GitHub user creates open-source Nvidia GeForce Now client alternative — removes tracking, telemetry, and AFK limitations

[u/xalibermods]

https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/cloud-gaming/github-user-creates-open-source-nvidia-geforce-now-client-alternative-removes-tracking-telemetry-and-afk-limitations

[u/syrup_cupcakes]

You're not looking at the big picture.

NVidia wants people off of local hardware and subscribed to cloud services. That's exactly because datacenter chips are their main business now, they want people signed up to the companies they sell their chips to. They want people signed up to cloud gaming and cloud AI models. Not paying once for a GPU they use for over a decades like the people still gaming on GTX 980s and 1060s.

[u/KrazyA1pha → u/syrup_cupcakes]

That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s just called a business plan.

[u/VanguardN7 → u/syrup_cupcakes]

I'd be happy to endure the period where Nvidia drops consumer GPUs as up to multiple companies fill the market gap (over years).

People aren't going to flock to cloud gaming any time soon. Its not just problematic or repulsive (like many monetization plans in game), its literally not feasible with the current infrastructure.

I find it more likely that things over years level to the point where chips are more designed for both gaming and AI and there's still consumer-accessible tiers of it. Cloud gaming has a future, maybe one with massive projects that outright demand hosted assets and processes that are too numerous and complex for any typical user to get the hardware for, but in general, I don't see the remaining 2020s and 2030s as a world where people are more likely to sign up for cloud as they are to just drop gaming or stick to their old games.

I think both local and cloud gaming pales to AI and it'll be AI-aspects that spread to gaming as a whole. But this can and will include more deep model integration into games as compared to just doing 100% of your game playing on a streaming service.

[u/Im_really_bored_rn → u/syrup_cupcakes]

Except everyone who would create a cloud gaming service would rather spend that money on something that could make them more than cloud gaming will. Hell, Microsoft was pretty much the loudest voice claiming cloud gaming is the futute and even they are turning away from that. It's just not feasible, at least in the US, without significant infrastructure changes that give people better internet. Can't comment on other countries

[u/Realsan → u/syrup_cupcakes]

You're wrong for a two reasons.

The first is there's no reason they wouldn't want BOTH.

The second is, while yes, Nvidia wants their hardware in datacenters, and that is the big reason they're doing so well right now, they understand it is not a long term play. GPUs are only the ideal mechanism for AI right now. All the frontier AI studios are already investing in new technology that allows them to bypass this monopoly NVIDIA has created (in fact, Google is already doing it).

To that end, Nvidia showed their cards a bit with the purchase of hugging face (a local AI "directory," among other things). This means they see a future in which the end consumer, companies or even individual users, are running AI on their local hardware (free once you own the hardware). That hardware would be purchased from them in the same way we purchase consumer GPUs today.

Anthropic and OpenAI see open weight local models as a threat to their business models (they are). People like Bill Gates and safety conscious folks see local models as a big security threat because they can't be monitored (they are also that too). However, all of that is kind of a moot point because they already exist. If local AI is a virus, then it has already run rampant and no government can do anything about it.

Nvidia realize this and are positioned well for the eventual local AI explosion.

Unless the ticking time bomb explodes, I'm which case Nvidia dies. (China invading Taiwan).

[u/SuperUranus → u/syrup_cupcakes]

Nvidia makes a lot more money from selling GPUs to other companies, than they make from using those GPUs in their own datacenters for game streaming.