Nvidia GeForce Now preview

Preliminary verdict: Nvidia GeForce Now is arguably the best online game streaming service on the market with great prices and performance.

• pros: Availability | No advances | Steam library;
• Minuses: Bad interface | May be late;

Nvidia GeForce Now has become something like what we’ve already heard from Google Stadia or Microsoft xCloud, but since the service has been in beta testing for a long time, it seems to be lost in time.

However, Nvidia has finally pulled the service out of the beta phase by offering excellent pricing for GeForce Now, and also making it clear how people can use the service. Right now, Google Stadia is the only other game streaming service that is available to users and does not go through a complex testing phase, which creates interesting competition.

The free tier of Google Stadia is not yet available, meaning Nvidia GeForce Now is the only relatively free game play service on the market, which should lead to a great stream of new users.

| GEFORCE NOW: PRICES AND AVAILABILITY

Nvidia GeForce Now is available right now in two different flavors: Free and Founders. The free plan, you guessed it, costs nothing and allows users to play games in the existing library of games on a PC for no more than an hour at a time. There is another catch: free users have “standard access,” which means that when services are overloaded, you have to deal with a queue before you can get into your games.

A Founders subscription saves you the server queue by giving paid members Priority Access, four hours of play at a time, and in-game ray-tracing support — none of which Google Stadia offers. This plan will cost users $ 4.99 (350r) per month, although this price promises to remain for the next 12 months. We’re not sure how much the price will jump after the first year, but we could easily bet on $ 9.99 (650r) per month. In any case, this is the case abroad, in the Russian-speaking segment the subscription is 999 rubles per month, easily and naturally.

When comparing prices to Google Stadia, GeForce Now is an extremely attractive proposition. Not only does Nvidia’s service actually offer a free subscription that’s available right now, you don’t have to shell out $ 129 (RUR 8500 + VAT) right away to access the service. If you are interested in streaming games online and want to try out new technology, GeForce Now is by far the most affordable option.

| GEFORCE NOW: DESIGN / INTERFACE

One thing that is available from Google Stadia is a simple and straightforward user interface, even if it still has some problems. The same cannot be said for the GeForce Now interface.

Once you add the game you want to play, you can launch it by going to the store that owns the game. But things can get a little more complicated. For example, when trying to add Wolfenstein Youngblood to our account, we got two options. The first option, the inclusion of the game in the account, which leads to the Bethesda launcher, according to which we do not own the game, and therefore cannot play it. I had to quit the game, add the game to the library again, but this time using the second option, which is tied to Steam.

Sure, this is annoying, but if you already have a game on a certain platform and it’s available elsewhere, you might end up with a few tiresome minutes.

And, of course, we cannot discuss the selection of games without mentioning the games that are incompatible with the service. Most games from big publishers like Square Enix and Rockstar Games are simply not there. We tried to work around the issue by running Shadow of the Tomb Raider or Final Fantasy XV, but nothing worked. GeForce Now practically yelled at us, “You can’t play this game right now.” You can only play the game you launch from the GeForce Now app, even if it sends you to the Steam Library UI.

There are some options that you can tweak using the user interface, although there aren’t too many of them. You can tweak the streaming quality to improve performance or quality, balance the two, enable Discord integration, and toggle the network status indicator.

The user interface can be the area where GeForce Now needs the most improvements. It is not only unusable, but also difficult to use.

| GEFORCE NOW: PERFORMANCE

These days, when it comes to game streaming services, it’s obvious that it’s about performance. Many users, including ourselves, are skeptical about streaming, so the only thing GeForce Now needs is to be successful in this section.

And in our experience, the service works fine. And here it should be clarified: until now, we have only played games at work and at home on a gigabit wired connection, so with a more modest connection, your experience will definitely change.

At home, with a fast, wired network connection, we had no problem playing The Witcher III: Wild Hunt – an excellent experience as Nvidia servers can easily handle 1080p games at max settings, including the dreaded Nvidia Hairworks. It is a pity that this is the maximum resolution, as well as the aspect ratio is unchanged, but this is not enough for criticism, given the price, in any case, in the West.

However, as soon as we got away from the wired Internet connection, the experience began to decline. We installed GeForce Now on a MacBook Pro 13 (2018) and played Wolfenstein Youngblood for a bit. The game looked just great thanks to the active RTX features, but something was wrong.

We couldn’t figure out what exactly was the matter, but a very sharp and active shooter did not work as fast as on a PC. We do not have a way to scientifically measure the delay, but something so subtle has taken place, although the general background remains insignificant. It’s probably all about latency – for this reason, aspiring streaming services like Google Stadia and GeForce Now will have to grow and evolve, but now we’d rather play on our own PC.

After all, GeForce Now uses your PC’s existing library of games, so you just don’t have much of a reason to use this service if you have a more capable gaming PC. However, for users who have a wide library of computer games, but are often remote from their PC, this service can be the most affordable way to play cheaply.

| GEFORCE NOW: FIRST OPINION

Nvidia GeForce Now is the best streaming service at the moment, but only because it has no competition. The performance is bearable, the user interface is poor, but the extensive library and more affordable price will make the service more attractive.

Most likely, GeForce Now will be actively developing over the next few years, and we can see how the service will become the de facto way of playing games on PC, especially on the road. We are looking forward to the future of this platform.