Latest news with #GeForceNow
Tom's Guide
a day ago
- Tom's Guide
I abandoned my Steam Deck for a year – but Nvidia GeForce Now has made it a Nintendo Switch 2 killer
Nvidia GeForce Now is now available to download on Steam Deck. The full native app was quietly announced at CES 2025, but now it's here. To say this is one of the biggest steps forward that Nvidia has made in cloud gaming would be an understatement. I've been testing it, and not only has it renewed my dwindling love for the Steam Deck, I think this combination could be the Nintendo Switch 2's biggest threat. Of course, this comes with some conditions, which I'll go into, but for the purpose of just playing gorgeous-looking games on a handheld, getting GeForce Now on the Deck is significant. So, what does it have to do to beat the Switch 2? As a gamer that isn't necessarily that bothered by the team chat, motion controls or other fun additions to Nintendo's new console, this combo has to do two things well: Does it hit both these notes? Sort of, as there's still some way to go. But it does so in a way that makes me confident that Nvidia is on the right track here, and it's making me reconsider my past judgements of game streaming. Let's get into it. This is the model of Steam Deck I used for this testing, and in all honesty, for all the love I have for OLED, this is all you need for a great gaming experience. For a limited time, you can get 40% off a 6-month Nvidia GeForce Now Performance tier package. This gets you 1440p gaming capabilities at 60 FPS, and gives you an Nvidia RTX gaming PC in the cloud to handle all your gameplay on any device — be it a Steam Deck, smartphone, or even the Meta Quest 3. With $10 off my favorite cheap docking station for Steam Deck, this is a must-buy for anyone sporting Valve's handheld. Not only do you get the 100W power delivery and HDMI 2.0 for 60 FPS gameplay, but there's two USB ports for peripherals and even an Ethernet cable for that smoother, faster connection for GeForce Now. There's a bit of a workaround to it, so let's break down the steps: There is a plan B using Command Line if you need it, but out of everyone I've spoken to, nobody had to resort to this. If you're in the minority here, Nvidia's got you covered. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. Let's address the elephant in the room: I loved the Steam Deck when I first got it — I even reviewed it for Laptop Mag and was smitten. So, what changed over the past three years? Honestly, my uses have always come in waves. It was perfect for travel — playing AAA games on a flight is still awesome, even if it's a little rough. But over the last 12 months, three things happened that pushed it into the dreaded 'man drawer' (you know the one). But that really good reason has arrived. Let me tell you about GeForce Now, and how it's completely revived my love for the Steam Deck. Dramatic, I know, but let me explain. For those uninitiated, GeForce Now is Nvidia's cloud gaming service that links to your existing Steam, Epic, Ubisoft and Xbox libraries, and gives you streaming access to the games that you already own. Once the best server is selected upon opening a game, you are taken straight into the game. And, if you're on GeForce Now Ultimate, you have an entire RTX 4080 gaming rig to play on. As you can see from the screenshots, the difference is night and day if you're playing with a good internet connection for two key reasons. First, you're not relying on the AMD silicon to power the games. That means no more hardware limitations, and it means you can play the likes of Cyberpunk 2077 at maxed out settings for beautiful visuals at a locked 60 FPS (the only constraint of my OG Steam Deck's refresh rate). In fact, if something becomes a little more demanding (like Indiana Jones and The Great Circle), you can make the most of DLSS (provided you're on Ultimate) to make it even smoother. Whether I was on my home network or at the pub, I could play to my heart's content. And speaking of that, this leads me to the second part — the battery life boosts. Currently, the 40Wh cell in my old Steam Deck is showing its age. Firing up a Balatro session can see that life draining in around 90 minutes, and don't even get me started on the roughly 45 minutes I get on Hitman: World of Assassination. But by putting the computational demands on a cloud server rather than spinning up the AMD chip on the device, I've seen longevity go up dramatically. For context, playing the same level on Hitman, I'm able to get roughly 6 hours of longevity in one sitting. Did I come out of the pub rather tipsy for playing that long? Yes. But it's purely revelatory watching the power demands on my Steam Deck reduce from 15 watts down to 7 watts for GeForce Now and getting so much more stamina for it. Also, shoutout to the low latency on offer here. Cloud