Typical capitalism. At least there are other competitors. I hope AMD and Intel can take advantage of this news and undercut Nvidia maybe.
Nono, they raise prices with parity such that they’re still technically minimally cheaper.
That being said, I don’t think AMD and Intel have similar game streaming services. It’s pretty much GeForce Now and Xbox Cloud streaming as the big dogs.
Do we need cloud streaming? Honestly.
Do we need gaming?
It’s not a need thing, it’s just more options for people that want it.
Options are great, but generally speaking companies tend to sunset options that are less profitable, regardless if it provides a better experience.
Case in point, once movie and TV streaming got popular, selling that content in physical or even digital form died off but it didn’t die completely. Plenty of people still like to own the media they pay for, plenty of people still like physical media collections that can never, ever be taken away when a server gets shut down. Having that option is great, too.
But it’s a less profitable option. So, to spite what some want, certain content is just streaming only now, while the prices rise. And that’s the new world we allowed ourselves to be shepherded into. While we were blinded by convenience, they discreetly shut the door behind us, and now there’s no going back (without piracy).
So yes, game streaming itself is a great option to have for many. That’s not the problem.
The trajectory is the problem.
It’s also worth pointing out any direction that furthers our dependence on the ISPs not being awful is asking for trouble. For example, remember when Charter was allowed to acquire Time Warner Cable and become Spectrum? They promised regulators they would not impose bandwidth caps for 7 years, and as of today it’s been 7 years and 30, days.
Do we need it? I’m not sure, but I am sure that all things cloud is an inevitability.
Going from dumb terminals to beefy individual networked computers and back a few times was a thing for a while and eventually it has settled into a use case specific balance because it is a balance between costs of centralizing the computing, networking, and people managing both. Throw networking connection issues for many locations and it is clear that everything cloud doesn’t work for everything.
Centralized gaming has already shown the same complexities and can never be fully put into the cloud even if that will work for a large portion of games and uses.
10 years from now, at an Applzonooglsoft Developers Conference: the new cloud… is YOU!
crowd gasps and then immediately is turned into fluffy little floating data center server racks
You: I FORETOLD THIS DAY!
And they told in communism you will not have anything
It’s a good option for people who don’t want to maintain a pc or want their game installs and updates to be instantaneous. You can play anywhere you have decent wifi so it’s kind of like having both a steam deck and a desktop pc, and probably cheaper than maintaining and upgrading both
If you only use beefy computers for gaming the subscription seems very reasonable actually.
You pay for the internet anyway. Geforce now monthly sub costing 9$ a month it will take 16 years for you to spend a total of 1800$ the price of a good gaming computer. It is enough years for tech to improve significantly that the computer if you had brought it would have been obsolete by then
Nein! - Doch! - Ohh!
Of course a new service only stays cheap until they reached critical mass. Same with gamepass and every subscription services. That’s why I try to subscribe to as little as possible. Oh, btw Netflix does again increase prices too.
100usd for ad free youtube 2034
People in this sub were insisting YouTube should be a subscription service (hilariously, “from launch”) in the YouTube ad-blocker thread lol
*250 USDT ftfy
Per week
subscriptions == Corpo tax for the plebs
Price increases seem inevitable for any service where a company licenses content to stream to customers. GeForce Now is going to be in a constant cycle of content agreements expiring and creators wanting more money, that extra cost gets passed on to customers. Contrast that with just buying a game, buy it once and you’re done (generally.)
I don’t use the service, but I believe you bring and install your own games. They’re just offering a remote computer.
At least, last I checked.
I believe back when it was in beta a good few years ago, it was a remote PC, but now it’s only whatever games are on the service, with more added about every week via licensing them. You do, however, bring your own games, that part is right, just you can only play the ones you own that are licensed to be run on it.
That would have changed within the last 6 months then, we had it then and as far as I know it was just a remote pc
its been like that for a good while now, I remember when I first tried geforce now playing cod 2019, then at work I wanted to setup my classes during lunch and it was gone, turned out blizzard/activision got mad that nvidia was letting people play their game even though you had to own the game so they pulled it off the service
Back when it was free for shield users, it was game streaming
Now I just get ads on my shield for a bunch of new releases I can buy for streaming on it
Gamestream (remote pc) was something else but I guess it’s incorporated into it now
Ah I didn’t understand that. That’s almost worse though, that’s buying the game and then paying to play it.
I haven’t done the math, but I’m actually not sure what’s more expensive: Maintaining a performant desktop PC, including paying power bills, or subscribing to GeForce Now. PC parts and electricity are both pretty expensive in my country.
I’m pretty happy with the service. Can play Cyberpunk at 4k, 120 fps on a Mac Mini without noticeable lag. Only major problem is the limited amount of games supported.
Owning a computer, especially if a desktop, makes more sense, in my understanding.
In my country, a gaming laptop is about €2500, while a decent gaming desktop starting on the €800.
Even when factoring in the energy, unless running a 1KW+ machine, 7 days a week, non stop, it still makes sense. You have your data in your machine, in your home.
These machines are a bit above decent, though. Nvidia claims gtx 4080-equivalent performance on their subscription ‘ultimate’ tier. Those cards alone start at the equivalent of around 1400 euros in my country (Denmark). You’d still need CPU, motherboard, storage, ram and PSU. I’m not sure exactly how the ‘ultimate’ servers perform in benchmarks, though. I hear their processors are relatively underpowered.
A top of the line gaming desktop here (Hello from Portugal!) and I do mean top of the line, competitive esports gaming, will cost about €3000.
