Earlier today, Nvidia announced that its cloud gaming service, GeForce Now, is officially out of beta and is available for everyone. The testing phase for GeForce Now lasted over two years and the GPU manufacturer has revealed some statistics from the beta. According to Nvidia, over 300K streamers participated in the beta, with users experiencing more than 70 million hours of gameplay in 30 countries across Europe and North America.
GeForce Now has a free tier that grants standard access to the streaming servers for up to one-hour sessions, although there aren't any limits on how many session requests you can make. Additionally, there is a premium 'Founders' tier that grants priority access to GeForce Now servers and extends session lengths to up to six hours of uninterrupted gameplay. Streamers will also be able to access the firepower of RTX 2080-level hardware, allowing for ray tracing features in supported games.
Upon purchasing the premium Founder tier membership, users will get the first three months for free and normal pricing will continue for the rest of 2020, which is $4.99 per month. Currently, the pricing for GeForce Now is a special offer and Nvidia stated that the subscription price may increase in 2021.
GeForce Now is compatible with PC, Mac, Nvidia Shield, and Android phones. Chromebooks are expected to be supported later this year. In terms of available games, Nvidia claims that members can play over 30 free games, hundreds of games from 50 publishers and thousands of games through what Nvidia calls 'single session installs'.
Nvidia has also stated that the games library will expand based on player inputs and publishers. In laymans terms, you've got to ask Nvidia for games.
When compared with Stadia, GeForce Now is missing some of the big titles, including Red Dead Redemption 2 and Grand Theft Auto V. However, Nvidia still allows players to import their own games library from stores like Steam, which is a major advantage over Stadia.