gaming has a bit of a reputation for lagging controls — something I still feel in Xbox Cloud Gaming for sure. But there is one more thing that the Steam Deck with GeForce Now has to do to truly put Nintendo on blast: docked mode. I wired it up to my TV to see what I could squeeze out of it. And the end result is incredible. It's not perfect, as resolution scaling seems to be limited to the 16:10 aspect ratio of the Steam Deck's display, but the fidelity of games on here due to the fact you're streaming an entire gaming PC is oceans beyond what the Nintendo Switch 2 will be able to do. Going back to Hitman with everything turned up to Ultra and DLSS set to balanced, frame rates were smooth, details were beautifully rendered without any of those network speed glitches you may see in visuals and it scales well to a big screen. If Nvidia is reading this (hi), if you could update this to support external screens better (maybe giving us full 4K 16:9), that'd be another significant step forward. Let's start with the obvious. GeForce Now on Steam Deck has been Nvidia's Jay-Z moment, allowing the company to reintroduce itself as the best player in the cloud streaming game. Gameplay is near-latency free, connecting is rapid with very short waiting times (provided you go for Ultimate or Performance, which, based on what I see from the free mode, are the only real ways to go) and the sheer drop in power demands meant I could play all day with no worries. A little bit of work needs to be done on transitioning between handheld and docked mode to really make it sing on a TV. But as far as first steps go, this is a Herculean leap into it. Of course, there are limitations. The big one being that it requires an internet connection. But statistically, most of the time you'll be on your Deck near a Wi-Fi network, so outside of the smaller circumstances where you'll have to rely on your device's chip to run offline, there's no better way to play on Steam Deck right now.
CNET
4 days ago
- Business
- CNET
Steam Deck Gets Direct Access to GeForce Now With Dedicated App
Steam Deck owners with a subscription to Nvidia's GeForce Now no longer need a workaround to use the cloud gaming service. A new app just for Steam Deck gives users of the handheld gaming device the option to play games at the highest graphics settings without quickly draining its battery. Nvidia released its GeForce Now app for Steam Deck on Thursday, according to a blog post from the company. This app lets Steam Deck players enjoy their games at the max graphics settings with all the visual bells and whistles. If docked while connected to a TV, it can also output 4K at 60 frames per second. To download the app, Steam Deck owners must be in Desktop mode. From there, open a browser and head to the download page to get the installer. After double-clicking on the GeForceNowSetup program and selecting "Execute, " this will add GeForce Now to your Steam Library. After installation, users need to select "Return to Gaming Mode" from the desktop. The app will be available in the Non-Steam Games section of the Steam Library. The GeForce Now app allows users to play games at a higher graphics setting than the Steam Deck and allows for longer battery life while streaming. According to a report from The Verge, playing a game via GeForce Now resulted in seven to eight hours of gaming. This is a big upgrade from the typical two to three hours most would get with a game at the highest graphical settings. As with any streaming service, the big concern will be the internet connection speed available. Players will need to have a fast connection to play games with little lag. Nvidia does have servers across the US, but if someone is a bit too far away from the server and doesn't have fast internet, it's likely they will see some lag while playing. Now Playing: GeForce Now is good enough to addict you to cloud gaming 01:39 Nvidia's new app for Steam Deck is another step in the company's push to have GeForce Now on every smart device. It's currently available on phones, tablets, Windows and Apple computers, Xbox Series consoles, Switch OLED, the PS5, Asus ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, MSI Claw, Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest Chromecast, Android TV and certain smart TVs from Sony, Samsung and LG. GeForce Now is available for free, but that tier is limited to one-hour sessions. The Performance tier offers six-hour sessions and short queue times for $10 monthly, while the Ultimate tier comes with eight-hour sessions, the shortest queue times and access to the highest graphics settings available. While GeForce Now does offer thousands of games to play, subscribers need to own the games from different platforms, such as Steam or the Epic Games Store, or they need to be subscribers to services such as Xbox Game Pass.
