Nvidia Shield Android TV box, GeForce Now United Kingdom launch confirmed

There will also be a storefront for new releases available to purchase at the same price as other digital retailers.

That’s the question Nvidia is about to pose with the release of GeForce Now, a new game-streaming service that runs exclusively on Nvidia’s Shield devices, namely the Shield Android TV box, Shield Portable and Shield tablet.

Screenshot shows how Nvidia Shield displays premium video games… Available across Shield devices, the service was previously available for free, but Nvidia had always meant to charge for it once it matured.

In terms of games, the catalog has been fairly consistent in the type of games NVIDIA is offering over the lifetime of the GRID beta, and it appears that this will continue to be the case for the paid service.

From the start, GeForce Now members will have access to 50 different games that they can play at any time.

Game streaming is quite challenging compared to traditional media streaming – in addition to low latency real-time encoding on the server side, we also need the client user input to have minimal lag while getting reflected on the server side.

NVIDIA on Wednesday made several big SHIELD-related announcements. Tuesdays are typically the day that new titles will hit.

Now NVIDIA is officially launching the service, which it’s billing as a sort of Netflix for games (you know, if Netflix had just over 50 movies). These purchases will also include a download code to play the game on your PC as well.

In theory, a subscriber could buy a new game, immediately begin to play it, and then let the game download to his or her PC later on. ‘Music, TV and film have already been transformed by streaming. As an added bonus, the October 1st system update will allow Android games to be upscaled to 4K, even if they weren’t originally created to support that resolution. To use GeForce NOW, you’ll need to meet a number of requirements.

Above: Jen-Hsun Huang unveils the Nvidia Shield Android TV console. The quality settings of games vary depending on your connection but the maximum is 1080p at 60fps. With support for pretty much every format of audio and video file going, you shouldn’t have any problem playing your files. Downloading and installing those games on a PC could take multiple hours. This model mirrors that of the PlayStation Now streaming service.

We’ll weigh in with hands-on impressions soon.

Those titles have to look good, as well. Geforce Now will be available on the company’s Shield devices, including the new Android-powered Shield TV set-top box.

All of the features we have come to expect from streaming services, such as recommendations, most popular, and recent searches, will be integrated into the service, along with voice search. In the SHIELD Hub, you’ll find the GeForce NOW app, the Gamestream app, and other SHIELD optimized apps as well.

GeForce Now will go live Thursday for gamers in North America, Europe, Eastern Europe and Western Russian Federation, as well as Japan and South Korea. The service will be free for the first three months, so you can try it out and see how well it works.