For those worried about the long term outlook for local hardware. Ya its grim but it was before GFN. This technology is going to work long term... sure there are still things to figure out. Its where GPUs where in 1999. Where they where starting to do things that software wasn't quite yet.

Today this is just a high end gaming PC. In 2-3 years from now... streaming will become big enough that game developers are going to start targeting NV/Google/MS cloud infrastructure on new projects. Instead of what they believe the average gamer is going to be capable of playing when they launch their game 2-4 years down the line. Things like Ray tracing will become more common... developers will start producing larger textures, cause they will know every cloud licenced machine is going to be sitting on 16gb of vram and they don't have to worry about the home gamers that are averaging 6gb.

The best we can hope for is that the big streaming winners are companies like NV that respect store fronts like Steam and EGS so purchases for home or streaming can continue to be used both ways. Their is a very real possibility that in 5-6 years we see AAA games released that don't have anything but ULTRA mode settings, and levels designed that just don't look right without Ray tracing turned on.

So all in all I consider streaming a HUGE boon for those of us that enjoy high end PC gaming. Consoles may still be a bit of an issue as a low end target for the industry. Streaming however should lessen the impact average hardware has on developers. If a AAA game studio can swing for the fences visually and create modern crysis type games that make 99% of home computers bleed... but run very well on the cloud services. Then they have a path to make money on those games. Instead of having to dumb every game down to increase their market potential.

I would guess that 4-5 years from now streaming for sure will be a big part of mid range gaming. And in 10 years... yes only the super rich or very dedicated are going to build rigs that can compete visually with the streaming options.

You have a hell of a lot of faith in ISPs actually upgrading networks and not charging insane bandwidth fees that make these services non-viable.
 
You have a hell of a lot of faith in ISPs actually upgrading networks and not charging insane bandwidth fees that make these services non-viable.

I remember people saying the EXACT same thing when it was Netflix coming up.

The bandwidth, the bandwidth. The ISPs are going to freak, shut it down... charge a fortune. I have no doubt they will be going after every player for backbone payments ect ect... but the bandwidth will happen. Trust me your ISPs are holding back and have been for years. They have a long term plan to slowly jack the price... we have all felt it. I'm Canadian but our ISPs have been doing the same. Speeds go up a little bit every year of so... price goes up to match. The local land line phone company is offering 35 Mpbs $45 dollar plans.... then a few years later its a bump to 50 Mpbs at $45 dollars for the first 12 months. (they have the numbers and when enough people are happy jumping up to the next speed tier at $60 or whatever they bump and phantom price jump again) And so it goes on and on. Every year the $60 plan becomes the $45 dollar plan, which becomes the $55 dollar plan a year after that. They have been doing that for at least the last 10 years... as has their competition. I am sure its the same in every major North American market.

So yes in 2 years its going to cost more then it does today, and in 4 years it will cost more again. People are going to accept it, as they have been for years... cause its a "necessity" after all. :p We all remember the $9.99 dial up days... the latest greatest keeps getting more expensive. Between the cable tv cutting and peoples greater reliance (addiction) to the internet its just going to keep going. I really wouldn't be shocked if you told me in 20 years peoples average internet bill would be more then all their other non rent/mortgage bills combined, and 99.9% of the population where subs.
 
compute time on cloud hardware(they own) is much much more expensive than the same compute on hardware that is already paid for(you own). go on aws and start provisioning a server with similar specs to your rig at home. yikes $. now price it for a month. double yikes $$. it get REALLY expensive when you get into renting out GPUs, dont mess with that while amazon has your credit card on file i wouldnt do that to you. so the devs have to eat that cost, and then pass it on to you in the form of subscriptions or more expensive games because before you were responsible for that compute at home and your personal hardware didnt figure into their cost.

the only reason they are pushing this so hard and the only reason it will eventually be the future is ultimate control and DRM of their games.

If Nvidia is doing this on their own infrastructure and hardware they can eat a lot of those costs as Tax rebates for new business investment. But this is an interesting thing indeed. I get the argument for and against it.

In the this won't be the end of PC line... remember when high end consoles were going to replace PC's? I remember those debates, and they went nowhere.

A high end gaming solution that can only serve Urban environments will see some use but it won't be the massive win they want it to be. America, and many other countries have massive Rural groups.
 
If Nvidia is doing this on their own infrastructure and hardware they can eat a lot of those costs as Tax rebates for new business investment. But this is an interesting thing indeed. I get the argument for and against it.

In the this won't be the end of PC line... remember when high end consoles were going to replace PC's? I remember those debates, and they went nowhere.

A high end gaming solution that can only serve Urban environments will see some use but it won't be the massive win they want it to be. America, and many other countries have massive Rural groups.

Did consoles not win though ? Console gaming won... by dragging PC gaming down to console level for the most part. Sure we can enable ULTRA settings and turn on some fancy new features like RT before it comes to the console plebs. But really how many PC games are actually PC games ? Controls are often crap... the PC launches often post Console exclusive window... and often super freaking buggy. I love Civilization, Xcom and some other true PC games... but actual 100% "AAA" PC games don't really exist anymore. So I really wouldn't say the debates went no where.

