It’s not exactly official compatibility, but those looking to use their Nvidia GeForce Now PC game streaming accounts on their Xbox Series X or S consoles are in luck. If you fire up the service through the consoles’ Microsoft Edge browser, you’ll be able to sit back on the couch and play hundreds of PC games to your heart’s content.
As ever with the Nvidia GeForce Now service (set at $9.99 / £8.99 a month for new members), mileage will vary as to the speed of your internet connection, as the games are streamed in from cloud servers. Also, you’ll have to own the title you want to play from Nvidia’s library of a few hundred, on Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG or elsewhere before you can start playing – but at least you don’t have to purchase them twice. The subscription here is purely to access Nvidia’s servers, which do a great job of delivering the games with high-end visuals intact.
With the Xbox’s mouse and keyboard support, it’s a great way to play PC games that otherwise wouldn’t make it to the console, be that Warhammer RTS games or MOBAs like DOTA 2, or even older classics like the first The Witcher game.
Analysis: the end of the PC / console divide
Access to streaming services like GeForce Now – through a console – act to further blur the line between what is the expected divide between PC and console gaming. Through cloud servers and a decent web connection, you can be enjoying Gordon Freeman’s Half-Life exploits with an Xbox pad in hand with little fuss.
It’s a stance that Xbox has already embraced with this generation of consoles through its own ‘Play Anywhere’ mantra – with an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, you’re able to play any first-party Microsoft game day one on both its consoles and a gaming PC, and carry progress over between the two. The exceptions to this rule are few, with Age of Empires 4 being the only recent point of contention.
That’s not to say that rivalries between the platform holders won’t still rear their heads. Though Sony PlayStation is slowly adding its back catalogue of games to PC, according to The Verge’s Tom Warren it appears the PlayStation console-exclusive Death Stranding can’t be accessed through GeForce Now on Xbox, despite it having a native PC version available from another publisher. Contractual obligations may still tie certain titles down, but this is the most open the platform gates have ever been. It’s a great time to be a gamer.
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