GeForce Now could be a game-changer for South African gamers desperate to play the latest popular titles without an expensive gaming PC or console. Instead of relying on local processing power, a graphics card, and storage to run a game, cloud gaming services use a dedicated gaming server in the cloud.
In South Africa, Nvidia has partnered with Rain for its local server rollout. Once they were signed up, they downloaded the GeForce Now app and linked the supported game libraries — Steam, Epic Games, and Ubisoft. GeForce Now already supports over 1,500 games, with more added weekly.
So, very interesting to see that this actually works quite well from a technical perspective.
What remains really is cost. The beta cost is an absolute no-brainer in terms of good value, but the final SA Price has not been announced. The US is paying $9 (R165) per month for a better graphics card.
But this also needs to be seen in context with these three issues:
- A higher -end gaming rig (which needs to be upgraded, say every 6 years) can be pretty expensive.
- I often buy a game and play it for only a shortish while. Then I’d need to buy a different game. There is one game I do play over 2+ years, but I don’t even play it every single month. NOTE: Seems you do have to still actually buy the game yourself, so the GeForce Now service gets you the hardware card.
- If it is a per-month subscription and not a mandatory 12-months say, you can play for two months and then stop for a month or two.
The game actually plays in a browser and I see, from the ArchWiki titled GeForce Now, that it may well play under Linux too. This may allow access to Windows-only games that don’t even run properly under Proton on Linux. The MyBroadband test though appeared to be using a GeForce Now app which I think is Windows only.