Same is going to happen with streaming. In a decade... sure we will still be able to game on the PC. But I fear mid range GPU cards are very likely to be gone as a market segment. Games that run on our home machines will fall into 2 categories... low end / SOC GPU is good enough for traditional PC like games and other tetris like fair. With catagory 2 being high end same as whats in the current cloud GPU at home for 100% offline true zero lag gaming. With AAA high end graphic games only really being playable via stream or on very top of the line gaming rigs.

In a way that sucks. In another way... well if you are looking for high end games to push your super expensive top of the line systems it might be a golden age of titles not developed to target 5 year old SOC chips in the current selling console.
 
We can't support game streaming and need to let it fail. Is it cool? Sure but the end game is streaming gaming. No more local gaming. Publishers want full control over your games and this gives it to them.
 
Be tuff.. their are more poor people then people with money for a high end pc rig I guess.

Though at the same time.. I would think those people with a smaller budget would just stick to consoles in the first place.

What advantage would this pc stream gaming give one over a high end console thsts in their budget?

A mouse and keyboard? Higher end visuals that the next gen of consoles would give them anyways.
 
Be tuff.. their are more poor people then people with money for a high end pc rig I guess.

Though at the same time.. I would think those people with a smaller budget would just stick to consoles in the first place.

What advantage would this pc stream gaming give one over a high end console thsts in their budget?

A mouse and keyboard? Higher end visuals that the next gen of consoles would give them anyways.

Not having to buy an expensive console. You don't need a PC at all.

Android requirements...
An Android phone with 2GB with Android 5.0 (L) or later, and OpenGL ES3.2 support or higher.

Even poor people have phones that meet those requirements.

The PC service will basically run on a potato. As long as it has decent internet connection... and BT for a controller your golden.
 
Not having to buy an expensive console. You don't need a PC at all.

Android requirements...
An Android phone with 2GB with Android 5.0 (L) or later, and OpenGL ES3.2 support or higher.

Even poor people have phones that meet those requirements.

The PC service will basically run on a potato. As long as it has decent internet connection... and BT for a controller your golden.

I wouldn't say "decent" internet connection. I'd say good or very good since it needs to be fairly stable. Pretty much leaves 4G out of the question.
 
I wouldn't say "decent" internet connection. I'd say good or very good since it needs to be fairly stable. Pretty much leaves 4G out of the question.

No doubt... I imagine for a few years mobile data won't be the best option for anyone in NA anyway. That will improve though. Streaming is early days... clearly the industry is pushing. But I don't really expect streaming to be a big player for a few years. I also doubt we see any developed with cloud systems in mind games for 6-7 years from now. Seems that is the way the multi billion dollar game publishers (and the big hardware companies like NV) are heading. Seems like this is happening no matter what.... I just really hope we at least get insane looking developed for cloud first games. And not just the final evolution of DRM alone.
 
I signed up for the hell of it. I've got gigabit FTTH, and I played one round of Fortnite as a test. The game had very low input lag, definitely the lowest of any remote-hosted solution I've tried so far. For some reason the game would chug whenever destroying structures with the pickaxe, but otherwise it played very well.

One annoyance is you can't copy and paste your account passwords into the GeForce Now session. I use randomly-generated passwords stored inside a password manager, and it was a pain not having clipboard access inside the session. Oh well.

Update: Tried out Doom (2016). Ran well, got some kills. Not bad. Looks like my session was running on a Tesla P40 with the 24GB vGPU profile. That's an entire P40 to myself. Crazy!

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To me... remembering how I got into IT... IT is going to go the way of doctors and professionals with more money to spend than not.

I spend on tech because I game... but that same spend and interest in Tech got me into IT and gave me a career because I was able to learn from the bottom to the top. And grow professionally as well.

Now I can afford to drop a G or so a year on hardware... sometimes more but don't tell my wife that.

But I fear for the future of tech. Are we only going to have people that get an IT degree that get into the industry? No more working your way up by figuring shit out on your own.

I suppose it go's hand in hand with the whole right to repair.

If people can game as long as they have a good internet connection and a starter card or built in graphics 'feature' that can do DX 11, or 12 or whatever it happens to be to stream. Then why will they learn to build a faster computer?

As an industry we need to help people learn how to get to where many of us are. I know I can't afford the super bleeding edge, but also because I know I can build something that is damn good, and better than all but the highest end of the pre-built systems out there. Others can build systems that make the highest end prebuilt seem a little sluggish because they have the budget to do it. (And need in some cases.)

My point is if we go to streaming everything, no more local installs... then there will be no point to having a desktop computer.

And honestly for a LOT of people today that need is gone. If all they do is facebook, youtube, and other app sites like that it can all run on a phone just fine.

My wife for example does everything on her phone or her firestick. I got her a Surface Book with a i5 and all. She likes it but 99% of her online life is on her phone.
 
To me... remembering how I got into IT... IT is going to go the way of doctors and professionals with more money to spend than not.

I spend on tech because I game... but that same spend and interest in Tech got me into IT and gave me a career because I was able to learn from the bottom to the top. And grow professionally as well.

Now I can afford to drop a G or so a year on hardware... sometimes more but don't tell my wife that.

