Google Stadia's less than stellar launch might have proved that hardcore gaming audiences weren't ready for cloud gaming just yet, but that won't be stopping NVIDIA. Their GeForce Now service has left beta and officially launched today, offering low-latency game streaming to a multitude of platforms, such as PC, macOS, Android, and the NVIDIA Shield. GeForce Now, much like Google Stadia, is a game-streaming service, but it makes itself different from the competition in a key way: instead of renting a library of titles, players pay monthly to access a remote computer to play their own games on, and stream directly to their devices. Currently, it only costs $4.99 a month for GeForce Now, though it's an introductory price that is slated to increase after the initial launch. You can also use the service for free, though it comes with certain stipulations, such as having to potentially wait in a queue for spots to open up, and limiting sessions to an hour at a time. Paid users get six-hour sessions at a time, which is done to prevent mining or non-gaming high resource activities, though you can jump back in after your session is over.

Users in 30 countries across the world will be able to subscribe to GeForce Now, which has data centers that deliver an average of 20-millisecond latency in Europe and North America, while eastern locations like Korea, Japan, and Russia get around 10 milliseconds of lag. Those interested in trying the service out are advised to have a 15mbps connection at minimum, and recommending 25mbps internet to have a better experience.

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[nolimits59]

Tried it on some save the world in fortnite a few days ago, worked pretty well, i was impressed .

 

[anhminh]

Every stream game need an option for download the game too. I don't trust anyone to keep my game, even if they pinky swear about it. You never know when your account will be banned for random shit like anti-China talk or when they ask for you support to avoid close down and no one want their games being hostage in such situation.

 

[the_randomizer]

Until we start seeing stable connections and ISPs not fucking about with speeds, cloud-based gaming will continue to be a bad idea

At the very least, they're going full stupid with forcing people to pay full price for games, but instead allowing them to use games already paid for.

 

[chartube12]

I thought this was available for years now? Was it in an extensive beta/trial period? If so, already smarter than Google and strata

 

[64bitmodels]

Yeah i'm going to stay 9 miles away from this one. I get it works better than Stadia but like.. There's a thousand other caveats that come with streaming-only. I'll stick with my Steam library, thanks

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I can totally see the appeal for this, as my friend's stepson plays (and keeps buying) modern games for his hand-me-down, 8 year old PC with a GTX 550Ti and is still having a blast playing fortnite at 1600x900 resolution and under 20fps. Even if it was $15 a month, $180 a year for a huge performance spike beats spending $500 and up to get him a modern gaming rig.

EDIT: Didn't see there's an android app! I tried to sign up and there was an error. Not a good start, team green.
EDIT 2: Working now, I have crap connection so the stream is a little blurry, but it seems to be prioritizing minimizing input lag. I like it. Testing on my phone only for now.

NOO DON'T DO IT IT'S A TRAP
A refurbished dell optiplex 7010 + a used 1050ti are just under 400$ and are a way better setup than buying a streaming service.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Now that's how you do it. I've been using the beta and have been happy with the performance. Input lag is basically non-existent, and you can bring all of your Steam games, or at least, the games that are too heavy to run on lower end PCs tend to be supported, such as AAA games, indies not so much, but you can run those on anything.

The only thing I didn't know was what the pricing would be like. And at $5, it's definitely worth it in my opinion. Cheaper than buying or building a gaming PC which needs to be upgraded every few years to run the newest games, and a great option for those that simply don't have the money for that, like teenagers and students. They just need to add support for 1440p, 4k and HDR and it'll be pretty much perfect.

Yeah i'm going to stay 9 miles away from this one. I get it works better than Stadia but like.. There's a thousand other caveats that come with streaming-only. I'll stick with my Steam library, thanks

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NOO DON'T DO IT IT'S A TRAP
A refurbished dell optiplex 7010 + a used 1050ti are just under 400$ and are a way better setup than buying a streaming service.

You can play your Steam library on it though.
I wouldn't go streaming only, but I was using the beta to play a couple of games my desktop was simply not up to the task of running, and for that, it worked very well. Obviously you'd run games locally whenever possible.

 

[Lodad]

NOO DON'T DO IT IT'S A TRAP
A refurbished dell optiplex 7010 + a used 1050ti are just under 400$ and are a way better setup than buying a streaming service.

Why not try it? 90-day free trial and $5 a month after that is nothing, especially considering that's only $60 a year (for now), compared to buying any upgrade to a computer to gain higher resolution or framerate, better settings etc.

