GeForce Now beta is coming to Australia in mid-2021
Beta registrations are open now.
Last week Nvidia announced that its game streaming service, GeForce Now, will roll out in Australia in 2021. It named Pentanet as the provider—a Perth-based ISP that currently only services Western Australia. But in a new announcement today, it's confirmed that the arrangement will service the whole country too, with the caveat that you'll need a decent connection for it to work.
Australians can register their interest in the service now, ahead of the mid-2021 beta, which will accept users from all over the country. Where connections are too unreliable or slow, Pentanet's Stephen Cornish said that "we won't shy from the challenge of building our own solution [next-gen wireless technology] we know to work, like we did for Perth."
Still, the infrastructure needs to keep up with these ambitions, so for now, GeForce Now servers will be in Sydney and Perth only for the beta. Cornish says in the announcement that beta registrations will influence the speed of deployment in other cities and states. "Gamers need to be close to our infrastructure, so our deployment strategy will be guided by level of demand across Australia, and potentially even New Zealand," he wrote.
Microsoft's xCloud game streaming tech, which is available as part of the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, is currently in beta in Australia.
Correction: This article originally stated that the GeForce Now beta would only roll out in Perth and Sydney. These cities are where the servers will be based, which will service the country.