In 2023, Microsoft announced a partnership with NVIDIA to see its first-party PC games become available via the GeForce NOW cloud gaming service. A direct competitor of Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming service for Game Pass Ultimate subscribers, but the move was seen by many as a means to get Microsoft's $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard over the line.
Many see GeForce NOW as the best cloud gaming service for visual fidelity, latency, and features, which lets you play games you own on a cloud-based GeForce RTX-powered rig. GeForce NOW offers up to GeForce RTX 4080 levels of performance with DLSS, Frame Generation, Reflex, and even G-Sync support. And now, based on a few images that have surfaced on Resetera - GeForce NOW is being integrated with Xbox in some way.
The images come from the Xbox PC app, showing titles like Street Fighter 6, Call of Duty: Warzone, and Resident Evil Village with the text 'Included with NVIDIA GeForce NOW.' So, what's going on?
Whatever it turns out to be, we expect an announcement in the coming days or weeks. Our guess is that PC Game Pass subscribers will have access to play compatible titles over the cloud using GeForce NOW rather than Xbox Cloud Gaming. The latter is capped at 1080p 60 FPS running on an Xbox Series X console, while GeForce NOW can push up to 4K and 240 FPS in specific titles.
It could also be as simple as account linking as the PC Xbox app does for Battle.net, Ubisoft, and EA. If you are a GeForce NOW user or subscriber (NVIDIA offers multiple tiers), you can see what Game Pass titles are compatible from within the Xbox and Game Pass app. It's an excellent move by Microsoft, as GeForce NOW has proven to be quite popular due to its superior technology. If the partnership goes as far as integrating GeForce NOW with Game Pass on Xbox Series X|S consoles, that would be something.