Nvidia gives GeForce Now official launch, prices at just $5 a month

The pitch for Google Stadia is simple: Play games anywhere with the power of the cloud. But Nvidia's GeForce Now adds a crucial layer to that: Play the games you already own anywhere. After what seems like a long, long wait, Nvidia has finally launched its GeForce Now game streaming service for just $5 a month, alongside an interesting free trial system.

Nvidia's service supports Steam, the Epic Games Store, Battle.net, and Uplay, and has you logging into each to access your libraries of games to play them on PC, Mac, Nvidia Shield, or Android. This is immediately an interesting comparison to Google's Stadia service, which asks you to buy each game individually.

GeForce Now: A Tale of Two Tiers

Here's a breakdown of how the two tiers work. Without paying a dime, you can play for up to an hour at a time, and you might have to sit in a waiting queue, though I got into each of the games I wanted to play immediately upon trying. That will, of course, vary by time of day and region.

By joining the Founders' tier, which right now costs $5/month with a 12-month buy-in ($60), you can play for up to six hours in a single session and you'll get priority access to those queues. You can finish out a six-hour session and start another one up right after that, too. This tier enables RTX and comes with a free 90-day introductory period.

One caveat after another

There's a laundry list of caveats, though. Not every game is supported, and not every game is supported on every store. Remedy's Control and Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption 2 are missing entirely. I have Into the Breach on my Epic Games Store account, but not on Steam. Even though GeForce Now supports the Epic Games Store, it only supports playing most of the available games on Steam, meaning that all those free games Epic has been giving you are off-limits. I played Doom and Batman: Arkham Knight on GeForce Now via Steam but was not able to find any of my Epic games on the service to play.

And that's another thing. Instead of adding your Steam, EGS, and other credentials to your profile, you'll search for a game you want to play, and if it's supported, you can add it to your menu. You can't just add your Steam profile and see what games are supported, so it feels a bit like asking mom for permission over and over until you find something she's okay with. Can I play Nintendo? No. Can I go outside? No. Can I have a cookie? No. Mom could just tell you what your options are, and it seems weird that she doesn't. Mom is Nvidia in this case. Many high-profile games, including flagship RTX titles like Rise of the Tomb Raider, are not supported.

RDP+GTX

The interface, in general, is pretty weird, too. Launching a game brings up what amounts to a remote desktop session that logs you into a computer in Nvidia's server farm. There, you'll see the Steam store page for the game you selected in the Steam software client. Note that if you selected Doom from the list in the GFN client, you can't simply go select another Steam game from this desktop. You have to log out and select another game. If the game is mature, you'll have to go through that Steam age-gate each time, too. Further, when you log in for the very first time, you cannot copy and paste your password; you have to type in all your storefront passwords manually. Cool.

So you've selected a game that Nvidia supports, you've signed into the storefront (first time only), and you own it on that particular storefront. You pass the age gate. Many games will load up instantly. Many games, however, have to be downloaded to that instanced desktop each time you play. It takes a split second from my experience, but it's a hassle. So you install the game. Then you click Play.

This is still a streaming service

GeForce Now is a streaming service, so it comes with all the caveats inherent to that, too. Indeed, it's easy to get a game like Batman: Arkham Knight running with everything turned up to max with a steady 60 frames per second. You'll still need a beefy internet connection, though, either of the wired variety of a 5GHz connection. The service requires at least 15 Mbps for 60 frames per second at 1280 x 720 resolution and at least 25 Mbps for the same frame rate at 1920 x 1080. Games also have that split second of lag that can make a fast-paced game like Doom frustrating to play.

You'll also need to be reasonably close to one of Nvidia's servers for this to work. The company has them all over the US and Europe, as well as some servers in Japan, Russia, and Korea. Outside of those areas, you may not be able to connect. The service will also use a ton of bandwidth, so while you can play for six hours at a time, you might find your ISP's data transfer cap getting in the way after a number of those sessions.

Free is a great price

The upshot here is that Nvidia's GeForce Now service is offering a competitive game library at a competitive price, but it's a bit of a headache to find a game and get it running right now. Nvidia is sure to improve on the service over time, and the quiet launch offers definite advantages over Stadia. Only Microsoft's streaming service has the potential right now to equal the number of games available, though to a more limited audience.

Despite the caveats, it's hard to deny that games can look really good on the service, and the free tier means you can find out whether the latency is a dealbreaker or not for yourself.

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