After playing around with the GeForce NOW Australia beta for a little under a month I feel I have enough experience that I can give a fair and honest review of GeForce NOW Australia Powered by Pentanet. The short answer is that it’s a great option.
Getting started
Getting started with GeForce NOW is simple to do, create an account on Pentanet’s Cloud.GG dashboard and select a GeForce NOW plan. During the beta testing period this step was done automatically, and my account was moved over to the Basic plan after the beta ended.
Pros
- $0 plan is great
- Works with many gaming publishers and libraries
- 60FPS gameplay without any issues
Cons
- Requires a decent internet connection
- You need to buy games to play them
Once you’ve paid and subscribed to your chosen plan, you have a few playing options to choose, via a web browser or by download the GeForce NOW app for PC, Mac, or Android. After the app is installed or you use the browser version you click sign in and your directed to the Cloud GG website, where you will automatically be signed in.
The next step is to link your game accounts. Currently, you can only link Steam and Epic Games to GeForce NOW. This connection allows GeForce NOW to know which games to add to Your Library for easy access. (Games from other services can be played.)
Running your game of choice requires you to select which service you have the game with. These include Epic Games, Steam, EA, GOG, and more. Upon first run of a game, you will be required to sign into your account, this should only happen once per service provider you use. After this, running a game is as simple as hitting play and waiting to load in.
Gaming in the cloud
After playing my first session in the cloud I was impressed! Throughout my many hours spent gaming on GeForce NOW I only ever had network-related issues once or twice, which is a lot better than what I was expecting. Playing various games such as Rocket League, Euro Truck Simulator, and Tom Clancy there were no issues, I could get through missions and drives with ease like I was playing on a local gaming desktop.
I was able to set in-game graphics up to the max in most games and played at a constant 60FPS. During my time with GeForce NOW I was using a 100/20 NBN connection in Perth connected to the Perth RTX servers that would frequently get down to around 50 Mbps download while others were on the network, this was not a problem for GeForce NOW.
As someone that hates leaving games on my SSD if I don’t play them for a while, being able to click play and have the game start up without the need to download it first was great! As a result of this I’ve played games that I haven’t looked at in months, even years.
Price
If you were lucky enough to pre-order GeForce NOW before the October 19th release you would have only had to pay $17.99 per month when paying annually or $19.99 when paying monthly. The standard pricing will be added once announced. We do know that the Basic plan will continue to be free for everyone, which is great to see!
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | $0 | 1-hour long gaming sessions |
| Priority | $TBD/m – yearly $TBD/m – month-to-month | 4-hour long gaming sessions Priority game queuing RTX-on gameplay |
Who is GeForce NOW for?
While I won’t be purchasing GeForce NOW anytime soon, I see a lot of people that will benefit from it right now. For those that don’t have a gaming PC or console at home cloud gaming is the perfect alternative, especially when considering the price of a gaming PC in the current climate. Getting a PC that has a similar performance to GeForce NOW would cost you upwards of AU$1900, which at founders pricing equals around eight years of GeForce NOW, and around four and a half if you spend $200 on games per year.
On top of that, you won’t need to upgrade the hardware when using GeForce NOW, which is something you will have to do on a desktop gaming PC. One thing to note is your internet connection. If you are interested in GeForce NOW, I would recommend starting with the free plan and playing and various times in the day and week. This should allow you to test your internet connection and give you an idea if you would need to upgrade your connection or move to a new provider.
So, if you want to start PC gaming without the up-front costs of buying a PC, GeForce NOW is the way to go. It has a fantastic range of free-to-play games and paid games that once you buy you own forever.
