NVIDIA GeForce Now adds support for M1 Macs and Windows ARM PCs

You might have heard of game streaming services like Google Stadia, Xbox Cloud Gaming and Amazon Luna – Sadly none of them are available in India yet – which allow you to play a selection of games by streaming games through the cloud. There’s also another relatively unknown player – Nvidia’s GeForce Now which allows you to stream games you own on different stores via internet.

Up until now, you had to use the desktop app on Windows 10 if you wanted to use the service. It also did not support the laptops that come with an ARM chip. Moreover, the Mac application did not support the Macs that came built with Apple’s M1 custom chip. That changes today, as GeForce Now is officially supported now in Google Chrome on Windows 10 and on macOS, by updating to v2.0.27.

In the release notes, it is mentioned that users of Google Chrome on Windows and macOS can start using the service by visiting this website. As a sliver of hope for other unsupported platforms, Nvidia also mentions that users on other platforms may be able to use the service by logging into the website on Google Chrome, but Nvidia wouldn’t guarantee support. It was previously possible to access the service’s web client on any OS by spoofing the user agent string, but users who did, often noted high input lag, making games unplayable.

Despite all the good points above, people in India can look away from this service, as it is not yet available in India. Moreover the company is also mum about its plans of expansion to other countries, including India. Moreover, you will also need to be in a GeForce NOW supported region in order to use the service.

It is to be noted that other Google Chrome based browsers like Microsoft Edge, Brave and Vivaldi still aren’t officially supported to use the website. In a majority of such services, the web app is just the same to use as the desktop app, and if supported can even be installed as a PWA. The desktop app still has a few more features on tap, but it’d still be one less thing to install.

Apart from the addition of Chrome support, it’s now easier to share games with friends via social media. There is now an easier way to create bookmarks and desktop shortcuts to your favourite games for quicker access. While these are features that are good to have, based on reviews from abroad, it does seem like the service still has some catch-up to play with its competitors Google Stadia and Xbox xCloud.