CES 2022: Nvidia partners with AT&T, Samsung to promote GeForce NOW
Nvidia on Tuesday announced that it is growing its cloud gaming ecosystem by partnering with AT&T and Samsung. The new partnerships, announced during CES, will extend the reach and performance of GeForce NOW, Nvidia's cloud-based game streaming service.
Nvidia's collaboration with AT&T will focus on developing 5G technical innovations to improve the gaming experience. Engineering teams from both companies are working together to optimize things like latency and minimize packet loss across the network. They're not unveiling any specific developments at this point but plan to work together through the year.
In the meantime, AT&T is also offering a six-month GeForce NOW Priority membership to customers with a 5G device on a 5G unlimited plan or another qualifying unlimited plan. The free six-month membership has a value of $49.99. Priority members get up to 1080p at 60 frames per second, with priority access to GeForce NOW servers and extended session lengths of up to six hours. They also have access to RTX Games.
Last summer, AT&T similarly announced that it would offer six months of Google's Stadia Pro service to 5G subscribers. As Ross Rubin noted for ZDNet last year, the pandemic has fueled growth for game services, By providing free access to streaming services, carriers can show customers how to take advantage of new 5G plans.
Nvidia on Tuesday also said it's bringing GeForce NOW to Samsung TVs later this year, with the expectation it will be available in Q2. The gaming service will be available via the Samsung Gaming Hub, a new game-streaming discovery platform.
Last month, Nvidia partnered with LG to release a beta version of the GeForce NOW app for LG 2021 WebOS Smart TVs. Nvidia expects to add support for additional TVs, including 2022 models, later this year.
Nvidia is also adding new Electronic Arts games to GeForce NOW: Battlefield 4 and Battlefield V.