Nvidia on Thursday announced a new subscriber level for its GeForce Now cloud gaming service called Priority, which will replace the existing paid founders level and include the same benefits such as extended session length and RTX support. The catch: the change comes with a price increase, from a previous subscription of $ 4.99 per month to now $ 9.99 per month for new subscribers. Nvidia will also offer a priority subscription of $ 99.99 per year.
However, those who have had an active membership since yesterday, March 17, will be eligible for the Founders Award for life, says Nvidia, which is a little less than $ 60 a year. The company still plans to offer a free level of GeForce Now as well, but that limits you to a one-hour session length. According to Nvidia, the price increase is meant to represent the platform’s evolution since it was launched in beta form in 2015 and what was called a public testing phase a year ago.
“As GeForce Now enters year two and is rapidly approaching 10 million members, the service is ready to revamp business,” the company said in a statement. ‘GeForce Now was launched in February last year with the founding members of beta – a limited time, promotional plan. On Thursday, founding member companies close near 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 have tried GeForce Now with a Founders subscription but let the subscription lapse may be unhappy to find out that Nvidia does not want to give the $ 4.99 a month price to someone who may have had a paid subscriber was not, even if you let your subscription expire a few days ago. You must have been an active, paying founding member since yesterday, and you must also keep the membership active to continue paying the reduced price. If you cancel, you will lose the promotion forever.
‘Members must be subscribed to the founding membership from 17/03/2021 and keep their membership in a good position to be eligible for the benefit. If you’ve been a founding member before, but have been downgraded, you’re unfortunately not eligible, ‘an Nvidia spokesman explained to The edge.
To its credit, Nvidia has for some time now no longer sold monthly memberships, but a six-month promotional bundle for $ 24.99. This makes it less likely that someone who has signed up in the past few months will not be eligible for the prize benefit for the founders.
Nvidia plans to continue investing in the platform as it has been successful with around 10 million members in the otherwise struggling cloud scene. Recently, Google closed its own game development studios to create titles for its Stadia service, while Amazon’s Luna platform remains in beta.
GeForce Now differs from the platforms by allowing members to stream games they have already purchased from Epic, Steam and other digital distributors. The launch of the service’s paid level last year was bumpy after sensational publishers such as Activision Blizzard and 2K Games pulled their libraries. The dispute was caused by Nvidia streaming the companies’ games without explicit permission.
Since then, Nvidia has switched to an opt-in model to place friendly terms for gamers on the platform, a strategy that is bearing fruit as Nvidia has added about 10 new games to the platform each week. The company now has a complete list of supported titles on its website, a welcome addition to the rocky license expiration of last spring.
Nvidia says the technology will improve over time, while the new GFN Thursday game will jump aboard ten new titles a week to 15 by the end of the year. GeForce Now will support Adaptive Vsync later this month, which “synchronizes frame rates on 60 or 59.94 Hz servers to match the on-screen client side, reducing stuttering and latency on supported games,” the company explains. Nvidia says it is also releasing a “new adaptable de-jitter technology” to increase the bit rate for games streaming over slower networks. (However, Nvidia could not provide a timeline for when the platform will support 4K streaming if requested.)
Other benefits soon to be available include linking accounts for games with platform-to-platform support and improving the preload to halve loading times, both of which come in the next one to two months. Nvidia says it will also add the capacity of data centers in Phoenix, Arizona, and later this year bring its first Canadian data center in Montreal online, both of which will help reduce latency.
As for the company’s iOS beta, which was launched in November, Nvidia did not have much new to share. But a company spokesman said that “all previously announced projects are still in collaboration with the Epic team on the roadmap”, referring to the ongoing work to bring Epic’s. Fortnite back to the iPhone and iPad via GeForce Now on the mobile web after being banned by Apple and Google last year.