Can Nvidia Succeed in Game Streaming?

Video game streaming is a technology nobody has been able to fully tackle. It's a completely different beast from video and audio streaming. It involves streaming high definition content with constant player interaction. Even MMO games with fully dedicated servers struggle under the weight of that crazy traffic. But if anyone is going to take on such a huge task, it may as well be Nvidia.



You may or may not remember Nvidia's Geforce Now service. If you didn't own one of their Shield units, then you pretty much had no reason to. It started off with only a handful of games and could only stream to that device. Nvidia's current plans, however, are much more ambitious.

The company's plans are to offer a wide range of streaming content for PCs everywhere. Among the available games will be current, high end video games with fantastic graphics. The best part of the deal is that you don't even need a powerhouse, gaming PC to run them. The point of streaming the games is that all of that stuff is done off-site. It's the best of all worlds.

Of course, the service is far from free. Since Nvidia is pioneering the first major attempt at streaming games, the price tag is pretty substantial. At the start, the service will be sold as a subscription. $25 will buy gamers 20 hours of gameplay. For better or worse, that price tag seems pretty solid.

If you're interested in how Nvidia can pull this off, you don't have to wait long. The current schedule has them entering into early access sometime in March. So if you're wanting to try it out for yourself, you might want to start putting money aside now.