But I fear for the future of tech. Are we only going to have people that get an IT degree that get into the industry? No more working your way up by figuring shit out on your own.

I suppose it go's hand in hand with the whole right to repair.

If people can game as long as they have a good internet connection and a starter card or built in graphics 'feature' that can do DX 11, or 12 or whatever it happens to be to stream. Then why will they learn to build a faster computer?

As an industry we need to help people learn how to get to where many of us are. I know I can't afford the super bleeding edge, but also because I know I can build something that is damn good, and better than all but the highest end of the pre-built systems out there. Others can build systems that make the highest end prebuilt seem a little sluggish because they have the budget to do it. (And need in some cases.)

My point is if we go to streaming everything, no more local installs... then there will be no point to having a desktop computer.

And honestly for a LOT of people today that need is gone. If all they do is facebook, youtube, and other app sites like that it can all run on a phone just fine.

My wife for example does everything on her phone or her firestick. I got her a Surface Book with a i5 and all. She likes it but 99% of her online life is on her phone.

Basically you got your answer.. cause nvidia thinks the future is streaming and gaming on your phone only I guess.

I guess people like us will be outdated a decade from now like woodcrafters of today. Or like how back when people used to work on their cars. People of tomorrow wont know how to fix nor build a pc.

Sad really.
 
I order it and going to try it on nvdia shield tonight. My PC played fine but I also have 1GB Fiber connection so Internet Speed really not a issue.
 
I signed up for the hell of it. I've got gigabit FTTH, and I played one round of Fortnite as a test. The game had very low input lag, definitely the lowest of any remote-hosted solution I've tried so far. For some reason the game would chug whenever destroying structures with the pickaxe, but otherwise it played very well.

One annoyance is you can't copy and paste your account passwords into the GeForce Now session. I use randomly-generated passwords stored inside a password manager, and it was a pain not having clipboard access inside the session. Oh well.

Update: Tried out Doom (2016). Ran well, got some kills. Not bad. Looks like my session was running on a Tesla P40 with the 24GB vGPU profile. That's an entire P40 to myself. Crazy!

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More then likely there are several people playing off that one card. A lot of power just to run Doom 2016 at 60fps. What res is that 1080p I assume?
 
You have a hell of a lot of faith in ISPs actually upgrading networks and not charging insane bandwidth fees that make these services non-viable.
Given recent reports about ISPs (Comcast and AT&T called out specifically) have been actually cutting investment into infrastructure, this is definitely a concern. Perhaps this will result in improvements to compression. It would definitely be so "American" for people to not buy a gaming PC because they see it as expensive, but then pay close to $1k additional in bandwidth cap fees in a year using this service.
We can't support game streaming and need to let it fail. Is it cool? Sure but the end game is streaming gaming. No more local gaming. Publishers want full control over your games and this gives it to them.
You are 10+ years too late for that movement. First they started releasing games with online requirement, even if was primarily a single player game. Now with Origin Access, MS Gamepass, etc. they have introduced the GaaS (Games as a Service) model, where you pay monthly to play the games. This is just an additional extension of that.
 
The situations where you can't play well the game and you have already the bandwidth are very few. The reverse is much more often. So, for instance, in comparison with Stadia, apart from "we are ready without new hardware", the interest is small. One should be close to the movie streaming bandwidth or on that level, and be able to downgrade the quality to fit the bandwidth. If one needs super-high quality, then it needs to use its own gaming PC.
I hope it is not going into that direction so everything stays at the server level and you pay to play. And then same with your professional software so some companies may charge you whatever they want since you(re totally depending on them for using their kind of files.
 
Used this for about a year in beta, it worked quite well. Didn't have full support so I ended up buying a subscription to shadow.tech, it's amazing how well both work though, really don't even need more then 25/30mb connection speed it seems, worked decently well from a hotel even.

Even used geforce now for some online fps action and I didn't even really have any latency.

Haven't been ready to pull the trigger on a new gaming system yet, and I travel a lot, so Ive been using this on my surface pro quite a bit.
 
Used this for about a year in beta, it worked quite well. Didn't have full support so I ended up buying a subscription to shadow.tech, it's amazing how well both work though, really don't even need more then 25/30mb connection speed it seems, worked decently well from a hotel even.

Even used geforce now for some online fps action and I didn't even really have any latency.

Haven't been ready to pull the trigger on a new gaming system yet, and I travel a lot, so Ive been using this on my surface pro quite a bit.
Ok. So this is good on laptops, probably great for Macbooks unsupported stuff and with integrated Intel graphics card. However, 25/30Mbps connection is not something you will get easy everywhere. Even your wifi connection may be much bellow that in hotels or other shared network.
 
Basically you got your answer.. cause nvidia thinks the future is streaming and gaming on your phone only I guess.

I guess people like us will be outdated a decade from now like woodcrafters of today. Or like how back when people used to work on their cars. People of tomorrow wont know how to fix nor build a pc.

Sad really.

We won't be outdated. WE will be paid to teach our 'amazing and rare skills' to others so they can have a place in the world of IT. IT will become a new Doctorate role. ;)
 
I remember people saying the EXACT same thing when it was Netflix coming up.

