AND THEN...
There are others out there – like Shadow – but the biggest on the upcoming radar has to be Microsoft’s
xCloud, set to start rolling out later this year and currently in closed beta. There isn’t much detail doing
the rounds at the time of writing, but backed by Microsoft’s formidable tech know-how and the Xbox’s
plethora of fantastic games (as well as the fact it looks to be entirely platform agnostic), there’s
real potential here. Tie it in with Game Pass Ultimate, and it could be game
streaming’s killer app. That is unless whatever Amazon’s doing with streaming
blows everything out of the water, of course.
GEFORCE NOW
Nvidia’s GeForce Now has been running in one
form or another since around 2015, but it wasn’t
until February 2020 that it launched in full to
the world. This latest incarnation of the GPU
manufacturer’s game streaming service operates
differently to the others, in that you don’t pick
from a list of games as a part of the service, but
instead bring along your own titles to stream to
systems that wouldn’t otherwise be able to handle
them. It works by linking you through Steam and
Epic Games accounts – your own accounts,
which you have to log in to – and playing through
a virtual PC link via server. While it didn’t result in
me playing Borderlands 3 by accident, it did result
in me playing my game of it, using my own save,
on my smartphone in the living room – and that’s
something to be impressed by.
Requirements to hit 1080p at 60 frames per
second land around the 50mbps mark, but even
with my speedy home connection there were
plenty of hangs, enough stuttering to make
something like Fortnite unplayable at busy times,
and even the odd dropout (in My Time at Portia,
for some reason). When GeForce Now works –
which to be fair isn’t exactly a rarity – it’s more
than acceptable. As long
as you’re not playing
something incredibly
new, with a lot going on
on-screen, it’s going to at
the very least be playable.
The fact that you’re playing your games and saves
can carry between GeForce Now sessions and
those on your home PC is a lovely little bonus, too,
making things feel less disjointed and alien than
they do on something like Stadia.
You do have to pay, though. You really do.
There’s a free tier, and when it does work, you get
an hour playing a game at a decent visual spec
before you’re kicked off – a great feature, no
Works on: PC, Mac, Nvidia Shield, Android
RATING
6 / 10
“GeForce Now is almost
entirely pointless as a
free service”doubt. But the problems arise from the fact you
have to queue, and at the time of writing it seems
the queuing system is bugged – more than once I
sat in a queue to play a game, working down from
a place in the hundreds to the ‘you’re next!’ spot,
only to stay there for over
an hour each time. Paying
the subscription fee skips
the queues (as well as
adding RTX functionality
and extending allowed
playing time), so really – you have to pay.
GeForce Now’s main problems right now are
ones that are out of the company’s
hands, in the form of publishers
removing their available titles from
the platform (Activision, Bethesda),
and another that really needs work:
congestion. That latter aspect
impacts the experience massivelythrough lag and game dropouts, as well as those
gosh-darned eternal queues on the free version,
resulting in something that’s sometimes great,
but just as often not great, and almost entirely
pointless as a free service. The
bring-your-own system is a solid
one, and though Nvidia’s streaming
solution is around five years old
already, there’s still room for it to
grow into something better. For now,
though, it’s not quite there.Price: £7.49/month (free version available) This is Borderlands 3 ‘running’
on an Android smartphone.Fighting the tideInterface
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