GeForce Now cuts off Google's Stadia in the game streaming race

As Google's game streaming service Stadia has stalled out of the gate with tepid reviews and a disquieting response to the public wondering when we can expect more, Nvidia's GeForce Now is setting itself up to take the lead in the race to become the premier game streaming service.

GeForce Now launched Tuesday, offering subscribers the ability to play the video games they own from a variety of different devices without needing a beefy PC. With GeForce Now, the computer part company will run players' games on Nvidia's own hardware and stream it back to players through their cloud service.

The concept is undeniably appealing to people who like to stay on top of the latest games but may not have the ability or the want to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on a high-end PC. It also helps gamers keep their hard drives from becoming over-encumbered with games that take up a bunch of space.

So what gives GeForce Now an advantage over Stadia? A couple big things.

The perks

GeForce Now launched Tuesday with two subscriber tiers. The first tier is free and allows people to try the service with "standard access" (A.K.A. slower connection speed) and one-hour gaming sessions. The second tier is only $5 a month for 12 months, which is half the cost of Stadia, and includes priority connections, four-hour sessions (so people don't choke up the servers if they stop playing but neglect to disconnect), and three free months of access.

Just take note: This offer only stands for a limited time. Expect the entry price to go up later.

Moreover, Stadia has a hardware entry fee of about $130 for the controller.

As for the service's video game library, GeForce takes the cake. GeForce Now is compatible with hundreds of games that you can purchase or download through online game stores like Steam, Blizzard's Battle.net, and Origin, with more game support coming. If you unsubscribe from GeForce Now, you don't lose any of the games you bought because they're purchased on other platforms.

Stadia's list of games isn't very long and when asked if more games were coming, Google said to ask developers. *Cough* deflecting *cough.*

The one thing Stadia has over GeForce Now is slightly better connectivity and quality, according to The Verge.

Swerved

With the full release of GeForce Now, Stadia has found its first big name competitor. From here, Stadia has two paths forward.

Perhaps GeForce Now will light a fire under the metaphorical butt of Google's Stadia team and they'll fight a bit harder to improve their service and work on accruing more games for their library.

Or, perhaps GeForce Now will just edge Google out of the game-streaming market. After Stadia's underwhelming launch and slow strides on making improvements, it wouldn't be unsurprising if Google stepped back to direct attention and funds elsewhere. Sometimes a bet doesn't pay off. It happens.

As it stands, it wouldn't be completely shocking to see Stadia fizzle out over the next couple years. After its launch, it hasn't really made any waves.

If GeForce Now can keep making strides and continue growing its library, it can corner the game-streaming market for computer games.