NVIDIA is announcing today via newsletter that the free GeForce NOW tier will begin showing up to two minutes of ‘video sponsorship messages’ (ads, basically) before each free gaming session (which only lasts up to an hour) while in the queue. NVIDIA says the change will go live starting next Tuesday, March 5, and it reckons it’ll eventually improve average wait times for GeForce NOW free users.
Of course, the main reason is to ‘help provide ongoing support for the free service’, which means that NVIDIA is looking to monetize free users by way of advertising. Granted, the free tier was perhaps too good for what it offered, and an increase in player activity may have pretty much required NVIDIA to make this change.
Over the past nine months, GeForce NOW started adding many triple-A games published by Microsoft following the deal between the two companies. GFN users can now play Halo Infinite, Gears 5, Gears Tactics, Deathloop, the Dishonored series, Grounded, Pentiment, the entire Age of Empires franchise, Starfield, Forza Motorsport, Forza Horizon 4 and 5, Ghostwire: Tokyo, Minecraft Dungeons, and State of Decay 2 via the cloud. Moreover, Activision Blizzard titles have started to appear as well, including Call of Duty, Diablo IV, and Overwatch 2. This obviously increased the allure of GeForce NOW, especially the free tier.
As you’d expect, the Priority and Ultimate memberships will remain unaffected by ads. The Priority tier is priced at $9.99 monthly or $49.99 biannually with the following features:
- Premium Rig | RTX ON
- Priority Access to Premium Servers
- 6-Hour Session Length
- Up to 1080p Resolution
- Up to 60 FPS
The Ultimate tier is priced at $19.99 monthly or $99.99 biannually with the following features:
- GeForce RTX 4080 Rig | RTX ON
- Exclusive Access to RTX 4080 Servers
- 8-Hour Session Length
- Up to 4K Resolution
- Up to 120 FPS
This GeForce NOW pricing is valid in the United States. Europe and Canada were affected by a pricing increase back in October.
