NVIDIA Doubles GeForce NOW Pricing With New Priority Membership Plan

[Uskompuf]

NVIDIA launched their first cloud gaming service way back in 2013 in the form of NVIDIA Grid for the NVIDIA Shield which allowed users to play a library of games hosted on NVIDIA servers. This service was renamed to GeForce NOW in 2015 and an additional option of purchasing individual games was also introduced. When NVIDIA launched GeForce NOW for Windows, and Macintosh in 2017 they switched to a "bring your own games" model which required the user to own a compatible game on their Steam or other storefront account. When GeForce NOW officially exited beta in 2020 two pricing tiers were available free and the 4.99 USD/month Founders plan. The free plan was limited to 1080/60p with a max session time of one hour while Founders subscribers gained access to raytracing and six hour sessions along with priority access to servers.

NVIDIA have recently announced changes to the pricing for GeForce NOW as the service enters into it's second year of general release. NVIDIA has discontinued the Founders membership for new subscribers and has replaced it with the Priority membership plan for 9.99 USD/month or 99.99 USD/year. Current Founders members will receive a Founders for Life membership which renews at 4.99 USD/month for the lifetime of the subscription. This latest price increases comes as NVIDIA continues to expand the service launching in new countries and nearing 10 million members.



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[Caring1]

Shouldn't more members mean the price should drop?

 

[Chomiq]

So much for "I'll play it on GeForce now".

 

[Outback Bronze]

Shouldn't more members mean the price should drop?

Probably have to pay for a bigger infrastructure now no?

 

[Legacy-ZA]

So much for "I'll play it on GeForce now".

Pointless to try this in countries that have absolutely pathetic broadband, if they even have broadband. I also wouldn't appreciate the delay/input lag, which is there. If people can't feel that, well, good for you, but I will always prefer hands-on equipment for these reasons, not to mention I hate subscriber models which remove choice out of my hands.

 

[RandAlThor]

Probably have to pay for a bigger infrastructure now no?

Economy of scale - said infrastructure is cheaper per user if there is a lot of users, than just only a few ...

 

[laszlo]

“The Way It's Meant to be Played" .....“The Way It's Meant to be Paid" ...

 

[Vayra86]

Probably have to pay for a bigger infrastructure now no?

Thats not how economy of scale works.

 

[Chomiq]

Pointless to try this in countries that have absolutely pathetic broadband, if they even have broadband. I also wouldn't appreciate the delay/input lag, which is there. If people can't feel that, well, good for you, but I will always prefer hands-on equipment for these reasons, not to mention I hate subscriber models which remove choice out of my hands.

These aren't exactly countries with absolutely pathetic broadband:

https://www.techpowerup.com/img/SZybNJW6CUIZvvv6.jpg

My 300mbit fiber fee now matches the updated fee for a month of GeForce Now. Given, I haven't used but "I'll just play it on GeForce Now" was an argument from some people I know that saw what resource hog Cyberpunk was.

 

[aktpu]

I have 300/100 connection at home. Geforce now always claims that at best this is 15 Mbps connection, every other speedtest gives about the full speed. Been trying to game on GFN for 4 months now, it's just a piece of shit

 

[TheLostSwede]

Pointless to try this in countries that have absolutely pathetic broadband, if they even have broadband. I also wouldn't appreciate the delay/input lag, which is there. If people can't feel that, well, good for you, but I will always prefer hands-on equipment for these reasons, not to mention I hate subscriber models which remove choice out of my hands.

I actually used for a bit last year, as I only had my laptop for a couple of months, until I managed to borrow a computer, while stuck "back home" at my parents during the start of the pandemic.
It worked better than I expected, but even on a 100Mbps connection with sub 5ms ping times, it would drop below 720p at times, which made it really hard to play Apex Legends. Anno 1800 was better in that sense, since it's single player, but had the same issue with dropping the resolution at random. The selection of playable games was also quite poor and that was at the time when a lot of publishers pulled out, which made it even worse.

