Nvidia GeForce Now Launches

Andrew Gu ‘23

Nvidia, a company known for making graphics cards for computers, is now releasing a service that has been in a beta-testing phase since 2017. 

 

Nvidia’s Geforce Now is a cloud gaming service. Cloud gaming lets users play video games that would otherwise need to be powered by expensive and heavy gaming computers on their laptops or phones. 

 

Here’s how it works: the game is run on a Nvidia server. It is then streamed onto a user’s personal device  via the internet. Nvidia aims to eliminate the need to own an expensive console or personal computer to be a gamer, hoping that it will attract more consumers to the world of gaming. Phil Eisler, a member on the Geforce Now team, “said that of the 300,000 users who tested the service, 80% of the time, they were playing on a machine that couldn’t otherwise play that game.”

 

Starting at $5 a month, Geforce Now will allow users to experience the power of a gaming PC on any machine. Rather than supporting only  games specific to the provider in other cloud gaming services such as Google Stadia and Sony Playstation Now, Geforce Now enables the user to play games already on their device. In addition, Nvidia’s subscription fee is much lower than other tech giants such as Google, Sony, and Microsoft, being $9 a month, Vortex cloud gaming costing $10 a month, and Parsec gaming costing .80 cents per hour.

 

Geforce Now is a viable alternative to regular PC gaming. However, for users to fully experience cloud gaming, they will need to have access to a very fast internet connection, as cloud gaming relies solely on the internet to stream the game to the user’s device. This limitation will likely reduce the number of people that are able to use this service, but it is already picking up in highly developed areas throughout the world. 

As technology improves and fast data speeds become more available worldwide, Geforce Now and other cloud gaming services will, in turn, become more prevalent in the world. This, in turn, will revolutionize the gaming industry, and move the main access to video games from very expensive and heavy computers and consoles to monthly cloud gaming services.