If this were a high school scenario, Xbox and Nvidia would be making googly eyes at each other from across the canteen. Microsoft seems to be in a particularly collaborative mood of late, as we’ve seen recently with Game Pass arriving on Amazon Fire TV. Now the Redmond giant is partnering up with Nvidia, bringing GeForce Now integration onto Xbox game pages.
Xbox has joined forces with Team Green and Boosteroid, implementing both game streaming services into pages for titles on the official Xbox site (thanks, The Verge). The handy practical upside to this collab is that subscribers to GeForce and Boosteroid can now launch and stream their games directly from these Microsoft pages.
A new “Choose streaming platform” button on Xbox game pages allows you to select your preferred streaming service, provided you’re a subscriber of course. Nvidia’s streaming service is the best in the business, with the highest image quality and lowest input lag. The Priority sub lets you play up to 1080p resolution (1920 x 1080) up to 60 frames per seconds costing $9.99 / £9.99 p/m, meanwhile the top-end GeForce Now Ultimate tier costs $19.99 / £17.99.
If you have a decent broadband connection, I’d strongly suggest you go with Ultimate as it’s hands down the best cloud game streaming service I’ve ever used. I’m lucky enough to have 1GB fiber optic here in my native Britain, and I’ve had some fantastic experiences with the most expensive sub.
Ultimate gives you the power of a cloud-based GeForce RTX 4080 GPU — the third fastest graphics card Nvidia makes after the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 Super — and you can play up to 4K resolution (3840 x 2160) up to 240 fps in select titles you own from digital platforms like Steam and GOG Galaxy. My best experience with Ultimate has come in Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, and I was super impressed by how little video artifacting there was, while input lag was minimal and frame rates felt like they were at 60 fps or over.
As The Verge points out, the business relationship between Microsoft and Nvidia is seemingly becoming closer, with the two colossal companies partnering up in a 10 year deal that allows you to play Xbox games you own on GeForce Now. This also extends to select Activision-Blizzard titles, following Microsoft’s historic acquisition of the megaton publisher.
Trouble in paradise?
Let's read between the lines of what is happening here, because in choosing GeForce Now, you're redirected to the app to play — making for a bit of a clumsy process. In one way, this is another step forward in the 10-year partnership deal between Microsoft and Nvidia.
But you've still got the binary decision between Xbox Cloud Gaming (capable of 1080p 60FPS) or the far superior GeForce Now (potentially sporting a full 4K 240FPS). We've not seen many improvements made to Microsoft's over platform over the past year, except for expanding it to other platforms like Fire TV.
So let me get my crystal ball out and take a stab at predicting the future. Because if you're a bit of a skeptic (like me), this could seem like a tacit admission that Redmond isn't capable of hitting these lofty heights of resolution and refresh rate.
And with a whole nine years left of this collaboration, could we see Microsoft start to ask for a little help from Nvidia's GeForce Now tech to improve the quality and latency issues currently found in Xbox Cloud Gaming? I think so. I d
Whatever the thinking is behind this, it does give you more options to access your games, and choice is always a good thing!
