Nvidia Scores Partners to Help Drive Its Game Streaming Initiative

Google isn't the only company making game streaming announcements this week. Nvidia announced this week at its GPU Technology Conference (GTC) that it's formed the GeForce Now Alliance to “improve the cloud gaming experience globally.”

How? By partnering up with telecommunications companies SoftBank and LG Uplus to add RTX servers to their networks. That will help bring GeForce Now to Japan and Korea, respectively, while Nvidia continues to beta test the service in North America and Europe.

Nvidia said its “optimized” RTX servers offer “a turnkey solution to bring cloud gaming” to partner networks. It's not clear if that simply means GeForce Now will perform better on these networks, or if Nvidia will make it easy for telecom companies to introduce their own cloud gaming services with its hardware.

Either way, it's a big step forward for GeForce Now, which has morphed from being a 'Netflix for games' contender, to being a way for people with “underpowered or incompatible hardware” to play PC games. That list of hardware currently includes PC, Mac and Nvidia’s own Shield TV set-top box.

Nvidia’s new partners said in the announcement that they plan to introduce GeForce Now and RTX servers to their upcoming 5G and fiber optic networks. Both technologies will make it easier for game streaming to go mainstream (heh) by reducing latency and enabling higher quality or better performing streams.

The announcement also gives the impression that there isn't any bad blood between Nvidia and SoftBank. The latter used to be Nvidia’s largest shareholder before selling the entirety of its $3.63 billion stake in February after the graphics company failed to meet expectations. Unless, of course, the GeForce Now Alliance is the equivalent to 'just being friends' with an ex. Then it's just awkward.