GeForce NOW Adds Monster Hunter Wilds To Slay Beasts In The Cloud

Fighting a monster in Monster Hunter Wilds
Having trouble finding a newfangled GPU in stock? Join the club. Alternatively, you can join NVIDIA's GeForce NOW cloud gaming service, at least until things calm down at retail (and perhaps grow a killer 5-foot beard while you wait -- sigh). All that aside, GeForce NOW is actually a capable service and it's gaining one of the hottest games on the market right now, Capcom's newly released Monster Hunter Wilds (plus several other titles).

The second installment in the Monster Hunter series has been out for all of a week (it released to PC and console last Friday, February 28). To say it's already a hit is an understatement. In a press release, Capcom said Monster Hunter Wilds roared past 8 million units sold in its first three days, having reached that impressive milestone faster than any previous Capcom title. Now it's found its way to GeForce NOW.

"GeForce NOW members can hunt even the largest, most daunting monsters with the sharpest clarity, armed with a GeForce RTX 4080-class gaming rig in the cloud...It's all part of the eight games available to stream in the cloud this week," NVIDIA said in a blog post.

GeForce NOW tiers with pricing and features (screenshot).

NVIDIA's shout out to the GeForce RTX 4080 is in reference to its Ultimate subscription tier, which grants access to a gaming pod pairing the GPU with 16 virtual CPUs. As you would expect, the top tier offers the most bells and whistles, including the shortest queue times, 100 hours of of monthly playtime (with 15 hours of rollover), 8-hour session lengths, support for up to a 4K resolution an up to 240 FPS, and support for a bunch of goodies such as DLSS frame generation, Reflex, HDR and SDR10, 5.1 and 7.1 channel surround sound, and cloud G-SYNC. Of course, it's also the priciest at $19.99 per month.

The next tier down is the Performance tier, which is also ad-free and includes 6-hour session lengths, up to 1440p and 60 FPS gaming, and various other perks. The server pod isn't as burly and you don't get perks like DLSS frame generation and Reflex, but it's also half the price at $9.99 per month.

Finally, there's a free tier that's supported with ads. It limits session lengths to just a single hour, drops the max resolution to 1080p, and doesn't come with any additional perks. However, it's a good way to kick the tires before committing to a paid tier.

There are also day passes available ($3.99 for the the Performance tier and $7.99 for the Ultimate tier) as well as discounted 6-month pricing ($49.99 for Performance, $99.99 for Ultimate). So there are plenty of options, either for short term or longer term commitments.


Here is the full list of games that are unlocked this week...
  • Dragonkin: The Banished (New release on Steam, March 6)
  • Split Fiction (New release on EA App and Steam, March 6)
  • Split Fiction: Friend’s Pass (New release on EA App and Steam, March 6)
  • FragPunk (New release on Steam, March 6)
  • Ghostrunner 2 (Epic Games Store)
  • Kingdom Come: Deliverance II (Epic Games Store)
  • Monster Hunter Wilds (Steam)
  • Prey (Epic Games Store, Steam, and Xbox available on PC Game Pass)
NVIDIA's latest game additions to GeForce NOW add to an already fleshed-out service that boasts over 2,000 titles. And unlike last month, we're not seeing any sold out tiers, though it will be interesting to see if that changes, given the current state of discrete GPUs and the popularity of Monster Hunter Wilds.