Xbox Games Come To A New Platform

Microsoft and Nvidia recently announced a 10-year deal to bring Xbox games to the streaming service GeForce Now, and the first have now been revealed.

Gears 5 from developer The Coalition is the first title in the partnership, with Deathloop, Grounded, and Pentiment following on May 25. More titles will be added "regularly," Nvidia said in a blog post.

GeForce Now allows members to stream games purchased from Steam on PC, smartphone, and other supported devices. Support for the Microsoft Store will happen in the "coming months."

GeForce Now streams games over the cloud, thus removing the need to own a powerful PC to play games. The $20/month Ultimate package includes games running on Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, with support for up 120fps. The $10/month package offers a "premium rig" and up to 60fps. A free package is available, too, albeit with much more limited offerings.

In February, Microsoft and Nvidia locked down a 10-year deal to bring Xbox games to GeForce Now. Microsoft seemingly made the deal to encourage the UK to approve the Xbox company's $68.7 billion buyout of Activision Blizzard due to the regulator's concerns about the cloud gaming market. It didn't work, as the CMA blocked the deal, and Nvidia stood up for Microsoft in the wake of the decision and said it hoped for a positive resolution as Microsoft appeals the decision.

The CMA said it's blocking the Microsoft deal in the UK primarily over concerns about the cloud gaming market. Microsoft did not agree with the CMA's findings, with president Brad Smith saying the CMA made its decision based on faulty reasoning. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick criticized the announcement, too, saying cloud gaming makes up an "inconsequential" component of the wider gaming industry right now.

Regulators in the EU, meanwhile, have approved the Microsoft-Activision Blizzard merger.