A few days ago I managed to set up a Fire TV Stick to use PS5 Remote Play. As it happens, it sort of works. After some hassle of sideloading the app (which isn’t too hard to do, in the end) the experience is very inconsistent. In ‘Horizon Forbidden West’ for example, it looks fairly okay in terms of resolution, but suffers from severe compression artifacts, particularly in very dark scenes. The input lag is acceptable, but just about not, particularly in games that rely on a very specific timing, such as rhythm games, like ‘Hi-Fi Rush’.

It’s handy that the Fire TV Stick is portable enough to take with you when you travel. Yes, you can use your DualSense controller to play games on the TV in your hotel room. But again, the experience is far from ideal. The Fire TV Stick’s Wi-Fi chip isn’t optimized for low-latency streaming. Expect the odd drop out or glitch.

This is definitely a fun novelty for casual gamers, but for serious gamers, they would want to invest in a better piece of hardware to enjoy PS5 Remote Play. The Fire TV Stick is a cost-effective option, but you get what you pay for.