Google and Microsoft aren’t the only companies that foresee cloud gaming as the future of video games. Nvidia has jumped into the fray with the official launch of its new cloud gaming service GeForce NOW.
Nvidia’s gaming platform is now officially out of beta and offers a service similar to those of Google Stadia and Microsoft’s Project xCloud, which is still in the preview phase. Members of the service will be able to seamlessly play games on PC, Mac (but not iOS), and Android, as well as TVs using Nvidia Shield.
There are two membership tiers for GeForce NOW, free and Founders, both of which will support streaming at 1080p and 60 frames per second. Nvidia says that it is looking into expanding support to 4K and 1440p resolutions, but that may not come for quite a while.
The free version of GeForce NOW is limited in that members will have to wait in queues to access servers and will be constrained to one-hour play sessions, at which point the game will end and players will have to log back in. There is no limit to how frequently a person can queue up to play, however, and Jordan Dodge, Senior PR Manager for Nvidia GeForce NOW and Nvidia Shield, has stated that play sessions generally lasted less than one hour during beta testing. Regardless, it probably won’t be very amusing to have a play session end in the middle of a Fortnite match.
GeForce NOW Founders will benefit from priority access to servers and extended play sessions of up to six hours, as well as the graphical upgrade provided by Nvidia’s RTX real-time ray tracing. The Founders membership currently costs $4.99 a month and will automatically convert to a GeForce NOW Premium membership after one year. This price is touted as a limited time offer, meaning that the subscription cost is likely to increase at some point in the future.
GeForce NOW is not an online game store. Instead, members will have access to their personal library of games purchased from many of the most popular PC digital storefronts—including Steam, GOG, and Epic—as long as the game is supported by GeForce NOW. This is a perk when compared to Google Stadia, for example, which requires players to purchase games directly through Stadia that can be played only with Stadia. If players decide to cancel their GeForce NOW membership in the future, they will still own the games they purchased.
The caveat “as long as the game is supported” is important to keep in mind. Currently, Nvidia says more than 1000 titles are compatible with the service, including 30 popular free-to-play games. However, that means that there are many, many games that still aren’t accessible through GeForce NOW and there isn’t currently an easily accessible list of compatible games. The official GeForce NOW website only offers a search box where users can type in game titles to see if they are supported by the service yet.