The bandwidth, the bandwidth. The ISPs are going to freak, shut it down... charge a fortune. I have no doubt they will be going after every player for backbone payments ect ect... but the bandwidth will happen. Trust me your ISPs are holding back and have been for years. They have a long term plan to slowly jack the price... we have all felt it. I'm Canadian but our ISPs have been doing the same. Speeds go up a little bit every year of so... price goes up to match. The local land line phone company is offering 35 Mpbs $45 dollar plans.... then a few years later its a bump to 50 Mpbs at $45 dollars for the first 12 months. (they have the numbers and when enough people are happy jumping up to the next speed tier at $60 or whatever they bump and phantom price jump again) And so it goes on and on. Every year the $60 plan becomes the $45 dollar plan, which becomes the $55 dollar plan a year after that. They have been doing that for at least the last 10 years... as has their competition. I am sure its the same in every major North American market.

So yes in 2 years its going to cost more then it does today, and in 4 years it will cost more again. People are going to accept it, as they have been for years... cause its a "necessity" after all. :p We all remember the $9.99 dial up days... the latest greatest keeps getting more expensive. Between the cable tv cutting and peoples greater reliance (addiction) to the internet its just going to keep going. I really wouldn't be shocked if you told me in 20 years peoples average internet bill would be more then all their other non rent/mortgage bills combined, and 99.9% of the population where subs.
And yet Netflix is still limited to 25 Mb/s when major ISPs like Comcast and Cox commonly offer connections of 100 Mb/s or faster.
More then likely there are several people playing off that one card. A lot of power just to run Doom 2016 at 60fps. What res is that 1080p I assume?
GeForce NOW gives you full control of the game options unlike Stadia. You're just limited by how good your connection is to how well that translates to your display.

EDIT: Just changed big 'B' (byte) to little 'b' (bit).
 
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And yet Netflix is still limited to 25 MB/s when major ISPs like Comcast and Cox commonly offer connections of 100 MB/s or faster.

No doubt once game streaming gets popular the ISPs are going to be having conversations with the players involved. Netflix pays a lot of money to ISPs.... and sure I have heard some American ISPs have played games when they are unhappy with Netflix backbone payments. Your right Sony MS Nvidia Google... there all going to have to pony up and drop money to make this work. Gaming is a huge industry that they all see growth in.... nothing will grow gaming faster then telling anyone with a smartphone (which is everyone isn't it) that they can play AAA titles with = or better visual quality of a high end expensive gaming rig. These services are eyeing the people sitting in front of facebook games for 8+ hours a day. The one segment of the gaming industry that should really not be looking forward to game streaming at all are the mobile game developers. Network speeds are going to improve. That is just the way it is... the history of connection speeds only goes in one direction, things only get faster and more reliable. No reason to believe that isn't going to continue. Even the traditional cable companies are going to have to deal with new competition from players like spacex at some point.

Short term though I agree with you... the cable and phone companies are probably going to play some games and try and squeeze the streaming giants for payments. Those games may even include stupid shit like throttling the services, or trying to sell gamer plans. I can see them floating stuff like 25 plans that have a 50 speed for game streaming option for an added fee. All that will shake out over the next few years... unless a new player really does shake things up. (I am not sure if the beamed from space internet will really work all that well especially for low latency gaming but who knows) Next few years are going to be very interesting... some big changes or some big flops coming.
 
Basically you got your answer.. cause nvidia thinks the future is streaming and gaming on your phone only I guess.

I guess people like us will be outdated a decade from now like woodcrafters of today. Or like how back when people used to work on their cars. People of tomorrow wont know how to fix nor build a pc.

Sad really.

That’s the price of integration. Most people don’t know how to build a radio today but lots of kids did it in the 70’s. Now an entire radio fits on a chip so there’s nothing to “build”.
 
The US is the largest consumer market for video games on the planet (outside of China, though that is predominately free-to-play titles).

Edit: And, even ignoring that most of the world isn't even ready. The handful of countries that are ready for something like this are relatively small nations within the EU. Maybe Japan (which might not even go for this in the first place) and the UK as well. I don't even know if larger EU nations like France are up to task, but I I could be completely wrong on that.

Largest does not necessarily mean bigger than all the rest combined. Europe, Korea, Japan are all well connected as a whole. Not sure about China and India internet speeds since they are so huge but yeah, there's plenty of potential there. I think such services are going to mostly destroy our hobby within 10 years.

My point is of course they are targeting people in big cities mostly since internet is generally better and cheaper. Most people doesn't matter. Most people do not play Doom after work and yet they keep making them.
 
