NVIDIA's GeForce NOW game-streaming service had been hit or miss lately depending on how you look at its current situation, given the fact that Activision-Blizzard removed its game catalog from the GeForce NOW service and the fact that CD Projekt RED announced that Cyberpunk 2077 will be present on the platform. Some moves like the one coming from Activision-Blizzard are taking a tole on the new game streaming platform, while others like the addition of Cyberpunk 2077 are giving the platform users hope to see it become a viable option.

To add to the pain, Bethesda Softworks, a maker of many popular titles such as the DOOM, Fallout, Wolfenstein, and The Elder Scrolls series, has decided to pull a big part of its game library from the NVIDIA GeForce NOW game streaming service. In another surprising turn of events, a part of NVIDIA staff announced that Bethesda Softworks will pull most of its games form the GeForce NOW platform, excluding Wolfenstein Youngblood, which will remain playable to give users a chance to experience it with "RTX on". We do not know why big publishers are pulling their game libraries form this platform, so we have to wait for more information in the future.

NVIDIA's GeForce NOW game streaming service has recently suffered a big blow coming from Activision Blizzard, as the company has pulled its entire game library from the GeForce NOW platform. However, there is some good news for GeForce NOW coming. In its announcement blog, NVIDIA shared that upcoming game that is perhaps the most anticipated release of 2020, Cyberpunk 2077, will be available on its game streaming service. One of the NVIDIA staff shared that "GeForce NOW members will be able to grab their copy on Steam and play the game the moment it's available. GeForce NOW Founders members can explore the streets of Night City with RTX ON, fully optimized and instantly available, even on your Mac laptop."

NVIDIA today has finally launched its GeForce Now streaming gaming service, and users can enjoy partial amounts of free gaming under the business model. There are two tiers of users on offer: Free, and Founders. The free tier, which you may give a go to check the streaming infrastructure and if it's something you would enjoy paying for, is limited to 60-minute play sessions. This means that after the clock has stopped ticking (with potentially intrusive pop-up notifications reminding you of how much time you have left every 10 minutes), you'll be forced to quit the game, and submit yourself to a playing queue until your next 60-minute window is up. RTX isn't available in this tier, though - so if you also wanted to see for yourself what the raytracing talk is all about, you'll have to pay $5 (monthly subscription) to cross that particular river.

Founder-tier members, however, will be able to enjoy the latest RTX-enabled games. The only ones listed on the service, for now, are Wolfenstein: Youngblood, Call of Duty: modern Warfare, Metro Exodus, and Deliver Us the Moon, which NVIDIA has recently started bundling with select RTX graphics cards). There is still a catch though: play sessions will be limited to 6 hours, after which time you'll be brought back to a gaming queue (though you'll have precedence over Free tier accounts, should there be many Founders-tier players in the queue, you might have to wait a while). There's a limited-time 90-day introductory period of which you can take advantage while subscribing for the Founders tier right now, which means you will only be billed after that 90-day grace period is over. Remember - you have to own a digital copy of the game you want to play in any of the more popular storefronts, such as EPIC and Steam, before you can game - but it's still a nice way to experience RTX should you currently own a non-RTX-enabled graphics card.

NVIDIA today raised the bar higher still for streaming media players — unveiling the next generation of SHIELD TV, which delivers unmatched levels of home entertainment, gaming and AI capabilities right into the living room, starting at $149.

The two new SHIELD models — SHIELD TV and SHIELD TV Pro — provide exceptional visual and sound experiences. Their new Tegra X1+ processor, delivering up to 25 percent more performance than its predecessor, helps bring to life Dolby Vision for ultra-vivid imagery and Dolby Atmos for extraordinary audio. Its computational prowess dramatically improves picture quality by using AI to upscale HD video streams into 4K resolution.

Google sent out a fairly cryptic invite to the game developers and associated press this week in the form of a GIF (converted into relevant images below). It teases a keynote on March 19, 2019 and more information was made available shortly confirming this would be in the form of a keynote to be held at 10 am PST during GDC this year. The media giant promises to "reveal all", and also has developer-focused sessions throughout the course of the event. An early report from The Information suggests the keynote will have Google talk about their new game-streaming service, code-named Yeti. This is in line with our own expectations, after having participated in the fairly successful Project Stream beta test that concluded recently.

Kotaku went further to suggest that Yeti is a streaming service in conjunction with a hardware platform- a simple streaming box, if you will, to take on the dedicated game consoles of 2019 and beyond. Indeed, Google has been wanting to get into this highly lucrative market, with intentions to take over Twitch before Amazon pulled one over them. There remain many challenges in general to a game-streaming world, not least of which were detailed in our own editorial linked above. But, with the next generation consoles getting ready for development and Microsoft willing to explore a game-streaming future themselves, perhaps Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and others should pay very close attention to said Google keynote in less than a month's time.

ASUS today unveiled the Republic of Gamers (ROG) Rapture GT-AC2900 wireless router with optimization for NVIDIA GeForce NOW cloud-based gaming service. What this entails is a certification from NVIDIA that the router provides "the best possible experience" streaming your game between the GeForce NOW cloud and your machine. What it really means is specialized QoS rules that prioritize traffic between your machine and GeForce NOW. As a router, you get 1 Gbps Ethernet WAN, four wired 1 Gbps Ethernet LAN ports, 802.11ac WLAN with 750+2167 Mbps across two bands, which includes 3x3 MIMO for 2.4 GHz, and 4x4 MIMO for 5 GHz. You also get USB 3.0 / USB 2.0 for 4G dongles and storage devices. You also get RGB LED lighting that's configurable using the ASUS Aura Sync RGB utility. The company didn't reveal pricing, since it hasn't finalized a release date.

In 2010, a company called OnLive believed that game streaming was the future. The problem was that they believed that this future would come sooner than what ended up happening. The company (or rather, its IP) would end up being bought by Sony instead. The Japanese company then launched PlayStation Now later, which in itself is a cloud gaming platform that finally brought us closer to that future.

They weren't the only ones hedging this bet, however, and soon the cloud gaming fever spread to other companies and manufacturers. NVIDIA's GeForce NOW is one of the clearest examples of that venture, with its own pros and cons. But now we have a new, promising competitor in this field: Google, which announced yesterday the birth of the so-called "Project Stream". As the name suggests, this initiative is intended to offer end users the possibility of playing any game from any device and with only one requirement: to have access to the Google Chrome browser.

Your underpowered PC can now pack the punch of high-performance GeForce GTX GPUs with GeForce NOW. Starting today, the game-streaming service, which launched a successful beta last summer, is available as a free beta compatible with most Windows-based desktops and laptops. GeForce NOW can connect gamers to their library of games from many of the top digital stores - and starting today that includes Uplay PC, Ubisoft's PC games portal.

"Ubisoft is excited that gamers playing acclaimed franchises such as Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege on Uplay PC can now enjoy outstanding play experiences on PCs and Macs thanks to NVIDIA's futuristic GeForce NOW service, without needing a high-end PC," said Chris Early, vice president of Partnerships and Revenue at Ubisoft. "NVIDIA is powering a high-quality experience that now streams a selection of Ubisoft's top franchises."