Alongside its announcement of the new and improved Shield Android TV at its CES 2017 keynote, Nvidia has also unveiled its new ‘cloud gaming’ service called GeForce Now. According to the company, PC gamers who are restricted to old hardware or simply have no time to upgrade may benefit greatly from this feature.
GeForce Now is essentially a cloud service, which allows almost any PC and notebook to become a mean green gaming machine – without the need to upgrade anything? How you ask? GeForce Now works by providing users with a virtual PC ‘in the cloud’ which acts as the device that games will be played on. It’s worth mentioning that the service also requires a constant high-speed internet connection as well. Similar to what Sony has been doing with PlayStation Now.
The virtual PC – which was demoed during the event – mimics that of a casual Windows or Mac PC, with Steam, Origin, Uplay, and other platforms pre-installed. Upon clicking, say, Steam, users will then be prompted to enter their account username and password, after which one will be presented with their Steam game library. Nvidia has not mentioned whether all games will be pre-installed on its virtual networks, although it seems that most major games are already available.
Sure, one will be able to play their favourite games without having to spend loads of cash to build a PC or buy a gaming notebook, but it comes at a price: US$25 (about RM112) for 20 hours of gameplay for a virtual GTX 1060-equipped PC and 10 hours for a virtual PC with a GTX 1080 graphics card.
(Source: Nvidia)
