Nvidia's GRID game-streaming service will be free until June 2015

Nvidia GRID
Good games at an even better price: free.

If you haven't had a chance to play around with it, I'll be the first to tell you: PlayStation Now is great. No download times, no storage space requirements, almost zero need for bleeding-edge specs - just whatever game you want when you want it. It's like Netflix for games, except you pay per title rather than one monthly fee.

But as cool as PlayStation Now is, Nvidia's about to one-up them with their completely free game-streaming service called GRID that's coming to Nvidia Shield Portable and Nvidia Shield Tablet owners November 18.

GRID has been available in private testing here on the west coast since earlier this year, but Nvidia has only today confirmed that the 20-plus games will be available for free, to Shield owners around the world, until the service stops on June 30, 2015.

What games are on the docket? It's AAA titles, mostly. Batman: Arkham City, Borderlands, Borderlands 2, Psychonauts and Brutal Legend, with more games to be added every month. The selection won't start at the 100 or so titles that Sony has in its lineup but what's there is impressive.

Just like PlayStation Now, games are streamed from remote servers so you'll be playing games in full 1080p at 60 frames per second without any download time or the game taking up space on your hard drive. The only catch here is that the service will only work for Nvidia Shield owners.

GRID isn't the only thing Nvidia has up its sleeve for its tablet toters. The company also announced today that they're bringing Android 5.0 Lollipop to the Shield Tablet on Nov. 18 and, starting today, the 32GB LTE version of the Shield Tablet will come with the "Green Bundle," which includes digital downloads of Half-Life 2: Episode 1, Half-Life 2 and the original Portal.

Nick Pino

Nick Pino is Managing Editor, TV and AV for TechRadar's sister site, Tom's Guide. Previously, he was the Senior Editor of Home Entertainment at TechRadar, covering TVs, headphones, speakers, video games, VR and streaming devices. He's also written for GamesRadar+, Official Xbox Magazine, PC Gamer and other outlets over the last decade, and he has a degree in computer science he's not using if anyone wants it.

TOPICS