With Stadia dead, GeForce Now and Amazon Luna are offering big free trials
Begun, the streaming wars have
In the wake of Google Stadia’s demise, competitor cloud gaming services Nvidia GeForce Now and Amazon Luna have expanded their free trials to entice game streaming enthusiasts left out in the cold.
As The Verge reports, Ubisoft has begun emailing Ubisoft account holders a promotional one-month free trial of GeForce Now Priority Membership, framing the service as a way of accessing Ubisoft games through the cloud now that Stadia’s controller is the only aspect left standing.
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Free trials galore
😃 Google Stadia might have kicked the bucket, but there are plenty more game streaming services to try
🦅 Nvidia Geforce Now and Amazon Luna are trying to swoop up Stadia’s leftovers
🆓 They’re offering big free trials
🚗 It’s a good time to take them for a test drive
Priority has become the standard GeForce Now subscription tier, letting you stream over 1,500 games at 1080p with ray tracing and DLSS where it's supported. Sessions are capped, so you’ll only be able to play for up to six hours before having to quit a game and boot it up again, although that’s quite a long time to spend staring at a screen, playing a single game. Membership usually costs $9.99 per month.
Although the support page advertising the promo is publicly available, you will need a special code to redeem it. So far, it looks like they’re only being sent out to Ubisoft account holders and, judging by the framing of the email, specifically to players who previously used Stadia.
If you’re not one of them, don’t worry, as Amazon’s cloud gaming service is also looking to swoop up the streaming market share left by Stadia. While Amazon Luna+ previously offered a measly seven-day free trial, you can now take it for a free runaround for two months.
Luna+ is a less powerful streaming service than GeForce Now, primarily because it doesn’t run off powerful RTX GPUs like Nvidia’s platform. But it’ll let you stream over 200 games, including a bunch of Ubisoft titles, at 1080p on PC, Fire TVs, and phones and tablets. It usually costs $9.99 per month.
Remember, Luna is a separate service from Amazon Prime Gaming, which comes bundled with every Prime subscription and hands out free games every month. Subscribers can pick up a great horror game this January.
I’ve not found much use for either Geforce Now or Amazon Luna, and have instead relied on Xbox Cloud Gaming for my streaming needs. Even if the Xbox Streaming Stick never arrives, the convenience of having a cloud gaming service already bundled into my Xbox Game Pass membership is unrivaled, as well as being able to access the best Xbox Series X games. But I’m tempted to give the services a test drive, just to see what I’m missing out on.