Google Stadia is dead and Nvidia GeForce Now gets a price cut – what’s going on?

A HP laptop running Far Cry 6 using GeForce Now
(Image credit: Future / Ubisoft)

Nvidia GeForce Now could be about to make its Priority membership a lot cheaper, with a price cut of almost 50%.

VideoCardz has heard that Nvidia will sell the Priority subscription for its game streaming service at $29.99 for the first six months, which is down from $49.99 in the US. Hopefully we’ll see the offer rolled out elsewhere with a similar drop.

It doesn’t appear that there will be any discount on the beefier RTX 3080 membership, however.

Bear in mind this is just a rumor, but VideoCardz also published apparently leaked promotional material that appears to confirm the price cut – and at least we won’t have to wait long to find out if there’s any truth behind the assertion. Mainly because the tech site believes the offer is about to go live later today, October 27, (and also notes that it will be in place for a limited period of time, as you might expect).


Analysis: Capitalizing on the demise of Google Stadia?

If you’ve been thinking about trying Nvidia’s game streaming service, then this could be an ideal opportunity to try the full product at a minimal outlay (there is a free tier available, but it provides a very limited experience including a queueing system and a maximum of one hour play sessions).

The discounted price represents five bucks a month, which isn’t a huge amount of money to check out Nvidia’s streaming chops. Of course, if you want the best, you’ll need to fork out for the RTX 3080 tier which allows for 4K streaming (or 1440p at 120 frames per second) – and you could always upgrade later if you get on with the Priority level during your six month-spin.

With Google Stadia recently announcing that it’ll soon close down, it makes sense that Nvidia would want to target those left without a streaming option due to its abandonment, giving those folks an accessibly affordable way to try an alternative (even if GeForce Now works quite differently in terms of providing streaming access to games you’ve already bought).

Furthermore, in recent times we’ve been seeing a push for gamer-targeted Chromebooks from the likes of Acer. These are notebooks which offer solid specs, but don’t have to go overboard (and become overly pricey) because they rely on the power of the streaming service (meaning your internet connection, rather than GPU and CPU). But they are still equipped with beefy kit where needed such as a high-quality display, and a good gaming keyboard deck. Again, Nvidia might want to pick up subscriptions from folks going this route with their new laptop purchase.

Of course, any Chromebook can be a gaming machine really, so if you’re looking for options in terms of a wallet-friendly portable to stream games on, check out our roundup of the best Chromebooks.

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).