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Nvidia Capping Monthly GeForce NOW Playtime at 100 Hours

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Nvidia today announced plans to start capping the number of hours that GeForce NOW players can game each month, with the company charging an additional fee for more game time.

nvidia-geforce-now-mac.jpeg

Performance (formerly the Priority plan) and Ultimate subscribers will get 100 hours of gameplay a month starting in January 2025. Up to 15 hours of unused playtime will roll over to the next month. Performance subscribers can purchase 15 additional hours for $2.99, while Ultimate subscribers can purchase 15 additional hours for $5.99.

Current GeForce NOW subscribers that have a paid membership as of December 31, 2024 will continue to have unlimited playtime until January 2026.

Nvidia says that limiting playtime will allow it to provide exceptional quality and speed, along with shorter queue times. The 100-hour monthly playtime limit "comfortably accommodates" 94 percent of subscribers.

The Performance plan, priced at $9.99 per month, provides subscribers with access to a GeForce RTX with 1440p streaming quality. The Ultimate plan is priced at $19.99 per month and offers a GeForce RTX 4080 and 4K HDR 120fps streaming.

Nvidia continues to offer a basic free plan for entry-level cloud gaming, as well as day passes priced starting at $2.99.

Article Link: Nvidia Capping Monthly GeForce NOW Playtime at 100 Hours
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/11/07/nvidia-geforce-now-playtime-cap/
100/mo doesn't seem like much for someone who's primary recreational activity is PC gaming (of course, a serious gamer wouldn't be using a streaming service anyway, lol).

MacRumors said:
Nvidia says that limiting playtime will allow it to provide exceptional quality and speed, along with shorter queue times. The 100-hour monthly playtime limit "comfortably accommodates" 94 percent of subscribers.
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If 94% of subscribers will be unaffected by this limit, how does adding it provide such a profound positive impact on the QoS? 6% of users aren't going to contribute to that much resource usage. BS-detector beeping.
 
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That’s… I mean, yeah. 100 hours will accommodate the majority of users. But it’s the ones that play over 100 hours who are likely your most dedicated subscribers.

I suppose Nvidia will hope that they stay dedicated and just pay extra for extra hours. But they could very well be the type of users who will very loudly make this a huge PR problem.

At a 3.65 trillion dollar market capitalization, I’m not sure how much Nvidia will care about a little bad PR from the streaming business.

CEO Jensen Huang needs to fill another mansion closet with luxury black leather jackets. This is likely how he will pay for it. In fairness to Mr. Huang… the black leather jacket look is good for him. He wears it well. 👍
 
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I'm surprised they have the subscriber base to have been going for so long. Now they're going to nickel and dime their new customers? Game streaming will NEVER be as good as local. It just won't. Period. The concept of game streaming is great, but not the reality. I don't understand the people that can play any type of game that requires more precise movement, timing, or reactions. Very few games, IMO, are somewhat playable via streaming. I can't even wirelessly stream from my PC to my Quest 3 because I'm very sensitive to response times and input latency. And that's all on a LOCAL 6e network!
 
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If this only affects ~6% of users, how is this change meant to improve things for other subscribers? This makes no sense to me, what am I missing? How are 6% of users meaningfully degrading the quality of the service and why can't one of the most valuable companies on earth simply improve their infrastructure?
 
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Damn, they had such a good thing going too. I have used the service a few times traveling and it worked surprisingly well even on kind of mediocre connections. Corporations getting good at shooting themselves in the foot
 
Unity451 said:
I can't fathom spending that much time every month gaming, but then again I'm an adult.
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It sounds like a lot, and it is a decent chunk of time in one month to be fair. That said, if you consider 3 hours of gaming 30 days in a month, that's 90 hours. So almost 100. So it's not entirely out of the realm of reason. While I probably would rarely clock 100 hours in a month, I could easily clock half of that.

Signed, an adult who plays video games.
 
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sunny5 said:
This is how the monopoly works as Nvidia has over 90% of external GPU markets and there is no way AMD can compete them.

No competition, unlimited price gouging.
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To be fair, this specific service really doesn't have much to do with the GPU market at all. They're competing more with Xbox Cloud Gaming, Amazon Luna, and other cloud gaming services.
 
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v0lume4 said:
To be fair, this specific service really doesn't have much to do with the GPU market at all. They're competing more with Xbox Cloud Gaming, Amazon Luna, and other cloud gaming services.
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GeForce NOW is a monopoly in the cloud gaming service. Others you mentioned aren't even close to them.
 
As an adult who plays games, and has a job, I'll probably just stay within that. I primarily play Elite Dangerous Odyssey on it since console development stopped and anyone who has played that game knows you can blink and 5 hours have gone flying by :cool:
 
sunny5 said:
This is how the monopoly works as Nvidia has over 90% of external GPU markets and there is no way AMD can compete them.

No competition, unlimited price gouging.
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That makes no sense,..this is GeForce NOW - the gaming service. There are plenty of players including Microsoft, Sony, Netflix and some would argue EVERY streaming player to capture your attention.
 
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sunny5 said:
GeForce NOW is a monopoly in the cloud gaming service. Others you mentioned aren't even close to them.
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That is misleading. Xbox, which is console+PC+cloud, has even more subscribers than Nvidia. And I believe most of Xbox's subscribers have Game Pass Ultimate, which includes the aforementioned cloud gaming. Now, how many people utilize the cloud streaming on Xbox is a discussion, sure. I don't know what that number is. Is it over 20 million like Nvidia? I doubt it. But I'm not seeing any evidence of a monopoly by the numbers.
 
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