The Verge
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Verge
May 29, 2025 at 9:48 AM EDT
The cloud game streaming dream is alive and well.* At least, that's the case if you have a Valve Steam Deck or another Linux handheld, like the new SteamOS version of the Lenovo Legion Go S. Nvidia just launched its native GeForce Now app, and many of us here at The Verge have already put it to the test, attempting to perform countless parries in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, lining up headshots in Splitgate 2, and other timing-based feats to test how it performs. The verdict? Surprisingly great, both in terms of performance and battery efficiency, but with oh-so-many asterisks.
Gizmodo
4 days ago
- Business
- Gizmodo
Nvidia GeForce Now Steam Deck Review: The Best Way to Play AAA PC Games on Handheld
As much as I treasure the Steam Deck as my closest gaming companion, the handheld's limitations will inevitably become more stark with time. Valve's handheld PC is still one of the cheapest of its class. It's comfortable, relatively light, and provides a beautiful picture with the OLED screen (if you have that model like I do). But when I'm struggling to play graphically intensive titles without making my precious handheld feel ill, streaming has proved an antidote to my woes. Nvidia's GeForce Now streaming games service now sports a full native Steam Deck app, and it has become my favorite way to play today's slate of ultra-hyped games from the comfort of my couch. Performance isn't everything, especially for something as portable as a handheld. The Steam Deck is still one of the best devices for playing less-intensive titles, but that doesn't mean the hardware isn't looking long in the tooth. Getting stable performance out of recent titles like Doom: The Dark Ages on the 3-year-old device has proved impossible. I've played games like Metaphor: Refantazio on Steam Deck—90 hours from beginning to end—and even though that game wasn't pushing pixels to their limit, I still experienced sluggish performance in Metaphor's open areas. Nvidia previously declared it would bring a dedicated GeForce Now app to Meta Quest, Apple Vision Pro, and Steam Deck. The company gave me early access to the app in the few weeks before launch, and it's been seamless enough I don't think I can go back. I was already smitten with Razer Cortex for Windows PC-to-handheld streaming, but for simplicity's sake, GeForce Now is the reigning champion of simple and seamless streaming on a SteamOS handheld. Nvidia could not confirm if the app will work on the upcoming Lenovo Legion Go S running SteamOS. We would be surprised if Nvidia doesn't provide some support for Lenovo's 1200p-resolution handheld in the future. You could previously use GeForce Now running on a Steam Deck, though it involved running the streaming service through a browser and setting up your own control bindings. SteamOS offers one of the most console-like experiences for handhelds, but downloading GeForce Now requires more finagling than searching for it on the Steam store. You need to load up your device into desktop mode and then download and install the app from Nvidia's website. After that, it will appear on the Steam Deck menu's 'Non-Steam' folder. Playing my Steam Deck with the app was a godsend for battery life. If I can normally barely squeak two hours out of a 3D game on my Steam Deck OLED running natively, I managed to do around four to five hours before I even noticed my device needed to be plugged in. The browser-based app has several limitations, including limiting the display resolution to 1440p. The Steam Deck app allows for 4K resolutions and a max of 60 fps if you're paying for the Ultimate subscription. That's still not the full extreme of 120 fps on the PC app, though at least the handheld version supports HDR10 and Nvidia Reflex. Nvidia told me they were considering upgrading the max fps to 90, but for the sake of using the app on handheld devices, the 60 fps ceiling is workable. That limit means it doesn't even matter if the game is running Nvidia's DLSS 4 AI upscaling. On the latest Steam Deck's OLED display, I didn't spot any distortion that can appear on in-game visuals when using the app through the browser-based app. Steam Decks are made to play your Steam library. That doesn't mean you can't play games through Xbox, Epic Games Store, or GOG, but it's more difficult, and I have encountered a few compatibility issues with the Steam Deck's Proton compatibility layer. GeForce Now becomes the easiest way to access all your games spread out across all platforms. Xbox recently added the option to stream your games through GeForce Now rather than Microsoft's