Additional 40 million possible gamers
Nvidia is investing heavily in a cloud gaming platform called GeForce Now, and we had a chance to get an update from an old friend and industry veteran Phil Eisler, VP of GeForce Now and cloud gaming. The biggest announcement for today is that Chromebooks have support for GeForce now.
The list of supported devices grew tremendously as it now works on PCs, Macs, Android phones as well as Android-based TVs. Since this is streaming, all devices that have a robust streaming decoder should be included.
Four million registered users
Phil confirmed that there are four million registered users of the GeForce Now cloud gaming community that stream 15 million hours of gaming every month. The list of games grew to 650, including 70 free to play games that turn out to be extremely popular among streamers.
GeForce Now is enabling new PC gamers since 80 percent of users have systems below minimum gaming specifications. Cloud gaming is increasing the Total Addressable Market. Square Enix is back to the GeForce Now with the Shadow of the Tomb Raider while Ubisoft offers access to the STEEP game and EA offers Apex Legends. Sega is back with Two Point Hospital.
It might be an indication of a trend where you can expect to see major publishers coming back to the GeForce Now, but it is still too soon to tell. Sega is back too. It might be an indication of a trend where you can expect to see major publishers coming back to the GeForce Now, but it is still too soon to tell.
GeForce Now supports 95 million users of Steam gamers, 61 million from Epic store, and 55 million from Uplay.
Nvidia’s gaming server supports the latest greatest features, including RTX and DLSS, and games like Hyper-scale get faster access to the new seasons as Nvidia servers update faster than most of the PC users have the ability to download and apply the update. Since 80 percent of the GeForce Now gamers would not be able to enjoy gaming at this quality.
Nvidia GeForce Now servers support Automatic game capture moments, freestyle post-processing filter, and Ansel super-resolution picture tool expected very soon.
GeForce Now, basic membership is free, but it will limit your gaming slot to an hour. Nvidia wants 4.99 a month for a founders edition that doesn’t have the timing limitation and let you explore all the games. The latest addition is the six-month membership with an exclusive Hyper scape bundle. The bundle includes season one battle token and exclusive in-game items. It sells for $24.99 and is cheaper than six months of Founders edition.
The whole GeForce now gaming server infrastructure is available to the US, most EU massive markets, Russia as well as China, Korea, Taiwan, and Japan through telecom partners.
Chromebook support
Chromebook is the latest addition to the GeForce Now family. The access is available now at play.GeForcenow.com. The website will let you log in via Chromebook and play your favorite GeForce Now games, and if you try the link from the X86 PC, it will inform you that you are on the wrong platform. X86 based PCs, as well as Macs, are already supported via the app.
Play.GeForcenow.com will get you to the website that will work from Chrome on the Chromebook and let you play everything that is supported in the GeForce Now catalog. The Geforce Now will rely on the hardware that has better streaming capabilities, but it looks like all X86 based Chromebook will work just fine, including low-end Celeron based.
Chromebook has around 40 million users right now, with steady growth in the young population and education sector.
Nvidia did indicate that some of the ARM-based devices might not be supported without going into details, due to a limited decoding capability.
Nvidia requires 20 Mbps for 1080p 60 streaming, and the quick math will get you to 9GB per hour gaming. The information is only relevant if you want to stream it over 4G or 5G, but we doubt that many will do that. The 720p 60 FPS resolution needs half of it, of 10 Mbps, and will look just fine.
Nvidia is working to bring GeForce Now to the browser too.
