Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud streaming adds helpful day passes

As regular viewers of PCWorld’s Full Nerd podcast know, I’m a massive fan of Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service. It’s easily the best game-streaming service for people with deep PC gaming libraries, and now it’s becoming even more useful with the addition of day passes, announced at CES 2024.

GeForce Now has always had an unlimited free tier, but it streams in lower quality and resolution for an hour a pop, and you get last priority in a queue system. What if you want to test the performance of a particular game or of GFN itself? Or, what if you’re holing up in a hotel for a few days and don’t want to spend $20 a month for full unfettered access to GFN for a month? Enter the new Day Pass system for GeForce Now’s Priority and Ultimate tiers.

The day passes are exactly what they sound like: You can buy access for a single day to GFN at your chosen subscription level. (I wish it was available right now as I type this from a Vegas hotel.) Nvidia didn’t reveal firm pricing for the new day passes, but from a feature standpoint, the Ultimate tier gives you exclusive access to RTX 4080 servers, with eight hour session lengths, and streams available up to 4K resolution and 120Hz speeds. You can’t ask for much more than that. The cheaper Priority tier includes 1080p streaming up to 60Hz with six hour sessions.

Update, 1/10: Nvidia has informed us that the day pass will cost either $3.99 or $7.99 (€4.39 or €8.39), depending on whether you go for the Priority or Ultimate tier. Technical capabilities are the same for their respective monthly passes. We’ve also been told that the capacity issues below were extraordinary over the 2023 winter holidays.

Brad Chacos/Foundry

Brad Chacos/Foundry

Brad Chacos/Foundry

I can’t help but wonder if Nvidia’s servers will be able to account for the potential influx of usage from day pass users, though; as I’m writing this article, the free tier is completely inaccessible, as well as the one month subscriptions to both Priority and Ultimate subscriptions, because “GeForce Now is currently at capacity.” I love the idea, so we’ll see how it goes!

If you prefer local PC gaming without capacity concerns, Nvidia also announced a trio of upgraded GeForce RTX 40-series “Super” GPUs as part of its CES 2024 keynote.