Nvidia’s New GeForce Now Day Passes Are A Good Idea With Poor Execution

Game streaming services are quite good in 2024, but there are plenty of gaming enthusiasts that can’t fathom game streaming being an enjoyable experience. After all, basic logic tells us that having a gaming PC directly connected to our peripherals and network at home will offer lower latency than cloud gaming. While it doesn’t make sense for most cloud gaming services to offer free trials — the overhead required to support game streaming is too costly — it stands to reason that these services would benefit from giving users a chance to experience their offerings firsthand. That’s exactly what Nvidia is trying to do with GeForce Now day passes, which launched for the first time last month.

However, Nvidia made some questionable choices in its implementation of GeForce Now day passes. The prices are too high for the duration of cloud gaming sessions offered, and it’s hard to think of a single use case where going with a day pass over a membership makes sense. Nvidia is the loser here, because it is missing out on a chance to offer users low-cost trials of what GeForce Now is like. Let’s take a look at where Nvidia went wrong with GeForce Now day passes, and how the company can fix them in the future.

Why the GeForce Now day passes are useful

The functionality is actually needed, but the price doesn’t seem right

Before we get into the pricing situation, it’s important to outline why a cloud gaming day pass should exist at all. For starters, there are a ton of factors that can dictate how good of an experience cloud gaming is in a given situation. These factors, for the most part, are not something that companies like Nvidia can control. Nvidia hosts the service and the gaming PCs that users can access, but plenty of things on the user side can make cloud gaming unplayable. These include things like a user’s network connection, input devices, hardware, preferred gaming titles, and more.

In essence, day passes allow users to test out a service like GeForce Now and discover whether it works for their gaming needs. Nvidia’s own disclaimers say that real-world performance will depend on “device type, settings, network quality, and more.” For example, when I tried out using cloud gaming services on Apple Vision Pro, I had no idea whether they would work at all. If a service did function as usual, the level of gameplay and latency experienced was a complete unknown. That was especially true while using a device like Vision Pro, where I was dependent on a wireless connection and couldn’t use Ethernet for faster speeds.

It would’ve been unfortunate if I paid for a monthly subscription and wasn’t able to make use of it due to hardware or network limitations. That’s precisely where an Nvidia GeForce Now day pass would’ve come in handy. I’d be willing to eat the cost of a day pass if GeForce Now didn’t perform how I expected, but losing a month’s worth of money would be a much tougher pill to swallow. The problem is, due to the awful pricing of GeForce Now day passes, you’re losing value either way.

Why the pricing is a problem

You’re overpaying for a day pass compared to a monthly subscription

Source: Nvidia

Nvidia offers two tiers of GeForce Now day passes, called Priority Day and Ultimate Day. Priority Day matches the feature set of the Priority membership tier, while Ultimate Day matches the feature set of the Ultimate membership tier. With the lower-cost option, users can spend a day (24 hours) streaming from a “premium rig” with RTX on. The Priority Day pass also includes 1080p gaming at up to 60 FPS, with a maximum six-hour session length. Upgrading to Ultimate guarantees you an RTX 4080 system with a maximum resolution of 4K at up to 120 FPS, as well as a longer eight-hour session length.

Here’s the issue: these day passes cost 40% of the price of their respective monthly subscriptions. The Priority Day pass costs $4 and a Priority membership costs $10 per month, while an Ultimate Day pass costs $8 and the Ultimate membership costs $20 per month.

Source: Nvidia

That’s a serious overpay, considering that the Priority monthly subscription comes out to be roughly 33 cents per day. Even at double the cost, the Ultimate membership is still less than a dollar per day when the $20 subscription fee is spread out over a full month. We don’t expect Nvidia to charge those prices for a day pass, because there would obviously be no incentive for users to grab a membership. But the $4 and $8 prices of GeForce Now day passes feel like an egregious markup.

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Nvidia can easily make GeForce Now passes better

Give buyers an option to upgrade to a monthly pass if they like the experience

It’s particularly frustrating that the GeForce Now day passes are available in this way, because there are at least three ways Nvidia could have done better. For starters, I think Nvidia could’ve offered more competitive pricing for the GeForce Now day passes — even a dollar or two less would be reasonable. However, if the company was set on this pricing, it should’ve given users an option to upgrade to a monthly subscription while splitting the difference.

As the pricing model currently works, users will end up paying as much as $28 for their first month if they try an Ultimate day pass and choose to subscribe to GeForce Now. Extending the pass to a length of three days or a week would’ve made the pricing more accessible as an alternative. Hopefully, this is something Nvidia can fix in the future, because it’s really hard to recommend GeForce Now day passes at their current pricing.

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