It's time to try your couch for PC gaming.

For their PC gaming setup, couches do not appear in most people's visions: a glowing combat station fashioned around a chair and a desk, optimized for vertical gaming. But eight months into the pandemic, with many office staff still WFH, it's not quite as enticing to unwind with those Apex Giants in the same chair at the same desk. The sofa calls.

Couch gaming is synonymous with consoles, melting into a well-kept portion facing a TV mounted on a wall or located on a media table, you and your wireless controller. In order to optimize the immersive couch experience, Microsoft and Sony are launching shiny new boxes with enticing specs. But you have a lot more choices than you would expect if you own a PC.

Although next-gen consoles are incredibly powerful, they're sort of just mini-PCs with software-specific benefits at the end of the day. In a June interview, Xbox head Phil Spencer told Quiziosity, "Other than people whipping out a keyboard and mouse and writing an email, a lot of what happens on our console is similar to what happens on a PC." For the premium couch gaming experience, you could spend from $300 to $500 on a next-gen console. Or, you might just buy a super-long HDMI cable if you already have a gaming PC. This is not tongue-in-cheek; the most flexible, comfortable, and high-powered way of playing games today might be PC gaming from your sofa.

No Regular Game Way

The way you can just place a console on a TV stand and use a wireless controller is not a couch PC gaming standard. Valve started implementing a grand plan in 2013 to replace gaming consoles with PCs, including its so-called Steam Machine unit. It was a console-lite that ran the proprietary, Linux-based SteamOS of Valve. Valve released Steam Connection when that petered out, a bit of hardware that streamed PC games to TVs. For its versatility and dependability, it won rave reviews, but was discontinued in 2018. (The system is still supported, including its software iteration.)

However, think of the lack of standardization as an opportunity: you get to cobble your own setup together, something to which PC gamers are already accustomed.

Which is why a $16, 25-foot HDMI cable started my chair-to-couch move. It links my gaming PC to a nearby, wall-mounted Sony television that sits across from my hideous yet irresistibly comfy sofa, which is also my work setup. The cable is clunky, but it also implies that latency isn't a concern.

You might have to go wireless if your favorite TV is in a room where an HDMI hookup is not feasible. Some couch PC gamers I've talked with have bought or used the software incarnation of Steam Links from eBay. Others have dabbled with GameStream from Nvidia, which allows you to stream games to your TV from your PC if you have an Nvidia Shield TV system. Regardless of which route you take, the setup is largely the same: plug a dongle into your TV, download the program to your PC, and they will create a connection.

I'd like to suggest that if you are playing twitchy shooters, the resulting lag from the wireless link is just a big deal, not if you are playing simulation or strategy games. But when you are used to gaming on a jacked-in PC, even a little lag can be frustrating.

Only step one is getting your PC to play nice with your television. Next, there must be decisions taken. Are you going to buy a new mouse, keyboard, or joystick that you keep on the sofa for the auxiliary PC setup? Or are you going to insert an inexpensive wireless mouse into an old college textbook and call it a day? Star Saltzman, 38, says he put an eight-foot wooden sailboat seat over his couch in the aughts to carry his mouse and keyboard. Today, to expand the range of his wireless mouse and keyboard, he uses a food tray and a USB extension with a wireless dongle. Other couch PC gamers I've talked to simply use cheap Logitech wireless keyboards to navigate menus with trackpads, but play with an old Xbox One or 360 controller connected to a USB hub.

There is another choice for devoted mouse-and-keyboard gamers who do not want to compromise latency: the lapboard, a gloriously tall, cushioned lap desk with an integrated keyboard and mouse pad. Asked what inspired its K63 model, Corsair said it wanted to "create something with the feel and performance of a desktop keyboard and mouse setup, in a form factor that could be used on the couch," adding that "the benefit of a desktop-standard mechanical keyboard and mouse is palpable for fast-paced or complex PC games in the living room."

Today, lapboards are hard to track down. In a number of countries, Corsair says the K63 is out of stock because of high demand. I managed to grab a used Roccat Sova for my setup, sizeable with its built-in mechanical keyboard and massive, plastic mousepad. It's an impressive system, checking all the boxes: low-latency, ergonomic and high-quality. I plugged the Roccat Sova into the back of my PC tower using a USB extender, wrapped its cable around the room, and put it on the console table. For games that recommend controllers, a plugged-in Xbox One controller sits to the left of the sofa.

The simplest reason for sofa PC gaming is comfort plus sheer game variety, like League of Legends or World of Warcraft, which you can not find on other platforms, plus potential computing power. But don't forget about games for the party. How many times without resorting to violence can you really play Mario Party?

For $500 to $1,500, you can build a small gaming PC, preferably with Bluetooth support for controllers. It's the least cost-effective substitute for a console; for the price of a very fine, very small PC, you could easily buy two Xbox Series Xs. On the other hand, if you're comfortable changing parts, it could last you a little longer.

For this very reason, compact machine cases exist. Link your itty bitty PC to a TV or projector that you can use to play (the very best kind) indie party games such as Crawl, Stick Battle, Overcooked 2 or TowerFall. And then you can tap out to watch the new music video for your favorite K-Pop party. Place it behind your sofa, cover the labyrinth of cable, and attach it to the controller's USB hub. Only make sure you're dusting a lot.

Select one: management or latency of cables. Selecting as many wireless peripherals as possible implies fewer wires that are available. Ethernet, USB, controller, HDMI and sound system cables can mean the option of low latency. I've opted for latency. This is what lives behind the sofa in the living room:

Even under the category of "plugged-in": mentally, you're probably already on your work computer. An email notification could pop up, unlike console gaming. You can get the sudden, ill-advised urge to check your feed on Twitter. You are lacking the opportunity to completely disconnect from the daily grind.

Physically, however, it is healing to switch from a desk to a sofa. There's a loosening-up going on while you're on the sofa, drinking in hand, picking candy fistfuls, and enjoying a long, long video game marathon. It can be bought on a PC. Or it's worth a shot, at the very least.