Nvidia GeForce NOW is well ahead of Google Stadia & Microsoft xCloud in the cloud gaming race

Cloud gaming is getting ever so close to perfection with the market for cloud game streaming expected to sky-rocket in the next decade. While Google Stadia completely dominated headlines after the search giant showcased the platform in March at GDC 2019. Coming in second in terms of popularity was Microsoft’s Project xCloud.

Both Microsoft’s Project xCloud and Google’s Stadia cloud game streaming service were touted as game changers, offering an alternative to the gaming industry, which relies so heavily on hardware. And, while both companies are equally admirable for their cloud gaming services, none of them has reached beta status yet.

However, the concept of cloud gaming is ground-breaking, innovative or game-changing. Nvidia has been developing and improving its GeForce NOW cloud-powered gaming service for years now. The chip maker first announced the service back in 2015.

Nvidia is primarily known for its commercial GPU products, but the company is very well positioned in the data centre market for HPC, machine learning and cloud gaming services. Despite lagging behind in popularity, Nvidia GeForce Now is currently available in beta trials in select countries in Europe and North America.

Not only is the service already available for testing, GeForce NOW has over 300,000 active users on the platform and a waiting list that exceeds one million. While the total number of active users on the platform may not seem as convincing, it’s still a lot more than the zero-install base of xCloud and Stadia.

Google and Microsoft may have showcased smooth gameplay in Assassin’s Creed and Forza Horizon respectively, but all of that was done in controlled environments. Now, compare these showcases with GeForce NOW’s arsenal of over 500 top PC gaming titles and indie games and Nvidia comes out on top once again.

Hardware is another big factor with Google slated to use AMD GPU-powered servers via a custom AMD Vega 56 unit on steroids with 16GB HBM2 memory. Nvidia, on the other hand, powers 15 of its own data centres across Europe and the United States, with most of these servers tipped to run on powerful data centre-grade RTX graphics. The servers are also likely to get all the benefits that come with Nvidia’s latest Turing architecture.

While Google and Microsoft deserve recognition for their excellent marketing prowess, Nvidia has a massive advantage in terms of experience and hardware, giving GeForce NOW a clear lead in the cloud gaming streaming race.