Nvidia bringing GeForce Now to Chromebooks to attract students
special report
Nvidia said it is bringing GeForce Now, its cloud streaming game service, to Chromebooks just as school districts are handing out devices at a rapid clip amid the shift to remote learning.
GeForce Now will land on the Chromebook via the play.geforcenow.com site in a beta. GeForce Now, which runs on PC, Mac, Shield and Android, will run on the browser just as its desktop app does on the PC.
Nvidia said the service will work well on a $299 Chromebook with Intel Celeron as the minimum processor. Nvidia said Arm-based Chromebooks didn't meet the minimum specs yet.
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Andrew Fear, senior product manager at Nvidia, said GeForce Now launched as a way to bring PC gaming to everyone and works through three stores including Steam, Epic Games Store and UPlay from Ubisoft. "Millions of students have Chromebooks and GeForce Now can give them gaming in their downtime," said Fear.
Of course, Fear also acknowledged that schools may block GeForce Now, but may find it difficult since it operates within the browser. Fear also said that Nvidia is open to partnering with schools too.
In any case, the Chromebook crowd could be a good market for GeForce Now, which has 4 million registered users and operates from 22 data centers around the world. GeForce Now streams 15 million gaming hours every month.