NVIDIA to offer "GeForce NOW" beta in Safari to revive "Fortnite" on iPhone / iPad

The United States NVIDIA started offering the beta for iOS to play the cloud gaming service “GeForce NOW” through the Safari browser on November 19 (local time) in North America and Europe. With the official service, it will be possible to play games that require a gaming PC on iPhone and iPad, and iOS users will be able to play the popular battle royale game "Fortnite" whose iOS version has been removed from the App Store again. The possibility of becoming is also widened.

In cloud gaming, game data processing is executed on the server on the cloud side and streamed to the terminal. GeForce NOW supports Windows, Mac, NVIDIA Shield, and Android through the "GeForce NOW" app, but it doesn't offer apps for iOS devices due to restrictions on the App Store terms of service. Not only NVIDIA, but Microsoft (xCloud) and Google (Stadia) do not support iOS for the same reason. The solution is to serve it as a web app through a browser, and Apple acknowledges that the service can be served without being reviewed by the App Store.

The requirements for using the beta service for iOS are iOS 14.2 or later for iPhone and iPad OS 14 or later for iPad. And you need a gamepad. You can use the keyboard / mouse to navigate the game menu and enter characters, but due to hardware support restrictions, the full game experience is not available with the keyboard / mouse. This means that games that can only be operated with a keyboard / mouse are not currently supported on iOS.

GeForce NOW also offers free games, including Fortnite. In August of this year, Epic challenged Apple's revenue sharing model and billing system and clashed with Apple, removing Fortnite from the App Store. Fortnite seemed to be played primarily on consoles and PCs, but according to Epic and Apple trial sources, 116 million people played on iOS, of which 73 million were on iOS only. I was playing. There is a strong desire to play on mobile devices using touch, and Epic and NVIDIA are working together to develop a Fortnite version that is easy to play with touch. "I'm looking forward to experiencing the cloud-streamed version of Fortnite by GeForce NOW on mobile," and it seems that he is seriously working on the revival of Fortnite playing on iOS.

GeForce NOW through the browser started beta availability for Chromebooks in August, and it is said that usage through Chromebooks has exceeded 10%. For Chrome, we plan to expand support not only to Chromebooks but also to Chrome platforms (Windwos, Mac, Linux, Android) widely in the first half of 2021.