New Delhi: Nvidia has introduced its GeForce Now cloud gaming service in India today. Here is our first impressions of the service. An internet connection
with at least 50 mbps is recommended for streaming games at 4K resolution, and 60 fps or better quality. Nvidia recommends using an ethernet connection for stability, or a router with at least a 5 GHz WiFi connection. The client on Windows conducts its own check of the internet connection, and alerts you if the connection quality is insufficient for a great experience, but you can choose to continue past this prompt.
The included network analyser does a great job of telling you what exactly degrades the experience on your connection. It is not always speed. (Image Credit: In-app screenshot on PC).
The servers are local, and hosted in Mumbai, with GeForce RTX 5080 SuperPODs, which are the latest and greatest Blackwell generation SuperPODs, 35 per cent faster than the previous generation, with double the system memory. Now Nvidia is just offering the video streaming as the service. While you can directly jump into a bunch of free to play titles and demos, the value of the service is in providing access to your gaming library on any device. No matter which platform you prefer, Ubisoft, Epic, Xbox or Steam, Nvidia allows you to sync games. Fortnite is available from Epic. At launch, there are over 4,000 titles including Xbox Game Pass games, along with AAA new releases.
Jump right into the game
There are Ready to Play games available on the service, as well as Install to Play, that will use up your cloud storage quota. What seems unreal about the service is that you can directly fire up the Ready to Play titles. This feels almost magical, that you can get such a cinematic quality streaming so quickly after launching a game. Starting up a new game does not feel any slower than launching a local game, which is one of the strong points that GeForce Now has over its competition, where the games take a long time to load, at times over 10 minutes.
The streaming quality is cinematic. (Image Credit: Aditya Madanapalle).
The service essentially provides you with an experience similar to running a game on a local RTX 5080 card at 100 mbps. Some games also support the Nvidia Reflex technology that reduces choppiness and micro-stutters, as well as latency for competitive shooters. DLSS is also supported for some titles, with Nvidia working on a whole bunch of behind-the-scenes tech to ensure a superlative gaming experience. Once you link up your accounts, which we did for Ubisoft, Steam and Xbox, most, if not all of your library will be available through the GeForce Now service.
The GeForce Now Experience
We really enjoyed the selection of instant-play demos and free to play titles available. If you just want to game for some time, these are great to jump right into the action and try out some new titles. When installing a Free to Play title, you get to select which third party service you want to get it on, such as Xbox or Epic, if multiple options are available. One thing that we were apprehensive about, was how GeForce Now would handle save games. We already have too many different versions of Burnout Paradise, for example. We tried out No Man’s Sky, a title that we owned on Xbox.
The quality is outstanding. (Image Credit: In-game screenshot on PC).
One thing that really, really surprised us was how rapidly the game loaded, indicating that this was one of the 2000+ Ready to Play titles on the platform. Then the best thing is that this was not a fresh install, my save game was right there, and I could continue gaming from where I had left off. This is incredibly powerful, as I do not have to spend time installing a game on a new machine, and can just dive into gaming when I get the time. DOOM Eternal has support for RTX, with GeForce Now indicating the supported features when you try out the game. For example, DOTA 2 supports Reflex. It is so exciting and powerful to play familiar games with settings maxed out, so you feel like you own a much better machine than you do.
We are pretty sure that the game loaded faster on the cloud service than natively. (Image Credit: In-app screenshot on PC).
The experience was similarly great for an indie car parkour Steam title called Distance that we also tried. We were trying to see that this indie title was supported for instant play, and it was. This is actually something that the developers themselves can do, by opting in for Steam Cloud Play support for their titles. There is an Install option for games that cannot be played instantly. We found some adjustments and drops in resolution while starting the LEGO Brick Tales demo, and just a bit of stuttering, once while moving the mouse very rapidly in No Man’s Sky. These are small niggles that we experienced in over six hours of gameplay, and most people would not notice these, we were specifically watching out for such snags. For the most part, the service is reliable, beautiful, fast and responsive. We really liked how rapidly the games load, which we feel is a big edge for the service. Watch out for our comprehensive review in a few days.
