NVIDIA Launches GeForce NOW Game Streaming Service

MojoKid writes: NVIDIA has championed game streaming for a number of years now, whether it's from a GeForce GTX-equipped PC to one of its SHIELD devices or from its cloud-based GRID gaming beta service to a SHIELD. Today though, NVIDIA is kicking its game streaming business up a notch by launching a new service dubbed GeForce NOW. The service streams PC games from the cloud to SHIELD devices at up to full HD 1080p resolutions at 60 fps. It may be tempting to call GeForce NOW an official re-branding of its GRID game streaming beta but that is reportedly not the case. The GRID beta is going away with the launch of GeForce NOW (an update will replace the GRID app with GeForce NOW), but according to NVIDIA, GeForce NOW was re-architected from the ground up to provide a better overall experience. NVIDIA sees GeForce NOW as sort of a "Netflix for games." There is a monthly fee of $7.99 for a subscription, which gives customers access to a slew of games. There are too many to list but top notch titles like Batman: Arkham City, Ultra Street Fighter IV, GRID 2 and many others are included. In addition to the games included in the subscriptions price, NVIDIA will also be offering GeForce NOW users access to AAA-titles on the day of release, for a fee. The games will typically be sold at a regular retail prices but not only will users get to play those games via the GeForce NOW streaming service on SHIELD devices, they'll also receive a key for playing the game on a PC as well. To use GeForce NOW you'll need an NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV, SHIELD portable, or SHIELD tablet (with the latest software updates installed) and a SHIELD-approved 5GHz router. Your broadband connection must also offer download speeds of at least 12Mb/s. 20Mb/s is recommended for 720p / 60 FPS quality, and 50Mb/s is recommended for 1080p / 60 FPS.

Comments

Re:DO NOT WANT

[hairyfeet]

Except that "You need a gaming beast PC" has been a myth for quite awhile now, hell you can play battlefield 4 on an AMD A10 7850k,which you can get in kit form for $345 after MIR, that is "Walmart PC" territory. Just slap on the free edition of Windows 10 and voila! $350 PC that will play most games at 30FPS, even comes with an SSD.

That is of course if your PC is truly ancient and you want a new PC, if its less than 7 years old or you don't mind going to Craigslist? You can get a gaming PC for just stupid cheap. The cheapest gaming PC was one I set up for a single mom down the hall as a favor, cost? $150! I just picked up a C2Q PC off of CL with 4GB of RAM, Windows 7 and a 500GB HDD (cost $75) and then $75 for an HD7750. He plays TF2 and other online shooters at 30FPS+ with no issue and since most games don't use quads to their full capability they can always pop in a $100 GPU in a year or two and keep right on gaming.

So the "beat PC for gaming" is just a myth, its for guys that care more about bench scores than game scores.