After years in public beta, the company's
GeForce Now cloud gaming service is officially launching today with both free and paid tiers. GeForce Now officially supports around 400 games, which you can find via the service's search bar. That tally includes most of the more popular titles being played today, and Nvidia says it adds four or five new games every week or so. PUBG, Witcher 3, Skyrim, Borderlands 3, Dishonored 2, XCOM 2, and many, many more triple-A games work with GeForce Now, as do indie gems like Battletech, Stardew Valley, and Disco Elysium. The service doesn't come with any games, but will run those you buy (or have bought) on Steam, Epic, Uplay or Battle.net - note that Origin, GoG, Microsoft Store and other launchers are not presently supported.
As of today, any user on the Internet can
register and take advantage of the free edition, which allows you to connect to the cloud service for up to an hour per session. If you sign up for the Founder's membership, which costs $4.99 per month, you can play for up to 6 six hours in a row and you'll get priority access to the servers. The first three months of a Founder's plan are free so there's no reason right now to go with the free tier.
System requirements for NVIDIA's GeForce Now are as stands:
- 15 Mbps internet connection (25 Mbps recommended). A 5 GHz network is preferred if using wireless.
- Any Windows PC running Windows 7 (64-bit) or higher, 4 GB of system memory, a 2.0 GHz dual-core X86 CPU or higher and a GPU that supports DirectX 11.
- Any Mac with macOS 10.10 or higher.
- Any Nvidia Shield TV (2015, 2017, 2019; Base and Pro models).
- Any Android phone running Android 5.0 (L) or higher and 2 GB of system memory.
- A Bluetooth gamepad is strongly recommended, including the Shield controller, Razer Raiju and Junglecat Mobile, or Steelseries Stratus Duo.
The minimum hardware requirements for GeForce Now are so low that you can run it on even the cheapest Windows computer. To run on a PC, you need any dual-core or better CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a GPU that can handle DirectX 11, which even low-end, integrated graphics processors support. You can also run the cloud gaming service on Macs that date back as far as 2009 or on Android devices. To play on your TV, you can use one of Nvidia's own Android-powered Shield set-top boxes. The one catch (which applies to all cloud streaming services) is that you need a stable Internet connection that's at least 15 Mbps, which operates over either Wi-Fi 5 (aka 802.11ac) or higher wireless, or Ethernet. The service is unlikely to work well over 4G and you need to have really good Wi-Fi coverage.