Your right Sony MS Nvidia Google... there all going to have to pony up and drop money to make this work.
It'll never work because like Stadia it can't break the speed of light.
Gaming is a huge industry that they all see growth in.... nothing will grow gaming faster then telling anyone with a smartphone (which is everyone isn't it) that they can play AAA titles with = or better visual quality of a high end expensive gaming rig.
Assuming everything works fine, no phone has physical buttons to play these games. Lets be honest here, touchscreens as an input device is bullshit.
Network speeds are going to improve.
I'd be more worried about data caps.
That is just the way it is... the history of connection speeds only goes in one direction, things only get faster and more reliable. No reason to believe that isn't going to continue. Even the traditional cable companies are going to have to deal with new competition from players like spacex at some point.
The problem is that ISPs don't directly compete with each other, so they have no real incentive to upgrade their infrastructure. It's called an oligopoly.
Short term though I agree with you... the cable and phone companies are probably going to play some games and try and squeeze the streaming giants for payments. Those games may even include stupid shit like throttling the services, or trying to sell gamer plans. I can see them floating stuff like 25 plans that have a 50 speed for game streaming option for an added fee. All that will shake out over the next few years... unless a new player really does shake things up. (I am not sure if the beamed from space internet will really work all that well especially for low latency gaming but who knows) Next few years are going to be very interesting... some big changes or some big flops coming.
Unless we change some laws and force ISPs to compete with each other then nothing will change. The only reason why cloud gaming is now being pushed is because gaming hardware is now ridiculously expensive. We know the PS5 and Xbox Series X won't be $400 like their predecessors, and GPU's have gotten so expensive that the Steam Hardware Survey looks the same as 2016. Here we are with Nvidia offering a solution to a problem they created, and a terrible one at that.
 
Here we are with Nvidia offering a solution to a problem they created, and a terrible one at that.

shortened for ease of reading. I agree phone gaming blows, and I highly doubt the cost of hardware, etc is going to change anytime soon. But, why do you think geforce now a terrible solution? at $5 a month it's pretty damn phenomenal. Sure, it doesn't have every single game out there, but for $5 you can access like ~80% of modern day games with more added daily. I used to game on an 8 year old i3 ultrabook and it worked just fine on that too.

I used it for months, competitively playing mordhau, fortnite, MMOs, FPS, strategy, about damn near any game. It even worked relatively well from a hotel which was limited to like 15-20mb/s. had to reduce the quality, but actual playability was fine outside of some fuzzy rendering every now and then.

Granted I live in a decent suburb so I can easily get 150-200mb/s connection speed, but my co-worker lives about 15 miles out, and is about 10 miles from the closest grocery store, gas station, etc and he still has 25mb connection through AT&T.

I use cloud gaming on average of around 3 hours a night, Looking at my ubiquity analytics, over the past 4 months I've used about 1.1 TB of data on gaming. So 200-300GB a month? I think even when I was with comcast and they had data caps it was still around 500GB, and for $20 a month more I could jump up to unlimited, but I never exceed that at the time.
 
It'll never work because like Stadia it can't break the speed of light.

Your too funny already. Dude I played for free for a solid hour last night. Worked great so your smoking something.

Is it as good as a $3,000 local machine... no. Is it about equal or better then any mid range PC I have ever played on. Yep. And I was using it at my parents place... they have a 35mbps advertised connection so nothing insane pretty standard middle of the road internet package where I am.

As for caps they will solve themselves... just like they did when Netflix started going gang busters. It might cost Netflix some back end money... or the carriers will offer streaming only add on cap space to end users. Someone will pay for it I don't doubt... and I would say its 50/50 it will be consumers. But ya it works today... and its only going to get better.

Speeds have improved. I have no doubt that plenty of places in the US have shit competition... cause your no rules capitalism system has breed mega winners. But at some point they will fall in line... when people start saying how does Sweden have this and we don't. Happened with other things like Cell phones... 10 years ago I was paying over $100 a month for my Cell. Today I'm on no contract and pay $35 Canadian for unlimited calling Unlimited Text and 8 GB of 4g speed... with no data overages switches to 3g speed after I use my 8gb. That happened in a decade.... paying $100 a month where if I wasn't careful I could end up with a $1000 monthly bill to $35. And the Cell competition in Canada is terrible.... they just don't want the Gov noticing so they eventually took things where they should be. Same goes for my internet here honestly.... very little competition really with 2 players 1 cable 1 phone. 10 years ago had shit 15mbps top speed cable and dsl options. Today 100mps fiber for pretty reasonable pricing (500mps for not much more... and 960mps for still less then the highest end internet options where 10 years ago).... and even my parents low end internet package is 35, and it seems plenty enough to stream 1080p gaming at 60fps.
 
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I would guess that 4-5 years from now streaming for sure will be a big part of mid range gaming. And in 10 years... yes only the super rich or very dedicated are going to build rigs that can compete visually with the streaming options.

The Lindy Principle and I would like to completely disagree.

Visuals are good for marketing, but it's gameplay that makes a game popular. The market is littered with beautiful, innovative games that were a failure.

The reason home video games became a thing is because people didn't want to spend $0.25 every time they played a game - people love unmetered, unlimited use of the things they enjoy and while subscriptions can work, people are used to "unlimited" use of things like WoW or Netflix or Amazon Prime for $15 to maybe $20 per month. How many people would watch Netflix if it was metered? It would suck and it would break their product model utterly.

This is the part where people suggest that advertising in games is going to help offset the costs. Maybe, but in game advertising has not exactly been a major revenue stream - not compared to loot boxes, cosmetics and DLC.

But the real, insurmountable-in-our-lifetime problem is latency. You can smooth it, you can mask it, you can predict it and hide it, but only so much and people buy one monitor because it has 5ms input latency and not the other one because it has 12ms input latency - so you might get away with WoW II or Tome Raider 9 on the cloud - or other games where an extra 50-100ms latency isn't a big deal, but there will always be a market for fast paced, twitchy games - the ones where people run low settings and tune everything they can for maximum responsiveness and minimal latency.

