
NVIDIA, a company known for making graphics hardware and GPUs, has been trying to break into the world of cloud gaming for years.
NVIDIA has just announced that it has brought its cloud gaming service out of a beta and the service is now available for public consumption. If you’d like to begin playing games based in the cloud on your TV, you can now do so with a simple set-top box.
NVIDIA Shield is the name of the set-top box that consumers can buy and this allows your TV to play the GPU intensive list of titled provided by NVIDIA’s GeForce Now Network. Gamers can also play games on their NVIDIA Shield tablet, allowing users to take full advantage of NVIDIA’s cloud gaming approach. The NVIDIA Shield set-top box, sometimes referred to as the NVIDIA Shield Console, looks a lot like an Xbox, as do the controllers for the device.
“Those GPUs are in the cloud (and) consumers are getting that GeForce experience now streamed from the cloud to their TV instantly,” says Chris Daniel, product manager at NVIDIA.
“The real benefit is you don’t have to worry about installing games, keeping drivers updated (or) maintaining that PC. We do all of that for you and you get instant game play on your TV. Within 30 seconds you are playing the game.”
NVIDIA recently changed the name of their cloud gaming service from NVIDIA Grid to NVIDIA GeForce Now. With GeForce Now, gamers can pay a meager $8 per month and gain access to over 50 gaming titles from the comfort of their own home.
Since gamers are queuing up games from the cloud, there is no waiting on disks to load or having to worry about scuffing the optical media. Over 50 games are now currently available, including new and recent releases such as Witcher 3, Wild Hunt, Saints Row IV and LEGO Jurassic World.