![]() Whether you’re gaming on Wi-Fi, Ethernet, or cellular, our environments are drastically varied, with different ISPs, routers, congestion, and limitations. Visual PerformanceEvery single person reading this is going to have a different experience with GeForce Now’s performance. As it is, it feels like it’s still in beta. From a user experience standpoint, things could definitely be streamlined. For example, if you select The Witcher 3 in GeForce Now and launch into the virtualized Steam page, but then decide you want to play Cuphead instead, you have to fully exit out of the virtual machine and re-launch Cuphead from GeForce Now. Another weird quirk is that once you’ve loaded into your virtual machine, you can only play the game that you launched it with. That’s a problem, because certain games, like Apex Legends, ask you to authenticate every single time you log in. It seems the Shield doesn’t know what to do when you haven’t authenticated across the virtualized desktop, in which case you need to authenticate these games beforehand on a computer. I couldn’t authenticate my account because I couldn’t type my credentials – then the same thing happened with the Epic store. When I opened certain games, the controller inputs stopped working altogether (despite the games technically providing gamepad support). I had similarly weird problems when connecting via Shield TV, Nvidia’s streaming box that also allows you to stream GeForce Now to your TV. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I was able to start a game. In this case, I finally finished authenticating everything and had to wait about 5 minutes for an available rig to play Destiny 2. Occasionally, when you start a game, you’ll need to wait for a rig (hence the subscription for priority access to servers). Once you’re finished authenticating, click play to start the game, just like when using Steam or another client on a regular PC. account to verify that you own the game you want to play – two factor authentication and all. (It’s unclear how GeForce Now determines which store to load up if the game is available on multiple stores.) This is when GeForce Now asks you to log into your Steam, Epic, etc. GeForce opens what looks like a virtualized desktop, complete with a virtualized window of Steam, Epic Games Store or whatever client you own the game at. Once you’ve connected with your virtual rig, things get really weird. Thankfully it doesn’t seem to happen every time you start a game. It’s a weird system that feels really outdated. The screen chugs along for a minute with a display that’s a dead ringer for the AOL 56k modem dial-up connection. (Though it doesn’t actually perform a check that you own it until later.) Then a new dialogue box appears, establishing your connection to the GeForce servers. GeForce then asks you to confirm that you own the game. When you find a game you want to play, you click a button to add it to your library. The library is already much more impressive than the paltry selection found on Google Stadia, but it’s still disappointing when you’re especially amped for a certain game, only to find it not available on the service. Instead you can either scroll through a limited list of “featured” games, or use the search bar to check for the game you want to play. GeForce now currently supports more than 400 titles, but there’s no place where they’re all listed. Neither was Monster Hunter World, Red Dead Redemption 2, Temtem, or Control. I was thrilled to load up Halo: The Master Chief collection, but it wasn’t available. ![]() There’s a carousel of hot games, but at this point, it’s filled with old titles like Cuphead and Tropico 6. ![]() When you log into the service, which is available on PC, Mac, and Android, you’re presented with a sort of junior varsity Steam client. Setup and InterfaceSetting up GeForce Now for the first time is a bit of a nightmare. Instead it’s almost perfectly suited for people who own outdated PCs or Macs but still want to play the hottest PC games. GeForce Now doesn’t seem to be aimed at tech enthusiasts or early adopters. It’s effectively free, at least for an hour session at a time, but paying for the subscription ($4.99 per month, though Nvidia hasn’t settled on a long-term pricing model) gives you priority access to servers, ray tracing in games that support it, and up to 6-hour play sessions. But it also means only select games are supported. ![]() And because the games are cloud-based, there’s no updating or maintenance required. Instead, GeForce Now connects to your existing digital game libraries to verify if you own the games you want to play. Nvidia isn’t running a games store here, unlike Google’s Stadia service. That’s because it has a different tact – GeForce Now streams the PC games you already own. But GeForce Now might not need mindshare to win out over its competitors.
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