Nvidia Reveals GeForce Now Game Streaming Service

[Jordan]

Nvidia Reveals GeForce Now Game Streaming Service

 

Nvidia revealed the game streaming service GeForce Now for Mac and PC yesterday at the company's CES 2017 keynote event.

GeForce Now is a game streaming service that works similar to the service that Nvidia Shield users can use already.

 

The core idea behind the service is to move the computing power to the cloud so that PCs and Macs without dedicated video card can play the latest and most demanding games.

Now you can transform your Mac or PC into a powerful NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1080 gaming machine with easy access to the latest PC games. Connect to top digital stores like Steam, Uplay, GOG, Battle.net, and Origin to play your games. It’s that easy.

A relatively fast Internet connection is required however to take advantage of GeForce Now. Nvidia states that GeForce Now requires an Internet connection with at least 25 Mbps.

Another limitation, at least for the time being, is that only residents of the United States may apply for early access to the service.

How it works

 

GeForce Now uses a different system than traditional game streaming services. The service is more a high powered gaming rig in the cloud than an all-in-one service.

It does not ship with any games that you get when you become a member, but lets you access the catalogs of gaming platforms such as Steam or Origin.

 

This means that you need to purchase the games on these platforms, or alreadyown them, to stream them using GeForce Now.

 

GeForce Now is more flexible than existing game streaming services because of this. Users have more games they can choose from thanks to support for several gaming platforms. It is unclear right now whether gamers will be able to play games they already purchased on one of the supported platforms, but it seems likely that this will be the case.

 

 

One benefit of this approach is that games may be played that are not yet available on a platform. Nvidia showcased the latest Tomb Raider game on a Mac for instance during the event; the game is not yet available for Macs.

 

While that is mostly beneficial for Mac users, as they may play games only released for Windows on their devices, it may also be beneficial to Windows users who run older operating systems that games may no longer support officially.

 

The main downside to GeForce Now is price. Nvidia wants $25 for 20 hours of play. Considering that games need to be purchased on top of this, it is a rather expensive affair.

You need to add latency to this, as input is delayed due to the streaming nature of the service.

 

Depending on how often you use the service, you could be better off buying a gaming PC or a video console instead.

 

SOURCE

[Keyser Söze]

20 hours of gameplay is a safe number by which current games are to be completed; speedrun junkies would want to be on this one, as I can't imagine being stressed at looking at the time whilst trying to enjoy a game:

"I still have time to finish this part... I still have time to finish this part..."

Target consumers seem to be mainly gamers who would earn from their streaming.  Catering to the elite GeForce community who already have their Titan X's & 1080ti's wouldn't be logical as it is redundant - and you can't target a larger demographic beyond the high-end internet access areas. 

And what happens if your ISP gets into connectivity issues - will you still be billed the remainder of your 20 hours?  Will setting up connection, troubleshooting connectivity, etc. be included in billing hours?  How about waiting to complete in-game updates/add-ons/DLCs, or setting up in-game configuration - will that go against billing time? What if I pause, and go to the door to see who's knocking? What if my game hangs in the middle and there's no way to go out of it but reboot? What if I alt-tab out of the game?  

[PrEzi]

$25 for 20 hours of play

 

Do not forget that this is the LOWEST tier with the weakest PC config. Other higher tiers will cost more "credits" per hour.

Don't forget that you need to buy the games too! 

What a f...g joke... LoL

[IronY-Man]

This sums it up nicely :

3 hours ago, jordan4x said:

you could be better off buying a gaming PC or a video console instead

Another failed attempt of luring *customers   who dont like  these mean and greedy business tactics !!

IM , first you buy games  then buy service   then GFY   and go Broke !!

[Keyser Söze]

The way NVIDIA is heading with their corporate decisions, it looks like they're definitely wanting to be the "APPLE" of gaming. I seem to recall they have this exclusive club as well for GTX Titan X/1080/ti users....

Currently after their CES 2017 appearance, they're going for putting AI into Audi automobiles (but can it DX12/Vulkan? ), integrating 4k Streaming for their Shield & Google services for your living room, among other things.  For how long, though.... This isn't a company like Google who has a separate R&D division who can buy up tech companies, drop current tech research and pursue another, like it was nothing... They still have issues making their proprietary GAMEWORKS middleware work with DX12 and VULKAN APIs (or leveraging next-gen APIs for their GPU architecture for that matter - stuck with DX11), which is why when you see an NVIDIA game, its chock-full of NVIDA Gameworks things, but working only on the old DX11 API. 

[nIGHT]

On 1/5/2017 at 6:38 PM, jordan4x said:

Depending on how often you use the service, you could be better off buying a gaming PC or a video console instead.

It is really useful to look first at the end of the article and look for the closing remarks/conclusion.

If you're a gamer then buy a gaming rig and not use shitty services like these!

 

 

 

[edwardecl]

The way it's not meant to be played™.