Some Damage Control?
Nvidia launched its new game streaming service, GeForce NOW, to some great reception in February. Unfortunately for Nvidia, the launch from its beta was met with some unexpected turbulence as two very large players pulled out of the platform unexpectedly: Blizzard and Bethesda. Blizzard had pulled out due to a misunderstanding of the contract where Nvidia thought they were staying after the early beta when they had meant to renegotiate on release. Bethesda and Nvidia have yet to give word on why their games were taken off the platform.
Nvidia made a blog post talking about the future of the service. It was mostly of an optimistic tone, but you can really tell that they are trying to do some damage control before they start bleeding too many users. “As we approach a paid service, some publishers may choose to remove games before the trial period ends. Ultimately, they maintain control over their content and decide whether the game you purchase includes streaming on GeForce NOW. Meanwhile, others will bring games back as they continue to realize GeForce NOW’s value (stay tuned for more on that).”
Looks like they are trying to keep people looking forward to all the potential the service can offer, rather than focusing on the negatives. It does feel like a bit of a gamble with these streaming services currently, with it being so new and all. Although they said 1,500 games have signed up, they have not released said list of games yet, just pointing out some specific ones, like Cyberpunk 2077, instead.
However, unlike Google’s Stadia, GeForce NOW does not require any additional hardware you need to buy, just a subscription. Additionally, you can try it out for free before you get a subscription. If you would like to jump in now, there is a discounted Founder’s Membership available.
If you aren’t familiar with game streaming, it’s an experimental service where rather than downloading and running a high-fidelity game from your hard drive, you stream it instead. This allows anyone with a reliable internet connection to play games that would usually require a gaming rig of over a thousand dollars. This can also circumvent OS issues (such as playing Windows games on Mac or Android) and will let you play without needing to wait for downloads.
Source: Nvidia