But when you decompose the machine, a good deal of money goes towards fluff like rgb, rgb components, glass panel box, etc - yes, I’m judging here - that if swapped out for non flashy items can shave off €200 or more off the top.
Plus, a gaming desktop can be assembled incrementally and will usually last longer and components can be used from one machine to the next.
Given you are playing for entertainment and not prpfessionally, a machine can give you years of joy.
Sure, I get that. Also, you’ll still need some sort of machine in your home to handle the streamning. And if you want to enjoy that 4k 120 fps, you’ll need a monitor with at least those capabilities, as well as other peripherals. I came from an older gaming PC with a 1080 and a 4 year old Kabylake processor that MS decided wouldn’t officially be supported for their latest OS anymore. Jumped on the Apple Sillicon-wagon with the Mini M1. For now, streaming works out well.
Guess the cost tradeoff depends on how much you play and how updated you keep your PC. My PC can’t play Cyberpunk at 4k 120fps. You must have good Internet though.
I have personally done the math for myself, and it is ultimately cheaper to subscribe to the middle tier of GFN. That was before any price hikes though, I am yet to pay or calculate the new prices, not sure when they start, but I am fairly sure it’s still cheaper at least here where I live.
In addition, it relieves a lot of stress and time spent on buying, fetching, installing and changing the thermal pastes and keeping it clean etc, as well as doesn’t contribute to the already barely tolerable heat in the summer, which high-end GPUs tend to do under stress.
All around it’s much more convenient for me, since I only need those high-end specs for gaming, and have a good light laptop setup for work and other uses.
But YMMV, of course.
Edit: We do have very affordable and fast internet here though, so that’s probably a thing not available everywhere, which would make this much less convenient. In my country, it’s not a concern even traveling.
You can still play it on any computer you own. You just login with your steam account.
It’s renting a computer but it doesn’t actually work like that since shitty publishers can get force them to not allow you to download your bought games on rented computers.
I still support buying a decent graphics card and a game rather than paying a subscription while also buying the game. Their basic plans costs 10 euro per month which is 240 euro for 2 years which is average cost for a decent gaming card. And best part is you own it. You can get NVIDIA 3060 for that amount. Which is amazing card.
A 3060 is only 240 euro?
You can get them for $399 here in Canada which converts to 276 euro. Seems reasonable they might be able to find one for 240 in their region.
Got the 12GB one for 200€ last week for my gf.
I would rather get rx 6650 xt for gaming primarily. Don’t know about RTX 4000 series or RX 7000 series though.
7900xtx all the way
Totally different price class.
Geforce Now is not at all about cost to me. I use GeForce Now because it allows me to play on my laptop, tablet, phone or TV anywhere I have an internet connection. I don’t have or want a desktop, and prefer to have a thin and light laptop for travel rather than a gaming laptop.
Buy the hardware so you can offset the costs by pirating all the games
Two years of subscription buys a ps5 or a steamdeck, if one want the “easy” experience
89kr/month for Denmark. That’s 2136DKK for 2 years of continuous service. The cheapest RTX 3060 right now is 2199DKK. But guess what? I don’t have a tower pc. So I would need a CPU, memory, storage, case, PSU. I won’t bother putting together a system but if I search the web budget builds are set for around 800USD atm. That’d be around 5600DKK or more than 5 years of GeForce Now. Tbh I think it’s not a bad deal.
Besides, as a casual gamer I keep cancelling the service when I don’t need it. Right now I’m signed up because I enjoy starfield. I’ll probably unsubscribe when I’m done with that. Or at least over Christmas because I know I won’t have time to game.
Plus I love the flexibility of streaming to my TV, tablet, phone, laptop.
My biggest problem is that it’s neither possible to pirate games nor mod them. Shadow is the solution for that but it’s too expensive IMO.
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Its never enough. Its called unlimited growth. Its why most of us aren’t going to live until our natural death age, but will likely perish due to environmental factors like extreme weather, plague, famine, etc. Its gonna start sucking at around 3C.
Man everybody’s hiking up prices. Where’s the money gonna come from to pay these, though? Considering thanks to inflation a lot of us have to use that money for more important things like… food.
But line has to go up
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What a dumb article title
Their 6.2b profit wasn’t from GeForce Now, it was from their overpriced GPU’s.
Products are priced based on their cost/value, not the companies overall profit margins
And game streaming is such a profitable market segment too. I mean look at how well Stadia is doing.
They failed because no one could trust them. I never bought into it at all because I knew one day they’d shut it down, and they did.
Google ruined their reputation, and people are going to have a tough time buying into anything they release. I really only buy their phones and use their services that I am not tied into, such as YouTube, Maps, Translate, etc. All of their services where I am buying things, or hosting my data, I jumped shipped a couple years ago.
I mean shit, I bought their Google WiFi and they just straight up fucked all their users and released their Nest WiFi, pretending the Google WiFi doesn’t exist.
Most normal users don’t view Google like this,
I work retail and customers don’t think this thoroughly about Google or any other brands really
Pretty much everyone I know refuses to buy into anything Google releases now. Not because they are tired of losing money or support, but they hate having to try and move their stuff over to a different service.
The average user won’t care about firmware updates or that they lost a few bucks, but they hate when they need to figure out how to move their music over to Spotify or lose the ability to cloud print.
Products are priced based on their cost/value
Ah, yes and the world is full of rational actors with perfect information.
“Products are priced based on their cost/value, not the companies overall profit margins”
It doesn’t take much to observe that this is just incorrect.
That’s how it’s supposed to work, and they teach that in your Intro to Economics course, but in reality it just doesn’t work that way.
It does, it’s just that the “value” gets fucked and manipulated in ways that are bad for the consumer
