Local wireless internet service provider Rain and GPU maker Nvidia are teaming up to finally bring South Africans access to Geforce Now. The partnership and subsequent agreement were announced today, Thursday 3 November but the service will only kick off in Q1 2023 with a limited beta program.

Gaming on cloud Nvidia

If you’ve had your head in the sand, Geforce Now is Nvidia’s cloud gaming service. Much like how Netflix allows you to watch movies you don’t have, Geforce Now lets you play games you don’t have on a PC you don’t own. It doesn’t even have to be a PC, you can stream games to any compatible device. Yes, that includes your slightly ageing smartphone if your options are limited.

“Members can stream titles they already own from popular digital gaming stores including Steam, Epic, Ubisoft, Origin, even on under-powered devices.”

Unfortunately, Rain failed to mention local prices and available tiers in the announcement. In the US there are three plans to choose from. Ranging from a limited free tier to the RTX 3080-powered premium tier for $20/m (R370/m).

This partnership will allow an estimated 24 million South African gamers to enjoy cloud-based game streaming. Latency shouldn’t be an issue as the Geforce Now servers will be hosted locally at Rain’s datacentres. That will obviously depend on your internet connection which is a necessity for the service.

That number could very well grow with the availability of cloud-based gaming. Prospective gamers won’t need to spend tens of thousands of rands on powerful computer hardware.

“We are extremely proud to partner with NVIDIA and bring cloud gaming to the fast-growing gaming market in South Africa. The ability to stream and enjoy the latest games on most devices, is a massive leap forward for the gaming community” said Rain’s CEO, Brandon Leigh.

You can register here for next year’s limited beta programme.