 

[Xaled]

Shouldn't more members mean the price should drop?

No. For nvidia it means `more demand` therefore more greed and higher prices.

The only reason for this price increase is that the other option, which is buying an nvidia or amd gpu, is much more expensive now, so you have to take advantage of it, especially if you are an opportunistic greedy businessman (or woman)

 

[AusWolf]

Shouldn't more members mean the price should drop?

I guess it's just like bigger and wealthier companies being less likely to pay decent wages to their employees.
More money = more greed.

 

[qubit]

So, they've made people pay double, but without offering anything extra in return? Seems really unlikely. There must be some detail missing from this story.

 

[stimpy88]

nGreedia

 

[Vya Domus]

Shouldn't more members mean the price should drop?

This is a common misunderstanding of how markets work, if your product sells more it's a signal that there is room for more margins hence an increase in prices.

 

[1d10t]

Stadia almost pulled the plug but nvidia actually increased the price of electricity.

 

[qubit]

This is a common misunderstanding of how markets work, if your product sells more it's a signal that there is room for more margins hence an increase in prices.

I know where that's coming from - economies of scale, where something can be done for cheaper.

I guess in this instance, it's competition that would drop the price. By the looks of it, NVIDIA doesn't think Stadia is a worthy competitor.

And for the record, I'm not interested in these services anyway. I reckon they're getting a leg-up though, due to the chronic graphics card shortage.

 

[R0H1T]

Thats not how economy of scale works.

Yeah except with more power comes more responsibility profits, that's just how "free markets" have evolved & will continue to work the same way in the future! Take Intel, or Nvidia GPUs, for instance ~ when they lead the x86 market they were happy to chug along with 4c/8t mainstream processors for the masses till Zen came along & charge $1700+ for 10c/20t "HEDT" top dog. Nvidia, Apple & arguably AMD as well today are just charging whatever the eff they can get away with & if you're a multi billion or trillion dollar corp you can pretty much get away with anything

 

[AusWolf]

So, they've made people pay double, but without offering anything extra in return? Seems really unlikely. There must be some detail missing from this story.

Why would it be unlikely? Look at current graphics card prices. If there's a shortage, or there's no competition to your services, you can charge as much as you want.

Edit: I used to think £500 2060s, £600 5700 XTs and £1000 3070s were unlikely, but they're apparently not.

 

[Legacy-ZA]

I have 300/100 connection at home. Geforce now always claims that at best this is 15 Mbps connection, every other speedtest gives about the full speed. Been trying to game on GFN for 4 months now, it's just a piece of shit

Now imagine all the GPU's that could have gone to consumers instead of their data centers.

 

[ixi]

Does anyone know a person who have subbed to this? On my end no one is interested in this.

 

[Shihab]

This is a common misunderstanding of how markets work, if your product sells more it's a signal that there is room for more margins hence an increase in prices.

If you have a monopoly or something of the sorts, perhaps, not if you are in a market where there are several other big players.

IMO, this looks more like they are putting themselves on the same level of said players. From a quick (i.e. didn't bother reading past first paragraphs) google, Stadia goes for $9.99 /month (can't seem to find annual subs), PSNow goes for $99.9 / year (while the monthly sub is nearly double Nv's, at $19.99).

The TCS may paint a different picture, but I doubt it.

 

[bug]

Pointless to try this in countries that have absolutely pathetic broadband, if they even have broadband. I also wouldn't appreciate the delay/input lag, which is there. If people can't feel that, well, good for you, but I will always prefer hands-on equipment for these reasons, not to mention I hate subscriber models which remove choice out of my hands.

Not every game is a fast-paced FPS (or Street Fighter). Many games aren't bothered by lag at all.

Though raising prices suggests the uptake is not as rosy as Nvidia would have liked. I'm not a big fan of subscriptions for everything either.

 

[mechtech]

The way profits are meant to be made