How Is Nvidia GeForce Now Cloud Gaming In 2021?

this month the geforce now cloud gaming service celebrates its one year anniversary of officially launching into live and honestly it's been a hell of a year starting with some downs but working his way back up in my opinion to be one of the strongest contenders in the cloud gaming space but let's start back in the beginning in case you are out of the loop what exactly is geforce now geforce now is nvidia's solution to cloud gaming that essentially lets you rent a virtual machine to play select titles from the geforce now library now i say rent but there are currently two membership options for geforce now one is completely free but does limit you to one hour play sessions and more frequently these days requires you to wait in a queue for an available virtual machine versus the founders tier which is currently still at its introductory price of five dollars a month but that does get you unlimited playtime the ability to jump the queues and the added bonus of access to rcx hardware meaning you can enjoy the full ray tracy goodness of games like cyberpunk but what exactly is the geforce now library so unlike some cloud gaming services like shadow which gives you access to an entire windows desktop geforce now is restricted to a library of games supported by the service but on the flip side unlike services like google stadia there is no need to repurchase titles that you already own geforce now accesses these titles through existing game libraries like steam the epic game store gog and ubisoft connect geforce now also has one of the largest free-to-play game libraries of services with this kind of library model with 80 free to play titles currently available including some heavy hitters like fortnight league of legends dota warframe counter-strike destiny rocket league and many more so now you're all caught up on the basics how did this first year go for geforce now so like i mentioned to start off with not so great after launching it appears nvidia forgot to cross a few t's dot a few eyes by which i mean uh publishers whose games were part of the geforce now library had no idea the platform was officially launching into production until you know they had already done it which in turn caused a surge of publishers to start removing their games from the library now yes this was an oversight on nvidia's part but greed from some of the larger publishers who were concerned they may be missing out on a payday was also to blame the good news is gradually throughout this last year we've seen the vast majority of these publishers bring their games back to the service but unfortunately with a few exceptions from larger publishers like activision blizzard his opening 2021 is the year they kiss and make up one thing i'm happy to see is after that initial blip after its launch the addition of new games is one area where geforce now came out shoulders above the rest in 2020 geforce now thursdays is something users could look forward to with a new list of titles coming to the platform every week and when i say list more often than not we're talking at least 10 or more games per week going into 2021 nvidia has taken more of a road map approach which i actually really like they start each month with a giant list of confirmed games being added to the platform and still managed to hit us with some surprises every geforce now thursday as of now geforce now has access to 800 titles across the various stores we mentioned previously again with 80 of those being completely free to play however it's definitely worth mentioning although we talked about the free and founders tiers availability has become somewhat of an issue in recent months for geforce now while the founders tier gives you access to rtx hardware it's also limited by the number of physical server blades nvidia can realistically install them in right now in both the uk and the us monthly memberships for the founders tier are completely sold out with a limited number of six-month memberships available with the growing popularity of the service this has increased the number of free users which in turn increases those queue times for free members that we talked about before as they do not get the priority access included in the founders tier and around and around we go until nvidia can add more rtx hardware to their databases which is understandably difficult right now with both the scarcity of gpu hardware and the physical limitations in safely entering data centers to install new hardware so let's talk about some of the major feature developments we've seen since the launch of the service back in 2020. starting off with a small quality of life update which i now couldn't imagine not having something called gamesync previously you would have to search through the games available on geforce now and manually add them to your library if you own them through a service like steam or the epic game store gamesync does basically what it says on the tin allows you to connect to geforce now to other game libraries and just hit the sync button to automatically add any new titles you may have bought to your geforce now library at its launch last year you could access geforce now through their app for windows pc mac or android devices obviously the major gap there is ios and 2020 was definitely interesting to say the least with apple's approach to cloud gaming services tldr the stance they've taken is if they can't take a cup of the games being purchased through cloud gaming services then they just won't allow these services to put their app on apple's app store their thinly veiled olive branch however was to allow cloud gaming providers to stream their services through the browser on ios devices geforce now launched their version of this in november last year and you can check out my full review right here honestly after kind of a hit and miss experience with their windows application i did not have high hopes for what is essentially a workaround to get this service onto ios but dear god was i wrong i was a completely new level of impressed being able to play brand new titles with ray tracing on a crappy ipad over wi-fi with no notable latency pixelation screen tearing audio stuttering none of the worst symptoms that come along with cloud gaming one device which has kind of exploded in popularity in the last year is chromebooks with more people working and learning from home chromebooks with the ideal choice as they're relatively cheap easy to use but they're also a great candidate for cloud gaming machines recognizing that geforce now was one of the first services to add official chromebook support because why work or learn when you could be playing games and finally one publisher who's consistently supported all cloud gaming platforms is ubisoft or ubisoft if you want to get technical and geforce now is no different being integrated with the ubisoft plus membership this is a 12.99 a month subscription which gets you access to over 100 ubisoft titles including brand new releases this means you're able to connect your geforce now account to your ubisoft plus subscription and game access to stream a large majority of that back catalog and all new titles which are being added to geforce now as day releases a great example of the value of this was towards the end of last year when within the space of one month's payment i got access to watchdogs legion assassin's creed valhalla and immortals phoenix rising and was able to stream all of them to any of my devices using gpos now this makes it a fantastic option for people on a budget let's say you pay five dollars for the founders tier if it's available and 12.99 a month for ubisoft plus that's 18 to play any of these games with ray tracing on any of your devices instead of paying hundreds of dollars to buy the games individually where you would have been limited to the one device pc or console and obviously you would have needed the hardware powerful enough to run them in the first place and one final point is services like the epic game store who have consistently been given away weekly free games and geforce now has promised to add those titles date releases as soon as they become available on the epic game store which essentially allows you to build up a library of pc games which can be streamed through geforce now without spending a penny all in all despite a few bumps in the road it's been a very good first year for geforce now but what would we like to see in the coming year of course we've talked about availability we understand the current roadblocks preventing more founders tier from being available but yeah top of the list more founder steers next here in 2021 it seems like there's only two real ways to experience a 30 series gpu kidnap a scalper or sell a kidney so adding a new tier with access to something like the 3080 or the 3090 cards is definitely something on my list and i would like to see come to geforce now in 2021 a new tier seems like something they'll need to add eventually just to be grammatically correct because you can't be a founder three years into a service you just haven't earned that right so that is a state of geforce now here in 2021 and officially one year into the services launch but now i'd like to hear from you do you use geforce now if so what do you think of the service if not why not what do you think of the pricing the specs the library selection their availability issues any and all thoughts let me know in those comments down below but if you enjoyed this video you found it somewhat helpful i like reading would be appreciated if you haven't already remember to subscribe to the channel turn on those notifications so you don't miss the next video i hope everyone staying safe out there and as always i shall see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: MarkWattsVLG

Views: 107,916

Rating: 4.8899674 out of 5

Keywords: cloud gaming, game streaming, nvidia geforce now, nvidia cloud gaming, nvidia cloud gaming fortnite, nvidia cloud gaming fortnite ios, geforce now fortnite, geforce now fortnite ios, geforce now chromebook, geforce now chrome browser, geforce now mac m1, geforce now ubisoft plus, geforce now ubisoft connect, geforce now activision blizzard, geforce now free games, geforce now free founders edition, geforce now free vs paid, geforce now 2021 review, geforce now 2021 games

Id: BWPSZiYEubE

Length: 9min 25sec (565 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 06 2021