Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Please Don’t Buy This”.
Let’S jump right into our headline topic: GeForce now just got a pretty significant upgrade it now wait. Is this not in the thing uh, but no okay? Well, whatever the point is that GeForce now supports variable refresh rate, which I have to confess, having not been briefed on this by anyone at Nvidia or done any Research into it whatsoever. I have no idea how that would work, knowing that, in order for your monitor to know what refresh rate to run at it talks to your GPU and the fact that your GPU is streaming over, that their internet um, pretty freaking cool. Now it sort of seems like it might have something to do with nvidia’s own drivers, because right now, variable refresh rate is limited to people who are running a relatively modern Nvidia GPU, so GTX, 16 50 RTX 2000 up, which sort of raises the question.
Why you’re paying for GeForce now in the first place, because you already have a decent GPU but then hold on that theory, gets kind of thrown in the garbage and uh lit on fire? The second that you realize that on a Mac you have support for variable. Refresh rate on Apple gpus or get this AMD gpus, oh on the older Intel B Max. So what the heck that would seem to suggest that Nvidia is just kind of arbitrarily locking Windows users who don’t have GeForce gpus into fixed refresh rate operation on GeForce.
Now then again, you know if the uh market share numbers that I was just looking at earlier this week or anything to go by. That’S basically, nobody, not matter yeah nvidia’s market share in the discret GPU space is unbelievable, and what’s what’s really wild about it? Right now is AMD has a pretty competitive lineup if you’re not looking at raate tracing. If you’re, not looking at um, you know which most people aren’t AI powered frame generation where they do still have a significant Advantage.
People do care about that. They do yeah that one, the r tracing part uh, but if you, but if you mostly care about rasterized gaming performance, traditional gaming performance AMD, actually has a pretty competitive lineup between their older 6,000 series and their newer 7,000 series cards. I will say, though, if you look at like settings guides for games everyone’s turning that stuff on these days, everybody yep and it kind of makes sense, um, anywho, p, uh. It is now $ 10 a month, and that gets you a premium rig with RTX on up to 1080p resolution up to 60 FPS and up to a 6-hour session length, though you can start a new session at any time weird. Well, I I get it.
I mean just in case you’re idling. Let’S say you were a popular. You know streamer SL YouTuber and were gaming when your heart unexpectedly stopped beating. Well then, this way uh, GeForce now or Nvidia would not be on the hook for streaming all that game data over the course of an entire weekend. Sure it’s not hypothetical, oh wow, this guy knows I don’t. It was a whole thing – um, oh boy, so anywh, who the point is that oh ultimate is $ 2 a month and gets you an RTX 480 rig, I’m up to speed with RTX on up to 4K resolution up to 120 FPS and 8 Hour session lengths.
I really don’t see the 6our session length why there, why is there differentiator that big of a problem in the first place, but hey you, can game for 8 hours straight with GeForce now ultimate, It’s the weird part to me is that it’s only two more hours Of course, of course, none of this is what I’m upset about. All of that is pretty cool. There are some limitations around the variable, refresh rate support uh. I don’t believe it works with multim monitors, for example, but overall I think that is super cool.
The thing that I’m kind of heard about is their priority day passes now In fairness to Nvidia, okay, In fairness to Nvidia. I am not super supportive of the you know. The the the free month concept give us your credit card and you get a free month. Yeah, however, I don’t think that this is the solution.
A priority question. Yes, would you enable that for flow plane, if there was trials on Flo, plane yeah, you said you’re, not a huge fan. I’M not sounds good. Sorry, it’s it’s well enough established practice at this point that I I’m I’m looking at it going as long as it’s very easy to cancel and super transparent. That’S our bar uh! So when we’re working with sponsors, for example, sometimes community members will flag for us that a service is difficult to cancel whatever else exactly um, and that’s where I draw the line. Whereas a free trial is a free trial, especially if it gives you very real access to the service, and in our case this isn’t the kind of service that is effectively useless for the trial period. Like you know, you look at some services like here I’ll pick on a longtime sponsor I’ll pick on Squarespace Squarespace. Their trial exists, oh yeah, not so you can actually like have a website for any amount set it up and see if you’re satisfied. So you can dink around with it a little bit and right. So so something like that, you know honestly, someone could.
