GeForce Now reaches a million users as Bethesda backs out

mongeese

Posts: 643   +123
Forward-looking: Nvidia’s cloud-based gaming service GeForce Now launched less than three weeks ago but has already accumulated one million users. While many of them are surely just nosing around the free tier, that’s a number that’s sure to impress – unless you’re Bethesda, of course.

Yesterday, Nvidia published on the GeForce Now forums that “most” Bethesda Softworks titles are being removed from the service, including Doom, Fallout 76, and The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. The only game sticking around is Wolfenstein: Youngblood. Given it’s one of the handful of titles that support ray tracing on GeForce Now, Nvidia might’ve made a special deal to keep it around.

It’s only speculation, but Bethesda could be eyeing off Google Stadia as an alternative. Doom Eternal, a highly anticipated sequel to 2016’s Doom, will be available on Stadia on day one.

Nvidia might be losing games left and right and center, but they can also afford to. GeForce Now already has 1,500 games, while Stadia has only a few dozen. Nvidia’s business model is also a lot more attractive: unlike Stadia, which requires you to pay the full purchase price of any game you want to use on the service, GeForce Now gives you access to all your game libraries as part of the deal. If you’ve invested hundreds or even thousands like many of you no doubt have, then GeForce Now will save you a lot of money.

However, that could also be why Bethesda isn’t so keen on the service. The whole Fallout 76 debacle proves that Bethesda is a little, uh, greedy, shall we say. For a title like Doom, which most gamers already own, GeForce Now doesn’t earn them much revenue. Stadia would.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Cyberpunk 2077 will stream on launch day, with ray tracing. And apparently, game studios that have pulled games from GeForce Now “will bring back games as they continue to realize GeForce Now’s value.” That’s a very smug way of saying that Activision Blizzard’s titles, which were removed over licensing miscommunication, should be back soon.

GeForce Now is a little rough around the edges at the moment, but we’d still recommend checking out the free tier as a little preview of what the future could be.

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#1 Cloud gaming is never gonna work in places with poor broadband or data caps.

#2 I see no reason whatsoever to pay them $5 a month.

#3 Even with my 2080ti, I see no real benefit of Direct X Ray Tracing over the previously existing shadow and lighting technologies - especially at the performance hit they cause.

Ray Tracing is an answer to a question no one asked.

It's a marketing gimmick to ensure AMD never catches up to Nvidia.
 
There is a mountain of resistance to it, but the cloud is the future and while the monolith of the desktop pc will probably be culturally relevant for several decades after today, the utility and viability of having 1 has less than a decade left.
 
Streaming of _data_ is well established (I.e., Netflix.)

Streaming of hardware capability that is not mostly about data is uncommon. Look at all the apps on your phone today -- they are all executed by your phone's hardware, and just fine. No one is looking to have the phone turn into a dumb display device playing a slightly delayed and hinky version of those apps, especially at an additional monthly cost.

The same forces that you think will make the "cloud the future" will also continue to make phones even more powerful. Phones and other devices a decade from now may have plenty of onboard gaming capability at little extra cost (they're not exactly terrible even today.) Zero latency delays and zero added cost is going to win out over additional graphics capability that is not needed and adds little extra fun.
 
There is a mountain of resistance to it, but the cloud is the future and while the monolith of the desktop pc will probably be culturally relevant for several decades after today, the utility and viability of having 1 has less than a decade left.


There's no "mountain of resistance".

The issue is hardware and pricing related.

It's easy to "say" cloud gaming is a must-have...but a lot of people can't play the games without lag or have data caps which completely make it untenable.

And that's before you get to the "why I should pay you $5 a month" when I can just play my games on a laptop?

To clarify, If I could get cloud gaming on an Alienware UFO for $5 a month and have reliable internet connections I'd buy in.
 
There is a mountain of resistance to it, but the cloud is the future and while the monolith of the desktop pc will probably be culturally relevant for several decades after today, the utility and viability of having 1 has less than a decade left.

Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, a decade ago and nearly a decade before that. Nobody is going back to dumb terminals if they don't have to for one simple reason: nobody is going to pay a subscription to use their own PC without enormous added value. The moment that Microsoft and the rest of the Usual Suspects start pushing that idea a new center of gravity will form on PC - probably some version of Linux.
 
Both perspectives are speculation and opinion, not verifiable objective truth. I stand by my assertion.
While I completely disagree with your assertion, I agree that both are speculative. However, one can look back at the previous decades, as already pointed out, and see that the death of the desktop has been predicted many times and proven wrong.

People have predicted the death of the gaming console for decades, only to have new generations break previous generation's sales records.

I just think it's too soon to count the desktop PC out in a decade.
 
#1 Cloud gaming is never gonna work in places with poor broadband or data caps.

#2 I see no reason whatsoever to pay them $5 a month.

#3 Even with my 2080ti, I see no real benefit of Direct X Ray Tracing over the previously existing shadow and lighting technologies - especially at the performance hit they cause.

Ray Tracing is an answer to a question no one asked.

