Nvidia is unlocking access to its GeForce Now streaming service on Microsoft Edge today, allowing Xbox owners to play Steam PC games on their consoles. GeForce Now includes access to more than 1,000 PC games, and Nvidia has finally started supporting the Edge browser that now ships on Xbox in a beta update to GeForce Now today.
It brings the dream of playing PC games on an Xbox a step closer to reality, as the result is easy access to stream PC games to an Xbox. As the base GeForce Now service is free, you can stream popular PC games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, DOTA 2, and League of Legends at 1080p for an hourlong session.
I’ve been able to do this in the past using Parsec, which is essentially a remote desktop app that lets you stream what’s on your PC to a browser. GeForce Now is a far better solution as it doesn’t rely on you having to own a PC that’s capable of running these games, and you just connect to the service through the browser and launch games.
What makes this all the more interesting is that the Edge browser on Xbox also supports mouse and keyboard input, so you can play certain games that don’t even have gamepad support. It’s not the most ideal experience on the Xbox right now because the virtual keyboard appears when you click and latency isn’t great for multiplayer games.
Microsoft’s head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, has recently committed to bringing full PC games to the Xbox through the company’s Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) service. We still don’t know when those will eventually arrive, but GeForce Now in the browser is the best alternative until they do.
With Nvidia expanding GeForce Now to Edge and even adding an RTX 3080 tier, it would be great to see an official Xbox client for the service, and a way to play these PC games on PlayStation, too.
