GeForce Now gets Xbox and Game Pass account sync

Worlds are colliding, as Nvidia’s stream-the-games-you-already-own service and Microsoft’s all-you-can-eat game subscription service (which also does streaming, sometimes!) get a little bit closer. Nvidia has added the ability to sync your Xbox account to the GeForce Now streaming service, making PC games connected to your Xbox account playable over Nvidia’s servers.

Crucially, that also includes games in the Xbox Game Pass PC library, if you’re currently subscribed. By the current count, that’s over 300 games you can access for just $10 a month, including some quite recent indies and big-budget titles from Microsoft’s developer stable, like Starfield. (GeForce Now streaming is free, though you’ll have to pay for the longest sessions and best visuals.) A lot of those games can already be streamed via the Xbox Cloud Gaming system, but some of those that can’t now have the option via Nvidia’s streaming system instead of Microsoft’s.

It’s an interesting move, to be sure. Xbox Game Pass with its library of subscription console and PC games is ostensibly a competitor to GeForce Now, albeit with a markedly different value proposition. This partnership appears to be fallout from the Microsoft-Activision acquisition (say that five times fast), in which the former promised not to monopolize the emerging game streaming market. The Verge reports that the current deal should be in place for 10 years, and that Activision-Blizzard titles are set to hit GeForce Now soon, after the publisher removed them from the service in 2020.

That’s on top of GeForce Now’s existing account syncing options, which give you access to the GFN-compatible PC games you’ve purchased from Steam, Epic, and Ubisoft’s Ubisoft. There’s also a new promotion on the service: If you sign up for six months of GeForce Now Ultimate ($100, 8-hour play timers and RTX 4080-powered remote servers), you get three months of PC Game Pass for free.