own servers. I combined my Game Pass subscription with Nvidia's streaming app to play Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on Steam Deck, which proved far more stable than using Game Pass on Steam Deck with the browser app. Doom: The Dark Ages, unfortunately, claims it needs a driver update and remains unplayable. Nvidia's app also makes the Steam Deck a far more capable handheld if you combine it with a 4K display. Unlike the mobile app, the version for Steam Deck includes options for resolutions above 1440p. This requires at least 45 Mbps internet speeds if you want to maintain the max 60 fps (you only need 25 Mbps for streaming at less than 1080p and 60 fps). I combined my Steam Deck with a dock hooked up to my TV through HDMI, and I found myself preferring to navigate SteamOS with the comfort of a controller from a couch than having to switch to a keyboard and mouse on Windows. The big limitation of 60 fps means that a Steam Deck in docked mode has fewer capabilities than it does on PC or even an Nvidia Shield streaming box. It's my new choice for streaming on my TV, although at $100 for the Ultimate subscription, I can't imagine it should be your first choice if you want to dedicate GeForce Now for Steam Deck. The free version has limits of 1-hour sessions and limits resolution to 1080p, which doesn't matter nearly as much since the Steam Deck's max resolution is 1,280 x 800, but ads are the real reason you may want to consider a 'Performance' subscription for $30 in the first six months. If you consider the price of buying a more capable handheld, especially as they get more expensive, streaming starts to seem that much more attractive.
The Verge
4 days ago
- Business
- The Verge
Tested: Nvidia's GeForce Now just breathed new life into my Steam Deck
I don't want gaming to become another streaming subscription service that keeps going up in price. I don't want to put even more power in Nvidia's hands, particularly not right now. But I can't deny that the company's $20-a-month* GeForce Now is a near-perfect fit for the Steam Deck. I've been covering cloud gaming for 15 years, and this is the very first time I've wanted to keep playing indefinitely. What is GeForce Now? For the uninitiated, Nvidia's GeForce Now is a game streaming service that farms the graphical processing power out to the cloud. Instead of controlling a game running locally on your Steam Deck's chip, you're effectively remote-controlling an RTX 4080-powered* gaming rig in a server farm many miles away, which you sync with your existing Steam, Epic, Ubisoft, Xbox, and accounts to access your games and savegames from the cloud. *Nvidia's GeForce Now also technically has a free tier, and a 'Performance' tier, but I recommend you ignore both. For me, it was the difference between playing many games through a clean window or a dirty window, the difference between playing Alan Wake II and Indiana Jones with full ray tracing or none at all, the difference between comfortably stretching to 4K or not. Handhelds have already become my favorite way to play games. The Steam Deck is comfortable and easy to pick up whenever and wherever the mood strikes. But neither my Deck nor my aging desktop PC have kept up with the latest titles. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Baldur's Gate 3 can look like a fuzzy mess on a Deck, and I've never seen Alan Wake II, Portal RTX and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle in all their ray-traced glory on my RTX 3060 Ti desktop. But today, with Nvidia's just-now-released GeForce Now app for the Steam Deck, I can play every one of those titles at near-max settings, anywhere in my home, for hours and hours on a charge. And if I dock that Steam Deck to my 4K TV, it can output 4K60 HDR and/or ray-traced graphics that put the PS5 Pro to shame. When we tested GeForce Now's last big upgrade in 2023, Tom and I agreed it wasn't quite on par with playing on a native PC. But on a Steam Deck, where I'm either playing on a low-res handheld screen or sitting across the room from a TV where I don't notice so many imperfections, it can feel like the best of both worlds. The best part might be this: while handhelds like the Steam Deck barely get two hours of such a game at potato graphical settings, I could get 7 to 8 hours of GeForce Now. I saw the cloud gaming service consistently sip under 7 watts from my Steam Deck OLED's 49.2 watt-hour battery, barely more than the system consumes at idle. And the new native app makes it a cinch to set up, with no more web browser-and-script workaround: just hold down the power button and switch to desktop mode, download the app, run it, and scan QR codes