Recently, most membership tiers of GeForce NOW — the game streaming service offered by tech firm NVIDIA to players around the world — became unavailable to purchase, with the company labeling them as "sold out" on the program's webpage. Specifically, five of the eight plans NVIDIA sells have been taken off the table, with only 1-month Ultimate and 6-month Performance and Ultimate plans remaining.
According to ComputerBase, NVIDIA cites the high popularity and demand of GeForce NOW as the reason the company has made these offers unavailable. Reportedly, it explained that it limits supply in response to high demand so that existing customers don't have to worry about server stability being affected by an influx of new subscribers. Essentially, the demand for GeForce NOW has outgrown the resources NVIDIA can allocate to it right now, so current members and those willing to pay for the priciest plans have been prioritized. The firm hasn't yet given a reason for the lack of bandwidth at the time of writing.
The tiers currently unavailable include the Free (ad-supported, 1-hour session lengths) 1 and 6-month plans, the Performance ($9.99/month, 1440p, 6-hour session lengths) 6-month plan, and both the Performance and Ultimate Day Pass offers that give customers access to the benefits of their chosen tier for 24 hours. It's not yet clear when they will once again go on sale, though depending on how high the demand for GeForce NOW continues to be, it may be a while.
It's worth noting that this isn't the first time GeForce NOW has had issues with server strain, and it's also something that NVIDIA has taken significant steps in order to address. Late last year, for example, it announced a cap of 100 hours of playtime for all subscribers that sign up on or after January 1, 2025; if you're one of those new members, you can't play for more than that, even if you signed up for the most expensive Ultimate tier.
With the list of games available on GeForce NOW constantly growing and NVIDIA poised to release a GeForce NOW Steam Deck app this year, it makes sense that the company is taking steps to try and avoid "selling out" of memberships as the service expands. Unfortunately, it wasn't able to do so in this case, leading to the current sign-up cutoffs. With any luck, though, this bandwidth shortage will soon be alleviated by server upgrades and the impact of the newly implemented playtime limitations.
Analysis: A major opportunity for Xbox Cloud Gaming
- DEAL: Xbox Game Pass Ultimate 3-month pre-paid cards are just $28.49 at CDKeys, giving you three months for the price of one and a half even after the recent price increase to $19.99/month
NVIDIA's ongoing struggle to supply enough server bandwidth for the service's frequently high demand presents an major opportunity for Xbox Cloud Gaming, which is Microsoft's answer to GeForce NOW. Included as part of $20/month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscriptions, Xbox Cloud Gaming (or "xCloud," as it used to be known as) allows you to stream hundreds of games from the Xbox Game Pass library to numerous different devices.
While Xbox Cloud Gaming is often criticized for having worse visual quality (NVIDIA's servers are designed specifically for video encoding, while Microsoft's use AMD hardware originally made for consoles), it also hasn't experienced the capacity issues that GeForce NOW is going through right now. On top of that, Xbox Cloud Gaming's "Stream Your Own Game" feature recently went live, allowing you to stream a growing collection of games you own outside of Xbox Game Pass.
These qualities make it an attractive alternative to GeForce NOW that many — at least temporarily — will undoubtedly consider while NVIDIA prioritizes existing customers and those with the most profitable subscriptions to deal with server bottlenecks. High-value discounts like this $28.49 3-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate deal at CDKeys make it even more tempting, as with them, you can often get three months of Game Pass Ultimate for the price of one and a half.
