Microsoft CEO Brad Smith has announced that they have signed a deal with Nvidia for their games to be added to Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service.
Smith made this announcement in a press conference following a closed hearing the European Commission held regarding the Microsoft deal for Activision Blizzard King.
As covered by Jez Corden for Windows Central, this is the exact statement shared by Smith in the conference:
“Microsoft will be bringing its Xbox games that play on PCs to Nvidia GeForce NOW streaming service and in addition, if this acquisition is approved, we will also bring all of Activision Blizzard titles including Call of Duty to GeForce NOW as well.”
Nvidia was one of several competitors to Microsoft that expressed their concerns to the FTC about the Microsoft – Activision deal. Their concern was primarily connected to their own GeForce Now service, also a cloud gaming service. Nvidia felt that Microsoft getting exclusive access to Activision Blizzard games, on top of the game IPs they already had, would put them in a serious disadvantage in the market.
Nvidia’s GeForce Now service has been around for longer than xCloud and Game Pass, but their journey has gone through several ups and downs all of their own.
The service was originally exclusively available to consumers who bought Nvidia’s Shield hardware. Whether you bought the tablet, called the Shield K1, or the Android based TV streaming device, called the Shield TV, the Shield originally allowed players to buy Android ports of console games, like Doom 3 and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, but that would eventually be abandoned.
Instead, the Shield hardware would punch above their weight thanks to Nvidia’s GeForce Now service, which would stream those games to the tablet or Android box.
Nvidia would offer games as individual purchases instead of a subscription service, but would later run into trouble maintaining their library as their relationships with developers failed.
Of particular note here is Activision Blizzard King itself. On February 2020, Activision pulled their games from GeForce Now. Nvidia explained this was due to a “misunderstanding” regarding the terms of their license agreement. Bethesda would later pull their games as well.
Nvidia would announce GeForce Now coming to PCs in 2017, but it wouldn’t be launched until February 2020. Yes, on the same month that Activision and Bethesda left the service, and before both of those companies were acquired by Microsoft.
Microsoft’s deal with Nvidia is the best that Nvidia could ever hope to happen. They weren’t good with dealing with Activision and Bethesda independently, but they managed to use the situation with the Microsoft-Activision merger to guarantee that they would get Activision Blizzard King games, and Bethesda games, in the future.
Again, I need to emphasize, this dealing wasn’t something Nvidia could do on their own, and it seemed like they would never see those games again until Microsoft came with a deal.
Today GeForce Now exists as a collaborative project as well. Nvidia made individual deals for libraries to be available to stream, and so companies like Valve and EA have put Steam and EA libraries available to play on their service, complete with cloud save. With Microsoft’s games added to that library, such as Hi-Fi Rush, Nvidia is a considerably better product, and ironically an even better competitor to Microsoft’s own Game Pass.
