Game Pass is coming to GeForce Now, and by now we mean Thursday

Earlier this year Microsoft promised to bring Game Pass to NVIDIA's GeForce Now service, and now it's delivered on that promise: from tomorrow, Thursday 24 August, you'll be able to play Game Pass games on the streaming service. Both Game Pass and selected Microsoft Store games will be available and playable.

You're not going to get every single title straight away, because there are still compatibility issues to be addressed with some games. But you'll be able to play big hitters including No Man's Sky, Grounded and Deathloop.

This isn't the first time Microsoft has brought Xbox games to GeForce Now; it was previously available on the service until Microsoft pulled it in 2020, and earlier this year it made a batch of Steam / Epic Games Store games available. But this is the first time since 2020 that Game Pass titles have been playable on NVIDIA's service, and it's a ten-year deal.

In addition to the likes of Halo and Minecraft, Microsoft will also be making third party games available: think Elder Scrolls, Fallout and Call of Duty.

Why is Microsoft sharing Game Pass with NVIDIA?

The short answer: Activision. Microsoft is trying to get regulators to approve its purchase of Activision Blizzard, and part of that approval involves demonstrating that Microsoft doesn't have an effective monopoly on cloud gaming. 

By making PC Game Pass available on a rival streamer, and by also selling Activision Blizzard streaming rights to Ubisoft – which Microsoft also announced this week – Microsoft is clearly hoping to persuade regulators that it isn't a boss to be battled. The sale of Activision Blizzard rights would mean Microsoft wouldn't be able to keep those games as Xbox Cloud Gaming exclusives, and Ubisoft would be free to offer cloud gaming on other platforms.

If you're wondering why you might want to access Microsoft's games through a completely different service, GeForce Now is targeted at a much more hardcore kind of gamer than PC Game Pass – while there's of course overlap between the demographics of both services, NVIDIA's offering is much more focused on graphics performance and low lag. That means that games may end up delivering a better experience streamed over GeForce now than over Microsoft's own cloud gaming service.