When Nvidia showed off their cloud-based gaming service, GeForce Now, back in 2015, my interest was piqued. I had already played with several similar services and I was excited to see Nvidia was getting in on the action. Well, mostly since most of those services were using Nvidia’s hardware. Now at CES 2018, Nvidia has been showing off the GeForce Now service and it has come a long way from its previous showing.
For those who don’t know what GeForce Now is, let me break it down. It is a cloud-based service that basically lets you play modern day games on underpowered PC and Macs. So if you don’t have that cutting edge gaming PC or you like playing PC games on the go but don’t have a gaming laptop, then this service is a godsend. Nvidia will put up the hardware, while you set up a thin-client on your PC or Mac and you’ll connect to that hardware.
This opens up a world of options, exciting options. Want to experience 120Hz gaming? Run at a higher resolution than your actual monitor supports? Play PUBG on that 9-year old laptop? Well, with GeForce Now, you’ll be able to do that. And while I haven’t had any hands-on (since I couldn’t make it to CES 2018), the reception from the show is very positive. Not to mention the list of support games is larger than I thought it would be. From PUBG, Prey, The Surge, The Witcher 3, XCOM 2 and many others. Check out the full list here.
While Nvidia isn’t ready to release the service to the public or has any pricing, all isn’t lost. Until they finally have the service ready for sale, you can get in on an ongoing beta for GeForce Now. However, there is a waiting list and you can sign up for the beta by going here.
Hopefully, we’ll get access to the beta so we can put it through the paces and get to report on our findings. more specifically the latency and how much impact it presents. In any event, looks like we’re getting closer to the turning point where gamers won’t have to spend gobs of money to play PC games on high-end setups. It’s a win/win if everyone can play PC games on outdated hardware.
