Nvidia GeForce Now Membership Selling Out Amid Coronavirus Outbreak

Nvidia's GeForce Now has been subject to heaps of setbacks through developers pulling out of the service. Nevertheless, it appears that Nvidia's game streaming service is still quite the success, as the Founder's Edition slots in Europe are all sold out with the company expecting the U.S. to follow soon.

"As you can imagine, we’re experiencing a substantial increase in the number of GeForce Now players and their amount of playtime." an Nvidia spokesperson said this week. "As a result, our Founders memberships are currently sold out in Europe, and we anticipate North America won’t be far behind."

We suspect that the increase in activity is due to the COVID-19 outbreak, as much of Europe is in lockdown, with people unable to go to work, cafes, clubs, group meetings shut down and general recommendations or obligations to stay home. 

With all the uncertainty on the market and people's incomes, a service such as GeForce Now came at the right time. With GeForce Now, you still have to purchase your games through a service like Steam but can run the game off of Nvidia's servers instead of having to buy a gaming laptop or desktop. With a low monthly fee of just $4.99 per month, it's a great alternative to spending big bucks on a gaming laptop or gaming desktop-- especially since the first 90 days are free.

Nvidia is currently working to increase server capacity so it can re-open Founders memberships to GeForce Now and keep up with the spike in demand. 

The question this leaves us with is the sustainability of this in the long term. Nvidia isn't making any money off the surge of subscribers yet and has no way of knowing how many will opt to keep the service after the three-month trial period ends. Consequently, we hope that the investments in added server capacity don't go to waste when the world goes back to normal.