Nvidia Launches New PC Games Streaming Service, GeForce Now, With Free And $5 Options

Computer-gaming company Nvidia on Tuesday officially launched its new PC gaming stream service, GeForce Now, throwing its hat into the burgeoning game-streaming space.

The launch comes after a long beta testing period, ensuring the service would be stable enough to handle the demands of PC games at launch.

Where a service like Google Stadia is designed to provide a console experience for PC and has its own list of games, GeForce Now works with the existing library of games a user has in digital stores like Steam and the Epic Games Store. Instead, GeForce Now aims to offer the experience of playing on a powerful PC without having to pay the expensive price tag usually attached with gaming PCs and laptops.

Nvidia is currently offering a free and $5 version of GeForce Now for interested customers to sign up for.

The free version of GeForce Now is more limited in its offerings, only allowing for hour-long gaming sessions on weaker hardware. Users may also experience long wait times trying to launch a game if too many people are using the free version.

The $5 version, or Founders edition, allows players to enjoy whatever game they want for as long as they want. Games are playing off of notably more powerful hardware compared to the free version, as well.

Nvidia did say they have plans to raise the price in the future.

The technical demands have also limited the initial availability of GeForce Now. Anyone interested in signing up must be near one of the 17 data centers that act as the PC running the games and reduce latency. Nine of the data centers are in the U.S., five are in Europe, two are in Japan, and one is in South Korea.

Games will need to be compatible with the service in order to work as well. Nvidia released the list on its website and said it would be optimizing games one at a time to work.