I didn’t even realize Microsoft had a steaming game service. Is it widely used?
https://www.xbox.com/en-us/xbox-game-pass/ultimate?xr=shelln...
If you want better graphics fidelity and performance, you can also now play certain Game Pass games on Nvidia's Geforce Now. Whereas xCloud games stream from underpowered consoles, GFN runs on RTX 4080s and offers MUCH better graphics and performance. It also lets you use a mouse/keyboard for all the supported games, while xCloud streaming games normally limit you to the Xbox version and don't let you use a mouse or keyboard unless the game itself supports it on the Xbox (like Gears).
To do this, you would need both a GFN subscription and a PC Game Pass subscription (though not ultimate).
You can also just use GFN with Steam, which offers a superior experience overall.
I wouldn't call it well polished though. It works but it's kinda janky, with heavy compression artifacts and occasional input sensitivity issues.
There are some weird rough edges, though. I was very excited to play Fallout 76 with my brother and very disappointed to discover that the cloud gaming system has some limitation around headsets and wireless controllers.
But now I'm a digital nomad with just two laptops, the best GPU I have is a Radeon 680M, and I really wanted to play Baldur's Gate 3. So I signed up for a streaming service and it works great. 9 euro/month and I can play more than I need to over some sort of VDI setup I guess.
I think it can be a real hit for a lot of games, to a lot of people, but some games obviously are best played locally.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/22/23828302/microsoft-activi...
For Game Pass specifically, you don't own the games... it's a subscription service, like EA Play or Ubi Plus, that lets you play from a library of games as long as you're subscribed. Of those, several (but not all) are also playable on GeForce Now. You still have to have a PC Game Pass (or Ultimate) subscription.
Without GeForce Now, if you have PC Game Pass (the cheaper plan), you have to install and play those games on your own computer. If you have Game Pass Ultimate, you can also stream some of those games from Microsoft's cloud of Xboxes. They are inferior to Nvidia's offering, but the selection might be better as long as you don't mind lower resolution and having to use a controller for most games. You also get access to the EA Play subscription library that way.
Confusing, right? It's a pity. When GeForce Now first launched, you could play any game on it -- all of Steam was available -- but publishers started complaining I guess (who knows why? maybe they wanted to one day launch their own services, heh, good luck with that).
Notably, there were a few games that were Stadia streaming exclusives (like Red Dead Redemption and Elder Scrolls Online). Once Stadia died, there was no way to stream those anymore (unless you rent a whole virtual PC like Shadow.tech). Can't play those now, sadly.
There are a lot of streaming services now: First-party ones like Playstation Plus, Amazon Luna, Xbox Cloud, Ubi Cloud (via Luna).
There are third-party stream-a-game-directly ones that just launch you into Steam and/or the game directly, no OS maintenance required: GeForce Now and Boosteroid.
There are also "rent a PC" style streaming services like Shadow, AirGPU, probably others (including renting them directly from cloud providers, usually at an incredibly high price).
Of all those, GeForce Now offers by far the best performance and quality, because Nvidia both controls the supply of RTX cards and also has written some incredible software to support the streaming, enabling play at 4k/ultrawide/120 Hz/low-latency via Reflex, etc. It is also the best value in terms of monthly costs. Its primary downside is the limited library available; only some games are available on there (https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/games/).
They could simply want Nvidia to purchase rights to use their game. If you made a movie you wouldn't want random streaming services to be able to stream your movie without paying you for the rights to do so.
So, I don’t understand publishers’ complaints, people could only play games they paid for, and Nvidia provided the streaming service. It’s probably technically correct on the publisher side, but I feel Nvidia did nothing wrong there.
But they do use the games commercially.
>So, I don’t understand publishers’ complaints
Nvidia gains value by having publisher's games in their catalog. Publishers want Nvidia to pay for that value.
And those games are still playable on Shadow, Airgpu, etc., just as bigger headaches.
There are many titles I've purchased because they were available on GFN. (And many I didn't because I don't have a machine to play them on otherwise).
I am cynical enough about the games industry to say this is possible, even probable.
What’s next? Should I pay 2x a game for a SLI config with two cards on my PC?
You could own it. Even if someone owns a movie, you can't stream that movie to them.
If you play on PC, PC Game Pass gets you access to hundreds of games but no streaming.
If you play on Xbox, Game Pass Core gets you multiplayer and a few free games but no streaming.
If you want streaming or play on both PC and Xbox, the Ultimate membership gets you everything.
If you want just the PC games and streaming, you can sign up for PC Game Pass and separately for Nvidia Geforce Now, which streams a subset of Game Pass games but at much higher quality and performance.
There is no such product. The comment you’re replying to said it correctly.
it wouldn't be a microsoft product without 8 different editions
Thank you to the people who corrected me.