GeForce Now has become one of the most successful cloud gaming services currently available with one million new players since its beta.
Nvidia's GeForce Now has been a massive success as a cloud gaming platform , offsetting the largely-disappointing competitor Google Stadia. | Source:
GeForce Now is one of the few game streaming services which is easily accessible for everyone. It turns out, that might be the key to success. Since the service left beta over a million new players have joined the service.
The success of GeForce Now is a good sign for the future of cloud gaming. Clearly, if you provide a decent service and make it easy to access, people want to use it.
Part of the reason that GeForce Now has been so successful is the way it works. Instead of requiring you to re-buy games on a proprietary platform, it works based on games you already own on Steam.
Right now, the service is free too. Although it is unlikely to stay that way. It does give people to try the service out before they buy. It allows early adopters to have confidence in the platform, something which services like Google Stadia severely lack.
GeForce Now also has a really low barrier to entry. Almost everyone will have a phone or computer capable of running the service. Project xCloud currently requires you to gain access to the beta, and Stadia requires you to buy into the founder’s package to try it out.
A not-so-hidden secret of the games industry is that companies like to copy each other. That’s why back when Call of Duty become gaming’s most successful franchise, everyone started trying to make the COD.
Since that’s the case anyway, hopefully, other companies will use GeForce Now as a model for their own cloud gaming services. Allowing users to have access to games they already paid for is certainly the best way to run this sort of service in the future.
No matter what the future holds, I choose to take the success of GeForce Now as a good sign. Personally, I’ve been enjoying the service. It’s given me more time to play games when I normally wouldn’t have been able too, and more gaming is (almost) always a good thing.