![]() ![]() Still, it must be said that streaming PC games through GeForce Now is likely to be a better experience than if Xbox offered up its own PC cloud gaming. That's $20-$30 per month to stream games you don't own, an odd pitch for a game enthusiast. ![]() You'd also need a really good Internet connection, on the order of 35-45Mbps and less than 40 ms latency to Nvidia's servers. Then you'd need a PC Game Pass subscription, which is $10 per month. That's $10 or $20 per month, depending on how much priority access and horsepower you want. First, you'd need a GeForce Now subscription unless Nvidia makes Game Pass accessible through its free, one-hour-limited tier, which is unlikely. ![]() The other is the configuration one would need to use this offering. (We've emailed Nvidia and Microsoft for details on "select" and other particulars.) "Select" could mean "as many games as we feel necessary to continue this hearts-and-minds campaign." It is, in any case, likely to be short of the 442 games currently in the PC Game Pass library. One is the word "select," as in the announcement's wording that "Game Pass members will soon be able to stream select PC games from the library through Nvidia GeForce NOW." "Select" could mean only those games that perform well while streaming or only those games already provably streaming from other storefronts. By offering Game Pass' PC games collection to people who might not even have a Windows PC, let alone an Xbox, Microsoft could be seen as signaling, in a slightly different key, that it really, truly does not intend to become a monolithic $10-$15 per month requirement for modern gaming.īut there are two big caveats to this offering. Game Pass is Microsoft's all-in-one subscription that lets customers install, play, or stream a buffet of AAA and indie games. Game Pass is different from the Xbox library or store, however. Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith said in both a statement and a Wall Street Journal interview that these deals were partly based on countering the perception that Microsoft would get Call of Duty from the deal and lock it into Game Pass. Microsoft in March announced a similar library deal with Boosteroid, a cloud-gaming service more popular in Europe. That deal, announced in February shortly after a separate 10-year agreement to offer Call of Duty games on Nintendo hardware, said that work would begin "immediately" on bringing Microsoft's Xbox PC game library and first-party titles purchased in other stores, like Steam, to GeForce Now. ![]() Microsoft had previously signed a 10-year commitment to bringing Xbox library games to Nvidia's GeForce Now game-streaming service. Microsoft's opening up of its PC Game Pass library to GeForce Now is predicated on countering the notion that its ownership of game studios, gaming hardware, and a cloud gaming/subscription service (let alone desktop gaming's most popular operating system) constitutes an unfair vertical monopoly, especially in cloud gaming.Īcquiring Activision Blizzard, the UK Competition and Markets Authority wrote in April, would result in "a substantial lessening of competition" in that country's cloud-gaming offerings, and Microsoft would likely "find it commercially beneficial to make Activision’s titles exclusive to its own cloud gaming service," the Authority wrote. The shortest, most context-free version of it is that some Game Pass games for PC will soon be available to stream through Nvidia's GeForce Now if you happen to subscribe to both services.īut most anyone following the company's quest to acquire Activision Blizzard, currently stalled by UK regulators, can see it as a transparent maneuver in Microsoft's continuing charm campaign. There's a lot to unpack inside the game-streaming news from Microsoft's Xbox event over the weekend. ![]()
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