Has anyone put CSGO or Overwatch or Quake on the Cloud? Maybe they have, but I think these services are always going to struggle to gain critical mass because they fundamentally misunderstand a large segment of the gaming community.
 
Being able to play Grim Dawn on my lunch break has been awesome!!

(it's not perfect - I did have to set the bit-rate to 25mbps for a "smooth" experience)
 
I wouldn't assume Nvidias motivation for doing this to be a face value interest and belief in the future of stream-gaming. I'm sure they're hedging their bets, but in my opinion, Nvidia sees themselves as the future of cloud/super/scalable/AI computing. This platform is a good nexus between gaming and HPC and it also lets them put pressure on Google and keep them out of their neck of the woods.
 
We won't be outdated. WE will be paid to teach our 'amazing and rare skills' to others so they can have a place in the world of IT. IT will become a new Doctorate role. ;)
I kind of know how to repair my cars. Already done it several times. I'm buying my parts and I'm fixing the thing or if it needs time give it to a friend of a friend who's doing it undeclared. Just as I'm doing it with my PCs.
And sorry but I couldn't work on anything smaller than a good PC. And eventually this is going to be even worse in that direction in the years to come.
I don't believe this future, everybody on smartphones and tablets. This is more the past. I was a bit of that guy and not anymore. And the cloud thing is going to stall or even eventually end.
And also, I actually make part of my wood furniture (home and office) myself.
 
But, why do you think geforce now a terrible solution?
Latency for one. Imagine quality for two. The internet infrastructure for three.
at $5 a month it's pretty damn phenomenal. Sure, it doesn't have every single game out there, but for $5 you can access like ~80% of modern day games with more added daily. I used to game on an 8 year old i3 ultrabook and it worked just fine on that too.
That price is temporary as Nvidia even said they're going to raise the price.
I used it for months, competitively playing mordhau, fortnite, MMOs, FPS, strategy, about damn near any game. It even worked relatively well from a hotel which was limited to like 15-20mb/s. had to reduce the quality, but actual playability was fine outside of some fuzzy rendering every now and then.
Fuzzy rendering means the connection wasn't stable and the image quality dropped. I'm hearing the same complaints for Geforce Now that you get from Stadia. Those who promote it say the same thing, in that there's some latency but you'll get used to it. I'll wait for some actual input lag results.

Is it as good as a $3,000 local machine... no. Is it about equal or better then any mid range PC I have ever played on. Yep. And I was using it at my parents place... they have a 35mbps advertised connection so nothing insane pretty standard middle of the road internet package where I am.
Got some screen shots so we can compare it to a PC? I've already seen people having similar issues like Stadia, including imagine quality issues.
As for caps they will solve themselves... just like they did when Netflix started going gang busters. It might cost Netflix some back end money... or the carriers will offer streaming only add on cap space to end users. Someone will pay for it I don't doubt... and I would say its 50/50 it will be consumers. But ya it works today... and its only going to get better.
Lets ask AT&T, and oh no they made things worse. I wonder if its because they're an oligopoly like a lot of ISPs in America. As long as they don't have competition then they have no reason to improve.

when people start saying how does Sweden have this and we don't.
Sweden has a functioning Democracy while in America we seem to have forgotten how to count votes in Iowa.
Same goes for my internet here honestly.... very little competition really with 2 players 1 cable 1 phone. 10 years ago had shit 15mbps top speed cable and dsl options. Today 100mps fiber for pretty reasonable pricing (500mps for not much more... and 960mps for still less then the highest end internet options where 10 years ago).... and even my parents low end internet package is 35, and it seems plenty enough to stream 1080p gaming at 60fps.
Keep in mind that no amount of bandwidth will fix latency and image quality will always be worse compared to even a low end gaming PC due to video compression. Everything I said would happen with Stadia did happen, and I'm certain the same thing will occur with Geforce Now. I will give Nvidia this, as it sounds like Geforce Now at least gives you access to a library of games, unlike Stadia. There are some disturbing things you see on Nvidia's website like "Priority Access" which sounds like you may need to wait in a line to play your games, and "Extended Length Session" which sounds like they may limit your gaming session. So it won't be $5 per month as Nvidia even says this is a limited offer as well as they will put you in a line and limit your play time. You really think Nvidia is going to give you access to all that hardware for a mere $5 per month, without stipulations?
 
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Latency for one. Imagine quality for two. The internet infrastructure for three.

That price is temporary as Nvidia even said they're going to raise the price.

Fuzzy rendering means the connection wasn't stable and the image quality dropped. I'm hearing the same complaints for Geforce Now that you get from Stadia. Those who promote it say the same thing, in that there's some latency but you'll get used to it. I'll wait for some actual input lag results.

lol, pick and chose much? out of the year I used it at an average of 3 hours a night, I can count on one hand the amount of times it was fuzzy, and that was while I was in a hotel with crap internet. I managed to come in first place a few times on fortnite and scored in top 5 on mordhau multiple times while using it. Image quality and latency are just fine.

