NVIDIA GeForce NOW: Cloud Gaming Might Now Be a Reality
Monday, June 23, 2025
At Crossed Wires we use Macs as our daily drivers, but Macs just aren’t built for gaming in my opinion. No matter how much Apple tries to court game developers, they just won’t be able to get the same traction as Windows has for games. This does pose an issue for James and I as we are gamers and we broadcast our gaming on Twitch and YouTube.
Back in 2022 we invested in Steam Decks to be able to game. We use capture cards to be able to stream our games from our Macs. This has been working very well for quite a while, but it does have one downside that sometimes certain games, especially Unreal Engine 5 games, do not run as well on the Steam Deck in our experiences. We aren’t triple A gamers so it doesn’t affect us as much, but it does limit what games we can play.
One major change recently is that NVIDIA announced a native client for the Steam Deck that allows you to login to their GeForce NOW service. This means any game that is available on the service can be run in the cloud. I’ve been testing this out recently and unlike prior things such as OnLive, which I talked about on a podcast episode a few years back, it has a lot of promise.
Cloud gaming has had many ups and downs over the years. Services such as OnLive or Google Stadia have come and gone, but right now Microsoft xCloud, Amazon Luna, Shadow PC and GeForce NOW are the current quality offerings.
One major difference about GeForce NOW compared to the original OnLive is that games are purchased directly from Steam, Ubisoft, Epic, etc and then you connect your account to authenticate with the service that you own the game. This way if NVIDIA shuts down their service, you still own your game. I lost many games that were bought on the original OnLive so this is a welcome change.
My experience so far with GeForce NOW is limited to a few gaming sessions, but I’ve been impressed. I’ve been running games like Starfield, No Man’s Sky, Oblivion Remastered and World of Warcraft at Ultra settings on my Steam Deck. The latency of using a cloud service has not yet been an issue for me. I will keep testing it out, but I’ve been surprised by the results. I’ve been able to login on my Macs and on my Steam Deck and play my games. I’ve been streaming using GeForce NOW as well and it has not felt any different than if I had a GeForce 4080 locally (which I do not).
The times are very interesting and I am looking forward to seeing where we go.
-Jae