NVIDIA GeForce NOW will get ads during queuing

The Free tier will soon show up to 2 minutes ads, but only before streaming has started.

Starting from February 28, NVIDIA will be adding ads to their free-tier of GeForce NOW. This game streaming platform has been a success for NVIDIA, as it has provided services to over 25M gamers (in 2023). In January, NVIDIA announced that gamers have streamed a total of 250 million hours in 2023 alone. This means that at one moment there were at least 29K concurrent players on average.

Part of this group are users on the free tier, a service that has time and specs limitations but is offered a no additional cost. This is a great opportunity to test the service before subscribing. For streaming services, the geographical location of the streaming server may be as important as the specs of the receiving system.

NVIDIA has now confirmed to The Verge that this free tier will soon show ads. Those ads will only be shown during queuing to join the gaming sessions. Those ads will not interrupt sessions that already established, explains NVIDIA spokesperson:

Free users will start to see up to two minutes of ads while waiting in queue to start a gaming session.

— Stephanie Ngo, Nvidia spokesperson

The waiting times to join game streaming sessions depends on the tier. For free users, the priority to establish the connection is lower, which means that this time is extended. However, NVIDIA expects that this change will allow NVIDIA to pay for the free tier, which will ultimately reduce the waiting time for users.

NVIDIA premium service called GeForce Now Ultimate costs $20 a month, which gives gamers access to RTX 4080-class GPU, 4K 120FPS experience, reduced latency and support for G-Sync (variable refresh rate). The cheaper tier enabling 1080p 60 FPS experience costs $10 a month. NVIDIA also promised to provide $7.99 (Ultimate)/$3.99 (Priority) day pass access for those who want to try the premium service before committing to a monthly subscription, however, this service is not yet available.

NVIDIA GeForce NOW has recently surpassed 1,800 supported titles. But only part of those games are free. The GeForce NOW service is unlike Xbox Game Pass, with cloud streaming included. Here, gamers are required to own the game before they can start it. This means that although the service is free, some games still have to be purchased. However, those who never experienced GeForce NOW can also try free to play games like Fortnite at no additional cost.

Source: The Verge