NVIDIA’s GRID Service Becomes GeForce NOW, Launching October 1 For $8/month

The moment many NVIDIA SHIELD owners have been waiting for has arrived: we now have a launch date for NVIDIA’s GRID game-streaming service. Or rather, “GeForce NOW” game-streaming service, as it’s now going to be called. After spending more than a year in beta testing, and nearly two years after its announcement, NVIDIA has pegged October 1 as the launch date for its much-hyped service.

It might seem a bit odd that this launch date has taken so long to arrive, given that the service has been stable for quite some time, but it’s clear that NVIDIA had a lot of work to do to bring us to this point. At the forefront, it had to make sure its infrastructure was up to snuff to deal with the workload, and of course, agreements have had to be made with various game publishers. As it stands today, GeForce NOW offers access to 50 games, but as time goes on, that number will continue to rise.

Alongside the general GeForce NOW announcement today, NVIDIA has teased that three top-rate titles are en route to the service: Mad Max, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and Batman: Arkham Origins.

For quite some time, NVIDIA has said that it wants to emulate what services like Netflix and Spotify offer consumers, and based on personal experience, I think it’s done a great job on delivering a compelling streaming service with GeForce NOW. Given the name-drop of those companies, it seemed like we’d be seeing a $9.99/mo price tag for the subscription, but instead, it’s actually $7.99/mo. That’s not bad at all given the large collection of games available – one that will continue to grow.

Better still, NVIDIA will provide the first three months for free.

What will be interesting to see is how long certain titles last on the service. It’s no secret that Netflix has to regularly cull titles from its service as agreements expire, and given we saw the same thing happen with at least one title in GeForce NOW during its beta period, there’s little doubt it will happen again. What we hope to see in situations like this is NVIDIA giving a heads-up about the expiring contract so that the user could make an effort to complete the game before it disappears. Ideally, this information would be easy to find; with Netflix, it isn’t.

It’s worth noting that overall, games streamed through GeForce NOW are likely to be of a higher quality than games played on current-gen game consoles – thanks both to the fact that GRID servers use beefier GPUs, and the service itself allows gamers to run all of the titles at 1080p and at 60 FPS. You might not get the crispness that comes with native gameplay, but sitting back from the television should negate that side-effect.

It’s also worth noting that any game streamed through the service can be purchased, and if you do go that route, you’ll be given a key to activate the game on Steam, in case you do want to go with the native version (even if it means streaming it from your GeForce-equipped PC to a SHIELD.)

It’s great to see the GeForce NOW service finally be set for a launch, and I look forward to taking the officially official version for a spin when it launches on the 1st.