Nvidia brings GeForce Now to Chrome and Apple M1 devices

[mongeese]

In brief: Nvidia's efforts to push GeForce Now have brought the service to the Chrome browser, an app almost as ubiquitous as the internet itself. The Windows and macOS versions of the browser are supported in the latest beta GeForce Now version 2.0.27, which also includes support for M1 Macs from within the dedicated macOS client.

Nvidia's inclusion of Apple M1 support is practical, and the snubbing of Apple, who continues to disallow game streaming services on the App Store, is merely a bonus. But the addition of Chrome support is (or at least appears to be) almost entirely an act of spite against Google, who operates their own game streaming service, Stadia, through Chrome.

That's because the only platforms that support Chrome but couldn't previously run some form of GeForce Now, are Windows on Arm and Linux. The latter doesn't even have official support, but "may work" according to Nvidia's release notes.

But, it's nice that you can play on your GeForce Now account without needing to download the client, if for example, you're playing on a friend's device. Or in your work or school computer if you're not supposed to download games.

GeForce Now availability map is shown above. Green regions are supported, and purple regions will be supported soon. White dots are servers, and being closer and having more per person is better -- which means that the three people that live in the Australian desert will have the best gaming experience of anyone on the planet. Seriously, Nvidia, it's not that hard to look at a map of Australian cities.

Nvidia does state that the best performance is achieved through the dedicated client on Windows or macOS, and will even prompt you to download it when you visit the website if you're on either platform. But apart from the loss of a few options in settings, and a small increase in latency in some games, users haven't reported any noticeable differences.

Nvidia is also adding new features to the service. A big one is the ability to create desktop shortcuts for particular games. Click on a game to open the details options, and select shortcut to get the prompt. Also in the details options is a new shareable link that will take your friends to the GeForce Now page for the game you're playing.

Game streaming services like GeForce Now and Stadia are very relevant when new hardware is difficult to purchase, and new games are difficult to run. It's good to see Nvidia improving theirs.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/88469-nvidia-brings-geforce-now-chrome-apple-m1-devices.html

 

[Toju Mikie]

I had a very very good experience with GeForce Now when it was in beta. I went to college in Downtown Atlanta and my ping to the server was <1ms when I tried it out. The school also had a gigabit Internet connection. I played Watch Dogs and I don't think I even noticed the lag. The only thing was that the video feed had a few issues, but I bet it's better now.

The only thing that sucks is for people that have data caps, because you'll use like 20 GB/hour.

 

[Fearghast]

I had a very very good experience with GeForce Now when it was in beta. I went to college in Downtown Atlanta and my ping to the server was <1ms when I tried it out. The school also had a gigabit Internet connection. I played Watch Dogs and I don't think I even noticed the lag. The only thing was that the video feed had a few issues, but I bet it's better now.

The only thing that sucks is for people that have data caps, because you'll use like 20 GB/hour.

I highly doubt that that ping was even near 1ms. The lag, the real lag would be 40ms at best + the quality of image suffers in fast movement or in dense area.

 

[penn919]

Cloud gaming is definitely viable, but not "the future". Barring some sort of miraculous technological advancement, cloud gaming will remain a minor segment of the marketplace.

Geforce Now had the best model, but it was derailed by developers who bailed once the service went live. I'm a fan of PS Now; however, lately I've been opting to download the games rather than stream.

 

[Toju Mikie]

I highly doubt that that ping was even near 1ms. The lag, the real lag would be 40ms at best + the quality of image suffers in fast movement or in dense area.

Yeah there was some pixelation whenever I would turn around fast, but I was still impressed. I don't know how long it takes to process the frames on the host computer (I believe it had a xeon and Tesla GPU), maybe it is 40ms. It's the best in terms of delay that we can get for now other than going a few blocks over into the GeForce Now server room to play the game. I'm sure the processing delay will get faster over time.

 

[Tinckerbel]

With Nvidia Ge-Force Now supporting M1 maybe Valve feels some kind of need to get off their behinds and get Steam (Link) to work on M1.

 

[koblongata]

Most fiber to home have a 1ms ping, I even have a 1ms ping to Geforce Now server in Taiwan, it was shown in the Now app, I think in a lot of dense cities one can have this kind of responsiveness, I personally haven't subscribed yet, because I have a RTX3090 already and because the service is tied to one of our local telecom I still haven't figured out how to register and pay properly, anyhow it would be nice to not needing to upgrade or buy another gaming computer for myself or my family in the future, and I can see nVidia is working hard pushing it around the world, my country included, unlike Stadia, I got excited by them first but nothing followed..