If we had a trial period, someone could Q download the entire site if Squarespace had a if Squarespace had a paid trial. I believe their trial is free, so if Squarespace had a paid trial um, you know I’d be a little annoyed by that. Let me, let me just see: yeah get your get trial start no credit card required so because theirs is kind of useless during the trial period, they’re doing the right thing and the is free. So, for our part, if we’re giving if we’re taking payment information, my expectation is that the service is very unfettered usable during that time. So I don’t know that we would offer a one-month trial. Maybe we’d offer a shorter trial, but what I can say is I thinking like a week or less.
We probably wouldn’t be doing this for a one day pass for the regular, the regular tier or the priority tier priority day pass. You are going to pay pay $ 4, which I guess is fine, except that a full month is $ 10. What exactly is NVIDIA trying to achieve here with a $ 4 day? Okay, so ultimate is going to cost you $ 8 compared to $ 20 a month. Why would anyone in their right mind, pay 40 % of the price of an entire month for one day and again In fairness to Nvidia? I’M not a huge fan of the whole.
Take your credit card now and then hope you forget about the subscription model. It’S become the standard, you know what would be cool actually, but everyone knows why they do that, and this is something. But why not? I mean it’s OB, it’s just who cares? It should be a dollar or $ 2. This idea is free, and I love this idea sure what if it contributed towards your first month, I would be far more okay with that.
It’S like it’s a it’s a pretty brutal percentage, but if you do subscribe for the month, it’s like well, I got to try it now. I feel I still feel like it should be cheaper, but I would like it if it contributed to towards honestly. I think it should just be. I would be happier with a free Monon trial. It shouldn’t be a dollar, that’s too cheap or just have me subscribe for the full month and prate me a partial refund, if I’m not happy with it or something like I just I just if the idea I just don’t really understand what Nvidia is trying to Achieve here, if the idea was to create a very low barrier of Entry, so that I can try it before I buy it, then it should actually be high.
The barri they don’t want to process a bunch of $ 2 payments, which is fair enough. But if processing that $ 2 payment locks someone into a subscription, if it turns them into a subscribing customer Mission, freaking accomplished and – and I can understand – Nvidia not wanting to just give away GeForce now because it as we know – is extremely expensive for them to run. Both in terms of processing like like actual power and in terms of bandwidth, this is this is a very premium service, even on Nvidia side, their costs are high, so I get that they want to cover the cost and they don’t want to do free trials.
But this is such a weird non-solution that I just I’m having a hard time Imagining the sort of the the penny pinching that was going on in the board meeting where they were making this decision like. Are they actually worried that on a one-day pass, someone is going to do. You know four six- hour sessions in a row to like to really get the maximum out of it, and so they have to charge $ 4 versus a buck or like come on. You guys if the idea is just to get the credit card which, realistically from a from a marketing standpoint, is 90 % of the battle is getting someone to create an account and enter their credit card.
There’S a free tier, that’s worth the few dollars yeah. It’S h, it’s ad supported yeah. So realistically, is it really your concern that you’re going to lose money on people who want to try priority and ultimate? If you don’t charge them enough, I I I just I can’t really. I can’t really follow.
I I I just don’t I just don’t really follow. Yeah we’ve got people saying like the four bucks should get you a week yeah. If, if $ 10 is a month, I could totally see $ 4 being a week and then and then it’s and then at least we’re kind of talking about people kind of paying approximately the same amount per time used and we’re talking about a period of time. When you could actually, potentially you know when you have a vacation, binge a game like it’s actually useful where $ 4? For I don’t know, I just I have nothing else to say other than that.
I just don’t really get it. I think it should be a lower price yeah. It should be, it should be a lower price. The day pass idea.
I actually love, I think, that’s really cool if we could do a float plane day pass I’d, be I’d, be super into that. We haven’t built the mechanisms for trials and for I don’t think it works very well for our service. To be completely honest, I mean it. Could I don’t think you unless it doesn’t include download, I think yeah yeah, something like that could work might be all right.
Yeah, there’s definitely some stuff that uh that we need to explore in terms of driving people to float plane we’re going to be trying something new today, um we’re going to be doing. We, hopefully are we not doing what uh float plane: exclusive Afterparty, oh okay, yeah we’re playing Super checks. I already forgot about that. That was I’m Downes [ Laughter ] ago.
I immediately started to think like some feature launch or something I was like. Oh no. What am I not ready for we’re back to lonus Le development? Oh man, the fear in his eyes, yeah I I legitimately was like what am I not ready for? I don’t I don’t know you actually looked extremely frightened. I led inside.
Oh man, .