The draw for me is that while I do have a good computer, my internet connection is such garbage there's no way I can use Steam Link over an internet connection on the go. This way, I can use my phone's data connection or wi-fi where I'm at to play games that I already own without having to buy them again like Stadia. Heck, I could go over to a friend's house and just hook my phone up to a TV and use Mouse and Keyboard with a hub (my hub has an ethernet adapter too) and not lug my computer or a laptop around at all to get some real gaming in with buddies.

I fail to see how buying a used prefab computer and extremely-low end graphics card can do any of that for me. EDIT: Also the kid is 9 years old, no 9-year-old needs $400 spent on them so they can play fortnite, minecraft, and roblox.

... and a great option for those that simply don't have the money for that, like teenagers and students. They just need to add support for 1440p, 4k and HDR and it'll be pretty much perfect.

Yeah, if they kept a $5 tier for 1080p 60fps and charged more for higher resolutions and framerates, I'd be in heaven because I don't need much more than 1080/60. I hate 120 and higher refresh rates.

 

[Kurt91]

I'm not understanding the hate towards this. It's not paying to "rent" new games, like a lot of people seem to think. It looks like it's more of a "I bought this game and didn't realize that my PC can't run it". You play your own games that you already have, and there's even a free option. Use the free option and see if the result is better than if you run the game locally. If it isn't, then just walk away. You've lost nothing. If it does run better, then consider subscribing for just the time that you spend playing your game. If you finish the game and you don't have another one that you want to play that runs better using their servers, then end the subscription and that's it. If you're absolutely determined to do it all for free, then play the game entirely using the free version, and just deal with the hourly interruptions. Other than the slight annoyance of the interruptions, most games either auto-save or you should be saving often anyways. If you're playing an RPG and grinding for rare loot where you need the longer length of time without interruptions, play the game without using their streaming service and run it yourself. You'll be in the same boat as if you hadn't used the service at all, and if it hurts your experience, then I guess that the streaming service wasn't so stupid after all.

Just remember that it should be more of a stop-gap service for the occasional game you can't run. You're going to get angry inevitably if you're constantly buying over-the-top games that you can't run period without their service, because they are no longer an "optional" fall-back plan.

 

[the_randomizer]

I'm not understanding the hate towards this. It's not paying to "rent" new games, like a lot of people seem to think. It looks like it's more of a "I bought this game and didn't realize that my PC can't run it". You play your own games that you already have, and there's even a free option. Use the free option and see if the result is better than if you run the game locally. If it isn't, then just walk away. You've lost nothing. If it does run better, then consider subscribing for just the time that you spend playing your game. If you finish the game and you don't have another one that you want to play that runs better using their servers, then end the subscription and that's it. If you're absolutely determined to do it all for free, then play the game entirely using the free version, and just deal with the hourly interruptions. Other than the slight annoyance of the interruptions, most games either auto-save or you should be saving often anyways. If you're playing an RPG and grinding for rare loot where you need the longer length of time without interruptions, play the game without using their streaming service and run it yourself. You'll be in the same boat as if you hadn't used the service at all, and if it hurts your experience, then I guess that the streaming service wasn't so stupid after all.

Just remember that it should be more of a stop-gap service for the occasional game you can't run. You're going to get angry inevitably if you're constantly buying over-the-top games that you can't run period without their service, because they are no longer an "optional" fall-back plan.

Unlike Google's stupid approach, NVidia's is much better, because it implies you already bought games in the first place, and *gasp* not overpriced games either. That too me is what killed Stadia, is having to pay full price for games you don't even own.

 

[osaka35]

I have a shield and there is a free option? Sure, I'll give it a shot. Good for when i have a short time to play. I mean, why isn't stadia like this?

 

[the_randomizer]

I have a shield and there is a free option? Sure, I'll give it a shot. Good for when i have a short time to play. I mean, why isn't stadia like this?

Because Google is run by out of touch morons

 

[MiiJack]

This is not a replacement for Console/PC gaming, this a companion for that. You won't always have your rig with you (vacation , work trip, toilet time?, etc) but you might want to play some heavy games but you only brought a GPD win 2, or any device compatible with this.

 

[Lodad]

This is not a replacement for Console/PC gaming, this a companion for that. You won't always have your rig with you (vacation , work trip, toilet time?, etc) but you might want to play some heavy games but you only brought a GPD win 2, or any device compatible with this.

