NVIDIA is putting a time limit on its GeForce Now cloud streaming service. On January 1, 2025, subscribers will have a 100-hour "monthly playtime allowance" for members of its paid Performance and Ultimate Tiers.
After hitting the 100-hour cap, subscribers can buy 15 more hours for $3 (Performance) or $6 (Ultimate). If a subscriber has up to 15 hours of unused playtime, that time will be automatically rolled over to the following month.
Subscription services for games often withhold what (or how) players have access to through their membership tiers, as we've recently seen with Xbox Game Pass. NVIDIA restricting play time is another matter entirely, particularly as other companies like Microsoft are trying to carve out a niche in the cloud game market.
The cap is being set "to continue providing exceptional quality and speed, as well as shorter queue times, to members," NVIDIA explained on Reddit. It acknowledged this limit will only affect 6 percent of its subscribers—the other 94 percent "typically enjoy the service well within this timeframe," and will be "comfortably accommodated."
Balancing between features and pricing will shift over time with any streaming platform, leading to a price increase (again, like Game Pass), or a change to the benefits offered by a subscription tier, similar to Amazon Prime Video. In many cases, the root cause is a desire to cut down costs, which NVIDIA may be looking to do here.
Amid all of this, there have been discussions about if subscription services are still (or will remain viable). For Microsoft, getting more subscribers has been a core focus for years, hence its acquisition of big name studios like Bethesda and Activision Blizzard and touting those teams' big titles—namely Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Indiana Jones & the Great Circle—as day one Game Pass titles.
In the former game's case, that gambit seems to have paid off: in its recent earnings report, Microsoft called the military shooter "the biggest Call of Duty release ever, setting a record for day one players, as well as Game Pass subscriber adds on launch day."
However, not every game can be a Black Ops 6-level hit. Several titles that launched on a subscription service have stumbled out of the gate (see Foamstars) or start strong before fizzling out. Add on the fact that every company is trying to get you to sign up for their service, and the ease of access such services provide can be easily drowned out by growing complications.
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