with your phone to link your various accounts. Oh, you'd best believe there are caveats. Giant gaping gotchas galore, which I'll explain as we go. But after testing the service for nearly two weeks, I'm starting to believe in cloud gaming again. Now, you might be wondering: how the heck am I playing a game where timing is so critical via remote control? Here's the first big caveat: you need a low-latency internet connection, a good Wi-Fi router or wired ethernet, and you need to be within range of Nvidia's servers for the magic to work. Download speed isn't as key: 50Mbps should suffice for 4K, and you can get away with less. But I'm armed with a AT&T Fiber connection, and I live maybe 30 minutes away from Nvidia's San Jose, California servers, which makes me a best-case scenario for this tech. Still, Nvidia has over 35 worldwide data centers now, including 14 distinct locations in the United States, and my colleagues with Xfinity and Spectrum cable internet in Portland and Brooklyn tell me Expedition 33 played just as well for them. 'The latency was negligible to the point that I wasn't missing parries,' Cameron Faulkner tells me, saying he nailed the Sad Troubadour on the first try. Jay Peters and I found we needed to adjust our timing a bit, but I wound up playing roughly half the game over GeForce Now and almost never looked back. Even with the best of connections, though, GeForce Now isn't bulletproof. Once or twice a day, my seemingly stable gameplay session would at least briefly unravel into a choppy mess. In single-player games like Expedition 33 and Indiana Jones I could easily forgive a few minutes of trouble, but my colleagues Antonio Di Benedetto and Erick Gomez saw it in otherwise stable twitch shooters where lag could be a bigger issue. 'I saw a handful of lag spikes / hiccups that would definitely screw anybody over in a competitive shooter, but thankfully they weren't at the worst times and they soon subsided,' Antonio tells me. You also give up some of the Steam Deck's portability. While you can plug and unplug the Steam Deck from a TV dock and seamlessly switch between big screen and small screen play, you can't just put the Steam Deck to sleep without ending the session and losing unsaved progress. (Unlike, say, Chiaki.) And although the native GeForce Now app supports 4K60, a big leap up from 1440p, you may find yourself squinting at tiny text because it doesn't scale the UI appropriately. Speaking of portability, public Wi-Fi generally isn't good enough for GeForce Now, and neither are most cellular connections — even with four bars of Verizon 5G UWB service and a wired USB tether to my phone, my stream quickly deteriorated into the jumble you see below. Only the very best cellular connection in my entire neighborhood, a spot right under a 5G tower where I can get 1,200Mbps down and 30 millisecond ping, felt playable to me. You may have noticed an asterisk* or two earlier in this story, back when I said I was testing a $20-a-month service that gives you the power of a GeForce RTX 4080. That's because Nvidia's GeForce Now also technically has a free tier, and a 'Performance' tier, and I highly recommend you ignore both of them, even just playing on a Steam Deck, because they're dramatically subpar. For me, it was the difference between playing Expedition 33 through a clean window, or a dirty window. (Epic spec, native resolution, vs. Medium spec, 50 percent resolution with DLSS). It's the difference between playing Alan Wake II and Indiana Jones on the Deck's screen with full ray tracing, or none at all and some graphical compromises to boot. It's the difference between comfortably stretching to 4K with some DLSS tricks, or not. But the biggest caveat with GeForce Now may be outside the company's control: you have to bring your own games, and yet you only can bring games where Nvidia has explicitly struck a distribution deal. Nvidia has made progress: 165 of my 457 Steam games are now available to play, up from 85 two years ago. The company offers over 2,100 games in total across Epic, Ubisoft, Xbox, and GOG too. But Nvidia has no games from Sony, so I'm not playing Helldivers 2, no games from Rockstar, so I'm not playing GTA V or Red Dead Redemption 2, and no Elden Ring, no PUBG, no Schedule I or Football Manager or FIFA or NBA or The Sims. We never quite know which games GeForce Now will get, or when, or if they might disappear. Cloud gaming has never felt like a better deal, now that the service has matured, now that handhelds can make such good use of it, and now that buying your own GPU is such a ridiculously expensive proposition. Maybe I'll defer my own next GPU upgrade in favor of a subscription.
