A new player comes to the field of … well, videogames. NVidia has been allowing us to play the most demanding games on PC for years and we have seen how it gave life to consoles like Xbox 360, PS3 or Nintendo Switch. Now it’s your turn with your own game platform. GeForce Now comes out of the beta, and these are all its details, price and features.
GeForce Now has been in the testing phase for a long time, a testing period in which, for free, certain users who have joined the program have enjoyed the service and provided feedback to evolve.
NVidia feels that the future of video games is streaming, and for years points to that future. Its platform, Shield, already allowed access to GeForce Now, as well as Nintendo Switch in Japan such as games like Resident Evil 7 and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, which can be played in the Nintendo hybrid remotely.
GeForce Now: RTX 1.080p60
As we say, in recent months the service has been tested to the fullest with more than 300,000 players who have given their time for the development of the platform.
As in Stadia, xCloud or PS Now, we are facing a streaming game service. That is, we do not need a gaming PC to enjoy the maximum level of video games. In fact, we don’t need a PC.
GeForce Now can be played on Android, Mac, PC and Shield TV, requiring only a remote control or keyboard / mouse and a broadband connection.
The maximum resolution of GeForce Now right now is 1,080p at a rate of 60 frames per second. We have been in a press session in which we ask why not 4K as other companies (Google) offer, and the answer was that they are very focused on getting the lowest possible latency.
GeForce Now consists of a fleet of, in the West, 9 servers in the United States and 6 in Europe located in Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Moscow and London.
With these servers, in these two regions, they look for a latency of only 20 milliseconds, more than acceptable in games of these characteristics (Stadia, according to our tests, has a considerably higher latency).
Yes there are plans to add support to 4K and HDR, but for now they are not worried about that, although they anticipated that it will arrive this year.
What we can enjoy is games with ray tracing, one of the latest technological innovations in video games that basically consists of having a more realistic image thanks to a much more natural light behavior in games, and not pre-calculated as up to now.
Requirements to play GeForce Now
Now, what do we need to play GeForce Now?
- If you play in macOS: system 10.10.
- On PC, Windows 7 64-bit or later (32-bit systems are not supported).
- Android 5.0 onwards
- Shield TV o tablet Shield
Sony Dualshock 4 controls, the Shield controller, the Xbox One or the Xbox 360 are compatible , as well as keyboard and mouse on computers.
On the other hand, the minimum bandwidth requirements are as follows:
- For 720p60 resolution – 15 MB / s
- For 1,080p60 resolution – 25 MB / s
- 5GHz or cable internet, preferably
From NVidia they told us that their system is adaptive, so the resolution and performance “on the fly” vary depending on the stability of our connection.
GeForce Now is a cloud PC, but you need to have the games
That said, it is time to clarify an important point. So far, there are over 400 games compatible with GeForce Now and new ones are added every week, but we must own the games to enjoy them.
That is, if we have a game bought in the Epic Store, on Steam or on the Blizzard platform , and that game is compatible with GeForce Now, we can enjoy it even if our PC, mobile or Mac cannot “run” the game for lack of requirements.
When we enter GeForce Now, we log into the game service where we have a purchased title and, if it is compatible, we can start playing. There are some free games, but it is not the majority.
What GeForce Now offers us is that the new games we buy can be enjoyed to the fullest, but also that the ones we have can be played without the need to physically execute them on our team. They give us the PC in the cloud, but we provide the games.
Launch and price of GeForce Now
GeForce Now is now available in two programs: one free and one paid. We leave the details below:
- The free GeForce Now program allows us to play 1,080p60 during one-hour sessions. Once the session is over, we leave and we can re-enter, as many times as we want, but from one hour to one hour.
- The Founders program allows us to play, for 4.99 Dollars per month, six-hour sessions in a row with the same mechanics (when finished, we leave and re-enter for another six hours in a row). In addition, we have 90 days free to enjoy the service and we can play with RTX in compatible games. That service is not in the free program.
Now, we only have to enjoy another platform for streaming games that, in the end, what allows us to play our games with the best quality without having the latest hardware version.