Exactly, I feel like this is just empowering owners of set top android boxes and portable devices at a very affordable price point. 8 or 9 hours out of your paycheck after taxes pays for a year of this. 25 minutes of work out of each bi-weekly paycheck pays for a month. If you don't have a beefy enough PC setup or broadband connection to play with steam link from your own PC on the go, this is what I'd recommend.

Also a good way to get a friend into f2p games with you - it copies the game files super fast and also patches quite quickly. I started up Path of Exile and it loaded a 5.5GB patch in a few minutes. I was in Destiny 2 in less than two minutes as well. No worrying about long download times or if a rig will handle a new game.

Also nice if hard disk space is at a premium on your PC.

 

[Stunx]

"RTX ON"
All in all I've used the beta service and the price point is worth it.
It says limited time, but I feel like it'd be worth it up to $15.
All you need to get a good 1080p stream is about 10mbps down
you want about 25ish for anything else especially if you're network has a lot of use outside this.\
You can talk shit, but it's free to see if you can run it well.
If you can't don't buy it if you can well it might be for you

As you said, free to try. On the spot I downloaded it on my phone, logged into my accounts. Loaded up Destiny, it plays almost perfect surprisingly! Ended up digging though my controllers to find the one synced to my phone. This is great! And it looks amazing.

 

[gudenau]

I mean you definitely don't need fiber for this. A regular ethernet cable will do you just fine, but honestly I didn't use one and didn't have a problem with lag, but most people probably should use an ethernet cable to minimize hiccuping. Fiber is for insane speeds that are over 10x what you need for this (even for high res and high frame rate)
Shadow is better than this though. You get a whole desktop, high frame rate and resolution, nation wide servers,
and you can choose your os. When I say you get a whole desktop I mean it too. You can do whatever you'd like with it really from steam to origin and drm free and so on

You completely misunderstood what I meant. I was saying a similar sort of distance from your place of residence to a fiber to the block setup would be required to guarantee good perforce. That would have a minimal number of hops, allow time sharing and not require as much unknown infrastructure between point A and B. Every hop has to be made twice, each ms of ping is extremely important.

 

[Deleted User]

Reading the other comments, I'm wondering just how long I've been living under rock. Seems like every man and his dog has heard of this before except me.

Good for people who don't like owning things I guess?

 

[kumikochan]

Just tried it and i find it quite bad, no 4k option and jezus the sound is horrible. +100mbps connection and tried destiny 2 out and i had to stop after a minute because of the sound being so extremely compressed that it sounded like i was listening to mono sound being played on a half broken single audio speaker. Don't get how people can claim it is good with such horrible compressed audio

 

[lordelan]

While I completely don't care for Stadia, I do care for GeForce Now. I even bought a beta key for 10 bucks as it took to many months for me to get unlocked otherwise.
The nice thing is: I can use it on PC and my Switch (thank you, Switchroot Android) and I'm using my almost existent Steam games. That's pretty cool.
I'm also fine with the free service. 2 instead of 1 hour would be cooler though but that's alright!

 

[nmkd]

Reading the other comments, I'm wondering just how long I've been living under rock. Seems like every man and his dog has heard of this before except me.

Good for people who don't like owning things I guess?

What?

GFN simply lets you play your Steam games via the cloud.
Any game you play on there can also be downloaded to your PC.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

While I completely don't care for Stadia, I do care for GeForce Now. I even bought a beta key for 10 bucks as it took to many months for me to get unlocked otherwise.
The nice thing is: I can use it on PC and my Switch (thank you, Switchroot Android) and I'm using my almost existent Steam games. That's pretty cool.
I'm also fine with the free service. 2 instead of 1 hour would be cooler though but that's alright!

It doesn't work on Switchroot anymore. Unless someone found a new workaround? I tried everything to get it working a couple months ago and it was not possible.

Just tried it and i find it quite bad, no 4k option and jezus the sound is horrible. +100mbps connection and tried destiny 2 out and i had to stop after a minute because of the sound being so extremely compressed that it sounded like i was listening to mono sound being played on a half broken single audio speaker. Don't get how people can claim it is good with such horrible compressed audio

Sounds like a bug, I haven't had that issue.

I have a shield and there is a free option? Sure, I'll give it a shot. Good for when i have a short time to play. I mean, why isn't stadia like this?

Actually you even get 20 streaming games for free with Shield TV. Nothing new, but some older AAA titles are on there, like Tomb Raider 2013.