If you live in a place with crap internet, you're not going to be able to play any online games as it is and you'll be stuck with offline games. Obviously this wouldn't be the service for you.

https://shadow.tech/usen/ is the competitor I'd say to geforce now.. gives you a fully fledged VM of win 10 and geforce 1080 gtx. it's $12.99 a month and I can load it with any game I want, works flawlessly. geforce now works better in terms of quality / latency (I suspect since you're no loading windows, etc), I've used shadow for 6 months, in addition to geforce now, for the games that aren't supported by nvidia's service.

While not all games are supported on geforce now, it's allowed me to game consistently with friends for a year without spending money on a new PC.

Only once have I not been able to play due to latency / quality, but the internet was so bad I suspect I couldn't even play were I to have had the game locally on my laptop.
 
lol, pick and chose much? out of the year I used it at an average of 3 hours a night, I can count on one hand the amount of times it was fuzzy, and that was while I was in a hotel with crap internet. I managed to come in first place a few times on fortnite and scored in top 5 on mordhau multiple times while using it. Image quality and latency are just fine.

If you live in a place with crap internet, you're not going to be able to play any online games as it is and you'll be stuck with offline games. Obviously this wouldn't be the service for you.

https://shadow.tech/usen/ is the competitor I'd say to geforce now.. gives you a fully fledged VM of win 10 and geforce 1080 gtx. it's $12.99 a month and I can load it with any game I want, works flawlessly. geforce now works better in terms of quality / latency (I suspect since you're no loading windows, etc), I've used shadow for 6 months, in addition to geforce now, for the games that aren't supported by nvidia's service.

While not all games are supported on geforce now, it's allowed me to game consistently with friends for a year without spending money on a new PC.

Only once have I not been able to play due to latency / quality, but the internet was so bad I suspect I couldn't even play were I to have had the game locally on my laptop.

See this is where I think these type of services fit in. If people lack the economic means to buy the latest and greatest hardware, this is a great way to continue playing at the midrange/high end w/a low monthly subscription of $5/mo. Everyone already pays for their internet connection so that doesn't change and this opens up gaming on a lot more devices so those who have top end PCs can still enjoy gaming while not at home via their phones/tablets/shitbooks.
 
lol, pick and chose much? out of the year I used it at an average of 3 hours a night, I can count on one hand the amount of times it was fuzzy, and that was while I was in a hotel with crap internet. I managed to come in first place a few times on fortnite and scored in top 5 on mordhau multiple times while using it. Image quality and latency are just fine.
You are not a metric. For all I know you're an Nvidia employee who's paid to spread propaganda on Geforce Now, like Google did with Stadia. Not a joke, there were a number of Stadia employee's who would argue in favor of Stadia, and they'd use their own experience like it matters. I'll wait for Gamers Nexus to do a review, if they'll actually do it. Scoring high in Fortnite and claiming great success doesn't mean anything.
If you live in a place with crap internet, you're not going to be able to play any online games as it is and you'll be stuck with offline games. Obviously this wouldn't be the service for you.
The problem with game streaming is that it can't buffer, and as such you can't alleviate lag spikes that typically doesn't effect services like NetFlix. At some point you'll hit a lag spike and suddenly the game stops for a slip second or longer.
https://shadow.tech/usen/ is the competitor I'd say to geforce now.. gives you a fully fledged VM of win 10 and geforce 1080 gtx. it's $12.99 a month and I can load it with any game I want, works flawlessly. geforce now works better in terms of quality / latency (I suspect since you're no loading windows, etc), I've used shadow for 6 months, in addition to geforce now, for the games that aren't supported by nvidia's service.
Nvidia must have something better because they claim to have RTX on. So really Shadow should be dead by now, if it isn't already.
While not all games are supported on geforce now, it's allowed me to game consistently with friends for a year without spending money on a new PC.
Starting to really sound like an Nvidia employee.

See this is where I think these type of services fit in. If people lack the economic means to buy the latest and greatest hardware, this is a great way to continue playing at the midrange/high end w/a low monthly subscription of $5/mo. Everyone already pays for their internet connection so that doesn't change and this opens up gaming on a lot more devices so those who have top end PCs can still enjoy gaming while not at home via their phones/tablets/shitbooks.
Another one of you guys... Ok...

  1. Firstly, cloud gaming will never match a high gaming PC. It just isn't fiscally possible. Wasn't Nvidia promoting 360 hz recently? How does that factor into Geforce Now being a "High End" PC? It doesn't even do 4k, I just found out. A GTX 1060 can do 4k... poorly but it can do it.
  2. Right now the price of GPU's is stupidly high, and Nvidia is mostly responsible for this, though AMD is also guilty for this as well. This is why the Steam Hardware Survey shows the 1060, 1050, and 1050 Ti as the most popular GPU's that people use in 2020. These are 4 year old GPU's, so I think its time that Nvidia drops some prices already.
  3. It won't be $5 for long, as Nvidia points this out on their website. Don't point it out as if that's the actual price for the service.
  4. Geforce Now will have access to your Steam library, but you know what else does, that doesn't cost a monthly fee? Moonlight for one.
 
