Nvidia on Thursday announced a new subscription tier for its GeForce Now cloud gaming service called Priority, which will replace its existing paid Founders tier and contain the same benefits, such as extended session length and RTX support. The problem: the move will come with a price increase, from what used to be a $ 4.99 per month subscription to what will now be $ 9.99 a month for new subscribers. Nvidia will also begin offering a $ 99.99 a year Priority subscription.
However, those who had active memberships until yesterday, March 17, will be eligible for the Lifetime Founders price, says Nvidia, which comes out to just under $ 60 a year. The company still plans to offer a free GeForce Now tier, too, but that tier restricts the duration of a one-hour session. Nvidia says the price increase is intended to represent the evolution of the platform since it launched in beta in 2015 and entered what Nvidia called the public test phase a year ago.
“As GeForce Now enters its second year and quickly approaches 10 million members, the service is ready to make a jump on things,” the company said in a statement. “GeForce Now was launched out of beta last February with Founders members – a limited time promotional plan. On Thursday, Founders memberships will close with new registrations and Priority memberships, the new premium offering, will be introduced. ”
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22378196/gfn_product_matrix_monthly.jpg)
Image: Nvidia
Those who tried GeForce Now with a Founders subscription, but let the subscription expire, may be unhappy to discover that Nvidia does not intend to price $ 4.99 a month to anyone who may have been a paying subscriber in the recent past. , even if you let your subscription expire a few days ago. You need to have been an active and paying founding member until yesterday, and you also need to keep the membership active to continue paying the reduced price. If you cancel, you will lose the promotion forever.
“Members must be members of Founders as of 3/17/2021 and keep them in good standing to be eligible for the benefit. If you were a founding member but had a downgrade, unfortunately you are not eligible, ”clarified an Nvidia spokesman for The Verge.
To its credit, Nvidia hasn’t sold monthly subscriptions in a while, instead selling a six-month promotional package for $ 24.99. This makes it less likely that someone who has signed up at any time in the past few months will become ineligible for this Founders price benefit.
Nvidia intends to continue increasing its investment in the platform, as it has proved to be quite successful, with around 10 million members, in the otherwise difficult game cloud scenario. More recently, Google closed its internal game development studios by creating titles for its Stadia service, while Amazon’s Luna platform remains in beta.
GeForce Now differs from these platforms by allowing members to stream games they have already purchased from Epic, Steam and other digital distributors via the cloud. The launch of the paid service last year was turbulent after high-profile publishers like Activision Blizzard and 2K Games removed their libraries, the dispute caused by Nvidia streaming games from these companies without explicit permission.
Since then, Nvidia has switched to an optional model to attract game makers to the platform in more user-friendly terms, a strategy that paid off as Nvidia added about 10 new games to the platform every week. The company now has a complete list of supported titles on its website, a welcome addition after last spring’s drop in licensing.
Nvidia says the technology will continue to improve over time, while the integration of its new game “GFN Thursday” will jump from 10 new titles added per week to 15 by the end of the year. GeForce Now will also have support for Adaptive Vsync later this month, which “synchronizes frame rates at 60 or 59.94 Hz on the server side to match the client side of the screen, reducing stuttering and latency in supported games,” he explains. the company. Nvidia says it is also launching “new adaptive de-jitter technology” to increase bit rates for games broadcast over slower networks. (Nvidia was unable, however, to provide a timeline for when the platform will support 4K streaming, when requested.)
Other benefits will soon include linking accounts for games with multiplatform support and improvements to preload to cut loading time in half, both coming in the next one to two months. Nvidia says it is also increasing data center capacity in Phoenix, Arizona, as well as putting its first Canadian data center in Montreal online later this year, both helping to reduce waiting times.
As for the company’s iOS beta, which launched in November, Nvidia didn’t have much news to share. But a company spokesman said that “all previously announced projects remain on the roadmap in collaboration with the Epic team”, referring to the work in progress to bring Epic’s Fifteen days back to the iPhone and iPad via GeForce Now on the mobile web after being banned by Apple and Google last summer.