It's a marketing gimmick to ensure AMD never catches up to Nvidia.

I too question the "inevitability" of cloud gaming, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a gimmick. There are those without gaming PCs and those with gaming PCs sans gaming laptops that might be interested in a service like Geforce Now. When picking between paying a one-time sum vs small monthly subscription fees I almost always choose the former, but at only $5/month it would admittedly take quite some time to recoup the investment (put into an equivalent Geforce Now spec'd PC/Laptop).
 
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You have to own the games you want to play so this is a bizzare service, I have hundreds of bought games & a gtx1080, the sole upgrade GFNow would give is raytracing, which is a sidegrade.

We are nearing full retard here just like with ps now that lets you pay god of war on pc thus rendering buying a PS4 pointless.
 
There is a mountain of resistance to it, but the cloud is the future and while the monolith of the desktop pc will probably be culturally relevant for several decades after today, the utility and viability of having 1 has less than a decade left.

If the cloud is the future of gaming it is not by any choices made by me. It will have to become the future by way of insidious deception very slowly. I still don't really understand how it is supposed to work but I really don't care. I have a desktop PC right now that's powerful enough to run any games that I care to play at the moment.

I'm fine with it existing as an alternative service for those people who want it. But it's just not for me. Paying a $5 month to play any $50 game that is newly released sounds like a sweet deal. But I just wait a year or 2 and pay $5 to own the game. Or better yet, just wait for some service like Epic Games to keep throwing out freebies once a week. Who needs a cloud gaming service?
 
You have to own the games you want to play so this is a bizzare service, I have hundreds of bought games & a gtx1080, the sole upgrade GFNow would give is raytracing, which is a sidegrade.

We are nearing full retard here just like with ps now that lets you pay god of war on pc thus rendering buying a PS4 pointless.

A PS4 and a gaming PC fail pretty spectacularly to do one thing: be a portable computer. GeForce Now is superior to the vast majority of laptops today yet will still run on one of them. That's how I use it and IMO it's a slam dunk for that common use case as more laptops are sold today than desktops.
 
From the GeForce Now website:

" GeForce NOW instantly transforms nearly any laptop, desktop, Mac, SHIELD TV or Android mobile device into the PC gaming rig you’ve always dreamed of. Instantly play the most demanding PC games and seamlessly play across your devices."

Am I interpreting this correctly?? Does that mean, screw those expensive video cards, RAMs, SSDs, etc....everybody on ANY PC / device can play those games with the same (I assume "great") settings????

All those great graphics and high FPS numbers are right there without the benefit of their own top of the line nVidia cards??

Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but what else does that statement mean??

 
A PS4 and a gaming PC fail pretty spectacularly to do one thing: be a portable computer. GeForce Now is superior to the vast majority of laptops today yet will still run on one of them. That's how I use it and IMO it's a slam dunk for that common use case as more laptops are sold today than desktops.

So the main benefit of cloud gaming is playing your games on a laptop? Or is it the portable benefit that you would be paying for? Steam (just to name one service) seems to have already solved the issue of portability. Who is the target? Poor people?

Gaming on a laptop will always be a second choice (for me anyway) if I have a desktop PC to play games on. Laptop keyboards are horrible for typing, the screens are going to be relatively smaller than what you can get on a desktop PC. I fail to see the pros of this revolution in gaming. Please explain. And respond to PEnnn's question.

How does using all of a servers resources help make your local system any faster? If everybody needs gigabit Internet service to keep up the FPS on the local system that's going to cost a decent chunk of change.
 
1) Data Caps will have to cease to exist
2) Streaming compression will have to get better
3) Costs of Connection/Cloud Gaming/Rental, similar to the Netflix & Hulu model will have to outweigh the Costs of Ownership.

I'm not buying access to a cloud game, so that the provider and licensing agreements can later make it unavailable. What Apple did is a good reminder. If it's on the cloud, you don't truly own it.
 
#1 Cloud gaming is never gonna work in places with poor broadband or data caps.

#2 I see no reason whatsoever to pay them $5 a month.

#3 Even with my 2080ti, I see no real benefit of Direct X Ray Tracing over the previously existing shadow and lighting technologies - especially at the performance hit they cause.

Ray Tracing is an answer to a question no one asked.

It's a marketing gimmick to ensure AMD never catches up to Nvidia.
Even at $10 a month for 5 years, geforce now will still cheaper than rtx 2080
 
There's no "mountain of resistance".

The issue is hardware and pricing related.

It's easy to "say" cloud gaming is a must-have...but a lot of people can't play the games without lag or have data caps which completely make it untenable.

And that's before you get to the "why I should pay you $5 a month" when I can just play my games on a laptop?

To clarify, If I could get cloud gaming on an Alienware UFO for $5 a month and have reliable internet connections I'd buy in.
$5 a month means $180 for 3 years.
what kind of games' quality level you can play for $180 GPU?
 
From the GeForce Now website:

" GeForce NOW instantly transforms nearly any laptop, desktop, Mac, SHIELD TV or Android mobile device into the PC gaming rig you’ve always dreamed of. Instantly play the most demanding PC games and seamlessly play across your devices."

