Cloud gaming has always intrigued me. Getting access to my favorite games on almost any device, at any time, without hardware limitations is a fascinating proposition that felt too good to be true. So, when I saw GeForce Now finally being made available in my region, I had to join in right away. On the surface, it’s an excellent concept: you pay a small monthly fee and get access to your own games from your Steam, Epic Games, or Xbox library, on any device that can connect to the internet.
Initially, I had a great time using GeForce Now, so much so that I ended up subscribing to the “Ultimate” tier. However, after about a month, the cracks started surfacing.
While I do think cloud gaming is the inevitable future of gaming, Nvidia’s GeForce Now isn’t the way to go about it.
Nvidia GeForce Now offers a lot
But at a price and with multiple caveats
On paper, Nvidia GeForce Now is an excellent way to sink your teeth into the cloud gaming ecosystem. It’s essentially giving you access to a mid-spec PC for a small monthly fee, without any restrictions on which games you want to play. Unlike Google’s failed attempt at cloud gaming, Stadia, you don’t have to buy your games from scratch on GeForce Now. Instead, you can simply carry over your entire Steam or Epic Games library to play whatever you want.
And if you want even more power, higher subscription tiers give you access to high-end PCs equipped with the latest RTX GPUs. Sounds neat, right? Well, in theory, it’s a really great service.
However, when it comes to actually playing your games using the service, it’s a completely different story. From input delays to long queue times, my time with GeForce Now left me with a sour taste in my mouth. GeForce Now has three different subscription tiers:
|
Tier |
Monthly Subscription Price |
Ad-supported |
Maximum Resolution and Frame Rate Targets |
Gaming Sessions |
Priority Queue |
CPU and DRAM |
Access to Nvidia RTX GPUs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Free |
Free |
Yes |
1080p at 60FPS |
1-hour sessions |
No |
4-core vCPUs and 16 GB DRAM |
No |
|
Performance |
$9.99 per month |
No |
1440p at 60FPS |
6-hour sessions |
Yes |
8-core vCPUs and 28 GB DRAM |
Yes |
|
Ultimate |
$19.99 |
No |
5K at 360FPS |
8-hour sessions |
Yes |
16-core vCPUs and 56 GB DRAM |
Yes |
Following the closed beta test, I immediately signed up for the $9.99 tier. It essentially allowed me to play games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Street Fighter 6 on my work laptop, which is an old ASUS Vivobook. For the first month, I actually had a lot of fun using GeForce Now, especially on my old Steam Deck. In fact, I ended up spending most of my gaming time on this service, instead of, well, my actual gaming rig.
However, after the first month, it all just went downhill. Firstly, there were lengthy queue times, yes, even on the paid “Performance” tier, which promises “less than a minute of wait” between sessions.
And to my surprise, the Ultimate tier wasn’t faring any better. Just to test it out, I even upgraded my plan to Ultimate, and still had to wait for roughly 10 minutes before I could play The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered or Monster Hunter Wilds. Long queue times aren’t unusual for cloud gaming services.
However, when I’m paying a premium that promises minimal (if not non-existent) waiting between sessions, having to wait 10 to 15 minutes is unacceptable.
Furthermore, even when I finally got to playing my games, it never felt like I was using a premium cloud gaming service. On the Performance and Ultimate tiers, the visuals certainly looked impressive, but only when they worked. Most of the time, the streaming quality is somewhere between 1080p and 1440p, which never felt good to look at.
Additionally, regardless of whether I’m using the good ol’ keyboard and mouse or a controller, there’s always an input delay. Weirdly enough, the streaming issues only occur when I’m using my laptop for GeForce Now.
For its price, GeForce Now has too many caveats for me to use it as my daily driver for gaming.
On my PC, which is a much more powerful system and on the same network as my Vivobook, the streaming hitches are less frequent, with the resolution mostly staying locked to 1440p. This makes me think GeForce Now is very hardware-dependent, even when it’s simply streaming your games from a data center.
And then there’s the limitation of which games you can actually play. While Nvidia claims that GeForce Now supports most major releases of the last 4–5 years, the list is actually fairly limited. Most games supported by GeForce Now are free-to-play titles that, surprisingly, you can also play on your mobile phone.
The catalog is limited to games that explicitly support Nvidia’s tech. For instance, while you can play niche titles like Lost Ark or Path of Exile, you’re out of luck if you want to play any FromSoftware titles, whether it’s Dark Souls or Elden Ring.
There are better alternatives to GeForce Now
Cheaper cloud gaming options that are worth a shot
While my time with GeForce Now hasn’t been that great, that doesn’t mean it’s not a decent service. When it works as intended, GeForce Now is perhaps one of the best cloud gaming services out there for its price. Unfortunately, most often than not, GeForce Now does not work as you would want it to. And you’re left with a monthly subscription service that still hits you with long queue times, limited playtime, and an inconsistent streaming experience.
Thankfully, there are some rather compelling alternatives to GeForce Now that you can try right now.
|
Cloud Gaming Service |
Monthly Subscription Pricing |
Subscription Add-on |
Games Catalog |
Supported Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Xbox Cloud Gaming |
$23.99 (Xbox Game Pass Ultimate/PC) |
No |
Xbox Library and Game Pass catalogs available. |
Windows, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and mobile. |
|
Amazon Luna |
Included with Amazon Prime subscription |
Premium tier add-on for $9.99 |
Small catalog of games, including Triple-A and select indie titles. |
Windows and mobile. |
|
Boosteroid |
$16.89 for the Ultra tier |
Ultra Pro upgrade available at $74.89 (for 6 months) or $134.89 (for 12 months) |
Select Triple-A titles and free-to-play games available from the user’s own Steam library. |
Windows, Linux, Tizen, WebOS, and mobile. |
Now, all these services do have their caveats, be it a limited library of games or a more expensive subscription tier. However, they are also the best alternatives to GeForce Now available on the market. In my experience, I found Xbox Cloud Gaming to be a much better option for all my cloud gaming requirements over GeForce Now.
It lets me stream my Xbox library as well as the latest Game Pass catalog of titles, without having to worry about latency or streaming quality.
Cloud gaming is an alternative, not a replacement
As someone who grew up playing games on his PC, cloud gaming has never really piqued my interest beyond its technological implications. It’s a really novel idea to let people enjoy their games regardless of hardware boundaries. And with the current market situation of PC components and even consoles, cloud gaming seems to be a superb alternative for players who cannot afford a dedicated gaming rig, just yet.
With that being said, cloud gaming is still very much in its infancy. And as such, I don’t think it’s going to replace traditional PC or console gaming any time soon.
Services like GeForce Now and Xbox Cloud are great options to have as “alternatives.” To me, cloud gaming is the option that I can rely on if I’m traveling and don’t want to carry my handheld PCs or consoles. However, it’s never going to replace my dedicated gaming PC or even the Nintendo Switch 2, for that matter.
There’s a certain charm to “owning” the system where you game, and cloud gaming, regardless of its many advantages, can never give you the satisfaction of that.