The gaming industry is constantly evolving and improving its technology to give gamers the opportunity to reach new heights, experience new things, and just enjoy the games they love. One of the most interesting advancements in gaming is cloud gaming, a service that allows people without the necessary hardware to stream their games online, through the Internet. A service that is climbing the ranks and broadening the possibilities of cloud gaming is GeForce Now, Nvidia’s cloud gaming service. Nvidia has a variety of servers in Europe and North America, where users can enjoy streaming their games in up to 4K, with the right connection. We’re going to dive into some GeForce Now statistics to see how many people use it and where it is going in the future. This is exciting because, as it stands, cloud gaming is making a huge contribution to the size of the video game industry.
GeForce Now key stats
GeForce Now wasn’t always called that, as it launched in 2013 under the name of Nvidia Grid. Back then, it was just an idea and has evolved into what it is today. There are a lot of complications that can arise when trying to make cloud gaming work, but Nvidia has passed all of those hurdles. This section will focus on all of the relevant stats regarding the service, from total users to milestones passed.
GeForce Now has over 25 million registered users.
(Sources: VentureBeat, CNET, Nvidia, PC Mag, TheGamer)
- The beta phase for GeForce Now had 300,000 users, with another 1 million on the waiting list.
- The service crossed 1 million registered users in February 2020.
- By April 2021, GeForce Now had reached 10 million subscribers.
- By August 2022, GeForce now had reached 20 million subscribers.
- It’s important to note that GeForce Now also has a free tier for use, suggesting that there are many more users than specified.
As we can see from these numbers, the growth of GeForce Now has been steady and has climbed quite high, attracting over 25 million users and more are joining day by day. The original hype for the service was evident during its launch period when there were over 1 million people just waiting to be accepted into the beta period.
You can play games in your car using GeForce Now.
(Source: VentureBeat)
- The cars that support GeForce Now come from Hyundai, BYD, and Polestar.
- Nvidia signed a contract with Foxconn to provide components for electric vehicles produced by the latter.
- The logistics behind how the network is supposed to work have not been discussed, although some manufacturers have suggested Wi-Fi integration into the cars instead of 4G networks.
- The service is not just limited to cars, as many more devices support it.
- This makes the charging process for electric vehicles much more bearable on longer trips.
This innovation has already been explored slightly with other car manufacturers, such as Tesla, which allow you to play Fallout Shelter in their cars, and many modern cars have built-in screens in the back of the driver/passenger seats which allow people to watch movies on long rides, but introducing cloud gaming is another step toward the future of gaming in general.
GeForce Now got a 4080-level upgrade for certain subscription tiers.
(Source: Tech Crunch)
- Users paying the $19.99 subscription fee can expect better performance on the server.
- GeForce Now allows you to stream your own games on the cloud.
- Before the upgrade, the highest level of performance was comparable to an RTX 3080 GPU.
- However, there are some issues with Nvidia support for various games on different platforms.
Here we can see that Nvidia is taking its cloud scene very seriously and steadily improving the hardware that supports the servers, amping it up to the level of what can be considered a supercomputer in today’s age. Despite the various issues that might arise when trying to streamline cloud gaming, GeForce Now is on the right path!
GeForce Now accumulated over 175 million hours streamed in 2020.
(Source: Nvidia)
- The service added 800 games in that year, with 80 free-to-play titles.
- The top free game was Fortnite.
- Players spent 100 million hours playing multiplayer titles.
- Players spent 16 million hours playing indie games.
- The most-played indie game was ARK: Survival Evolved.
- Players streamed 4 million hours of Cyberpunk 2077‘s night city with RTX on.
- 130 million moments were captured with Nvidia Highlights.
- The most-used platform to stream games was Windows PC.
The sheer number of hours streamed on GeForce Now across a single year is amazing. The hype for the service was justified and through these numbers, we can see that multiplayer games are definitely in the lead for the most popular streaming genre, with indie games claiming only a fraction of their numbers.
GeForce Now has over 1,500 games in its library.
(Source: Nvidia)
- New games are added every GFN Thursday.
- The range of games comes from Steam, Epic, Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, GoG, and more.
- There are games from many genres, from survival horror to FPS, and many more.
- The improvement of cloud gaming prompted some TV manufacturers to tweak their UIs to suit these services.
One of the most appealing things about cloud gaming, in general, is the variety of content you can indulge in when you play, and GeForce Now offers you a vast library of content to choose from, as well as the added benefit of not having to pay a monthly membership, as users can simply play for free, with some limitations. This is still fine as not everyone is looking for a next-gen experience and is fine with short sessions playing simpler games.
To sum up
Alright, that’s all we have to say about Nvidia’s cloud gaming service! While cloud gaming has yet to reach the level of classic gaming, we are seeing steady improvements on the scene and it might just grow to new heights in the future. GeForce now is definitely the reigning cloud gaming service around at the moment, as other platforms like Google Stadia have tried and failed to achieve what Nvidia has in such a short span of time. We hope that your questions have been answered and that you’ve learned something new!
Sources
- “Nvidia GeForce Now beta has 1 million gamers on waiting list”. CNET, 2019, https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/nvidia-geforce-now-beta-has-1-million-gamers-on-waiting-list-gdc-2019/
- “A New Frontier for PC Gaming: How GeForce NOW’s Game Library Continues to Evolve”. Nvidia, 2020, https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2020/02/20/pc-gaming-geforce-now/
- “Nvidia GeForce Now Has Surpassed 10 Million Subscribers”. TheGamer, 2021, https://www.thegamer.com/geforce-now-10-million-subscribers/
- “Nvidia’s GeForce Now Game-Streaming Service Tops 20 Million Users”. PC Mag, 2022, https://www.pcmag.com/news/nvidias-geforce-now-game-streaming-service-tops-20-million-users
- “Nvidia lets you play cloud games in the car with GeForce Now expansion”. VentureBeat, 2023, https://venturebeat.com/games/nvidia-lets-you-play-cloud-games-in-the-car-with-geforce-now-expansion/
- “Achievement Unlocked: Celebrating Year One of GeForce NOW”. Nvidia, 2021, https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2021/02/04/geforce-now-anniversary/
- “Play your games anywhere.”. Nvidia, 2023, https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/games/
- “GeForce NOW Supports Over 1,400 Games Streaming Instantly”. Nvidia, 2022, https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2022/09/08/geforce-now-thursday-september-8/
- “Nvidia upgrades GeForce Now with RTX 4080 performance for premium users”. Tech Crunch, 2023, https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/03/nvidia-upgrades-geforce-now-with-rtx-4080-performance-for-premium-users/