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It shouldn't be assumed that cloud gaming is to completely replace all forms of current gaming, especially no the near future. While there is some overlap in target demographics it'll also target those that aren't interested in current forms of gaming. It can also be supplemental.

The broader global market should be considered as well. Internet pricing (and quality, as well as geographic distances) relative to hardware pricing (as well as software pricing) has very differing dynamics in many other regions compared to the US. In many of those regions there is already an ingrained market for not gaming at home in a "share" type environment in the form of PC/Cyber Cafes.
 
Another one of you guys... Ok...

  1. Firstly, cloud gaming will never match a high gaming PC. It just isn't fiscally possible. Wasn't Nvidia promoting 360 hz recently? How does that factor into Geforce Now being a "High End" PC? It doesn't even do 4k, I just found out. A GTX 1060 can do 4k... poorly but it can do it.
  2. Right now the price of GPU's is stupidly high, and Nvidia is mostly responsible for this, though AMD is also guilty for this as well. This is why the Steam Hardware Survey shows the 1060, 1050, and 1050 Ti as the most popular GPU's that people use in 2020. These are 4 year old GPU's, so I think its time that Nvidia drops some prices already.
  3. It won't be $5 for long, as Nvidia points this out on their website. Don't point it out as if that's the actual price for the service.
  4. Geforce Now will have access to your Steam library, but you know what else does, that doesn't cost a monthly fee? Moonlight for one.

That moonlight service is nothing like GeForce now, it's self hosted for private use. As for your other points, 360 Hz is esports tier, high end these days for most people can easily be a 1080 level of performance which this cloud service provides and more. Eurogamer tested it out and said this:

Nvidia says that Founders get access to RTX 2080-level performance and to put it to the test, I loaded up Metro Exodus. At 1080p resolution with all settings fully maxed out, including ultra-level RTX, the game ran flawlessly at 60fps on the demanding Taiga stage.


It's titles like Metro Exodus where the comparisons with Stadia are perhaps the most stark. 4A Games' latest gets a reasonable port to the Google streaming service - it's essentially on par in terms of features with the Xbox One X version, but with some performance issues. However, it's locked to 4K resolution at 30 frames per second, with the full 4K output only available to those with high bandwidth connections. While resolution may be limited to 1080p on GeForce Now, running the game at 60fps with enhanced physics, tessellation and stunning real-time ray traced global illumination is an altogether different, preferable experience.

...

Compared to Stadia, there's also more transparency in terms of the hardware performance you're accessing - there's nothing stopping you loading up a game with a benchmark that identifies system components. Doom 2016's performance options told me that it was running on a Tesla P40 GPU - pretty much the top-end Pascal card with 24GB of RAM (!). Meanwhile, the ray-tracing enabled Wolfenstein Youngblood ran on a newer Tesla T10 with 16GB of memory. Nvidia tells me that with the RTX-enabled games, you get the full GPU to yourself

Rest of your post is meaningless, NVIDIA isn't lying, Eurogamer isn't lying about the T10-8 and you can fire up a game on the service and see for yourself. Oh btw, 4K is coming to GeForce Now as well. I'll stick with my original point, this service is a good thing for people who lack the money to buy a new PC. Even if they up the price to $10/mo, that's $120/yr which is far cheaper than a console or PC.

P.S. NVIDIA had over a million people on a waiting list that wanted to get into the service when it was in beta. I suspect this service will be more successful than the ill fated Stadia.
 
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I've put in a few hours this week while on vacation and it works pretty well. One big caveat - I've only tried it with turn based Civ V because I'm on a tablet laying out on the beach outside of the US so that's basically the only option.

Pros:
1. Free 1 hour sessions with periodic reminders that your session is about to end.

2. Holds up pretty well under poor network conditions and not just because the game is turn based. Encoding quality doesn't go completely to shit when latency spikes during gameplay. I've been playing just fine on a mobile hotspot.

Cons:
1. Launching a game is really awkward compared to GameStream or Steam in-home streaming. You first have to add the game to your Geforce Now library using a Mac or PC. You can't do it directly from the Android app which is weird. When you launch the game from Geforce Now it brings up the steam interface for a few seconds before the game starts. At first I thought I needed to click something in Steam but after a few seconds the game starts on its own. Overall very clunky user experience compared to other streaming options.

2. No statistics overlay available to see fps, encoding bitrate, network latency, dropped packets etc. This is a basic requirement for any streaming service.

3. No way to browse all Geforce Now compatible games. There's a search function and a featured games section but I would like to browse the whole list. Also, it should let me login to steam and automatically add all the supported games that I own to the GN library instead of manually adding them one at a time.
 
Just imagine a LAN party with everyone trying using a cloud service...
Nothing short of a 1Gb fiber connection will be able to support that.

Way too many variables out of your control on a cloud service for something like gaming.
What happens if someone else starts a download? We already know that even messes up a regular PC playing an online game sometimes.
What happens if internet goes out? No games at all, while a PC/Console can still play offiline or LAN.
Most peoples cable modems run really hot (including mine), so lets put an even higher load on it...
Sure it could support 1 casual gamer, but what about 3?
 
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I'll give it a shot. It sounds a whole lot less obtuse than Stadia. I'll see how it works on a game like Doom.
 
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