Nvidia upgrades its GeForce Now streaming platform with ray tracing and Android phone support

GeForce Now, Nvidia’s game streaming service which has been in beta for some time, has now started supporting RTX graphics (ray tracing) for some users – plus the service will soon be arriving on Android mobiles.

To begin with, ray tracing support is being rolled out in a limited fashion, only to certain Nvidia data centers, starting with Frankfurt in Germany. RTX servers will then come to other German locations, and gamers in Northern California, before a broader rollout to other data centers throughout Europe and the US.

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In other words, only a limited amount of GeForce Now users are going to benefit to begin with, and it may take some time to arrive in your particular region.

Naturally, you’ll also need to be playing a game that supports Nvidia’s ray tracing technology as well as having a local RTX server to stream from. (Check here for a list of the games that benefit from ray tracing at the moment, as well as future releases – plus lots of other RTX info besides).

GeForce Now is also set to be available on Android phones ‘soon’ according to Nvidia, and that will include flagship models from Samsung and LG. The initial release of the Android mobile app will be a beta, unsurprisingly (of course, as mentioned, the PC service is still in beta).

Grab your gamepad

Nvidia is also recommending that those who want to enjoy games on the move partner their Android mobile with a Bluetooth gamepad (some games simply won’t be playable without a pad, as the controls just won’t translate to a phone).

In other GeForce Now news, the service is coming to Japan and Korea, and it now supports in excess of 500 games. That includes recent titles like Wolfenstein: Youngblood, and Remedy’s Control is coming to GeForce Now soon (it hits general release next week).

Nvidia also noted that the ‘sun is starting to set’ on the free beta testing of GeForce Now – perhaps indicating that we are nearing a full release – although you can still sign up to test the game streaming service.

Nvidia has been working on GeForce Now for some time (that free beta began at the start of 2018), but some rival services from big-name competitors have since sprung up, most notably Google Stadia and of course Microsoft’s Project xCloud.

So now Nvidia certainly has a fight on its hands in terms of the clout of the cloud gaming competition – we’ve more thoughts on GeForce Now versus Google Stadia right here.

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