Am I interpreting this correctly?? Does that mean, screw those expensive video cards, RAMs, SSDs, etc....everybody on ANY PC / device can play those games with the same (I assume "great") settings????

All those great graphics and high FPS numbers are right there without the benefit of their own top of the line nVidia cards??

Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but what else does that statement mean??
geforce now will kill gaming laptops.
I think desktop gamers is not target of geforce now.
 
So the main benefit of cloud gaming is playing your games on a laptop?

For my uses, yes.

Or is it the portable benefit that you would be paying for? Steam (just to name one service) seems to have already solved the issue of portability. Who is the target? Poor people?

Gaming on a laptop will always be a second choice (for me anyway) if I have a desktop PC to play games on. Laptop keyboards are horrible for typing, the screens are going to be relatively smaller than what you can get on a desktop PC. I fail to see the pros of this revolution in gaming. Please explain. And respond to PEnnn's question.

How does using all of a servers resources help make your local system any faster? If everybody needs gigabit Internet service to keep up the FPS on the local system that's going to cost a decent chunk of change.

My experience has been this:

* 60fps at 900p with good settings (I don't have a 1080p laptop and haven't used a desktop for this to test yet), depending on the game it's better fps than a GTX 1060
* Significant lag, the degree of tolerance for this is different for everyone
* big frame drops on occasion with more GPU demanding games, but with a quick recovery to 60fps.

IMO it's DOA for desktop gaming as even a modest Ryzen 5 1600AF, Radeon 580, 8GB RAM, 2TB HDD beats it for the vast majority of uses. However $5/mo is wayyy less than $500 for the PC. It could end up begin a gateway drug for people not sure about PC gaming for $5/mo.
 
For my uses, yes.



My experience has been this:

* 60fps at 900p with good settings (I don't have a 1080p laptop and haven't used a desktop for this to test yet), depending on the game it's better fps than a GTX 1060
* Significant lag, the degree of tolerance for this is different for everyone
* big frame drops on occasion with more GPU demanding games, but with a quick recovery to 60fps.
...
I'd also like to add that the experience can be vastly different depending on the game. I'm on the 90 day trial and even on an off-the-shelf vanilla 2.5ghz wireless router games like Doom, The Crew, BioShock, and Destiny 2 all ran flawlessly for me. I've tried steam in-home streaming and honestly Geforce Now felt more responsive. Assassin's Creed unity was completely unplayable though. Lag, freezing, and audio distortion. The game is clearly bugged. I managed to use the service on an old $300 laptop I purchased back in 2014. It's not taking over anything anytime soon, but it has come a long way.
 
From the GeForce Now website:

" GeForce NOW instantly transforms nearly any laptop, desktop, Mac, SHIELD TV or Android mobile device into the PC gaming rig you’ve always dreamed of. Instantly play the most demanding PC games and seamlessly play across your devices."

Am I interpreting this correctly?? Does that mean, screw those expensive video cards, RAMs, SSDs, etc....everybody on ANY PC / device can play those games with the same (I assume "great") settings????

All those great graphics and high FPS numbers are right there without the benefit of their own top of the line nVidia cards??

Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but what else does that statement mean??

Yes,
You would be controlling a remote server that has an installation of Windows and the game you are playing

The Laptop / tablet / smartphone or whatever you are using is simply a remote monitor and control device for the game server

When I invented application and game streaming, it was for "Personal" use and FREE to use, allowing you to control "Your" remote desktop from a remote tablet / smartphone / laptop etc.

I myself do not pay strangers to graciously allow me to use my own equipment on a remote device, but GeForce Now is a different animal in that the gaming performance of NVidia's equipment is far superior to a single remote desktop in my home, and can be accessed with much lower latency from far more locations as long as the Internet connection is acceptible

Think of it this way>
Sitting at my desk, my keyboard and mouse are connected to and control a remote server, which is playing the game and sending a compressed video output back to my desk so I can watch the gameplay with as little latency as possible

The gameplay you see is a compressed video stream and therefore not as good as owning your own hardware, but it is very cost effective!
 
OK I finally played a graphically demanding game (Ark:SE) in GeForce Now on my hardwired PC and it'll do 1080p/60 in demanding scenes using the same settings I use on my GTX 1080 to do 1440p/60, so that's good. But...

It's clearly continually dynamically reallocating GPU resources because I can go from an outdoor long draw distance view, which will occasionally get my GPU to drop to 55fps, and GeFN does 60fps. Then I'll go indoors which locks my GPU at 60fps (short draw distances) and GeFN will be doing 34fps for a while. That's backwards. Distractingly backwards. It'll recover to 60fps but it's odd and distracting.

In addition there are multiple framerate drops into the 30s-40s and not really where you'd expect them. Still the game remains pretty playable and a thousand percent better than any laptop I have. The experience on a hardwired Coffee Lake PC was no different than an 11 year old wireless Mac laptop so the GeFN experience seems quite consistent as all the client is doing is decoding a video stream.
 
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