Nvidia's Gamescom Gambit: Did GeForce Now Just Out-Wizard the PS5 Pro?
AI Gaming News Author · Eurogamer ·
Nvidia's audacious Gamescom 2025 demo saw GeForce Now's streaming capabilities go head-to-head with the PS5 Pro running Cyberpunk 2077, revealing stream quality that was equivalent or better, backed by significant service upgrades and a bold claim for cloud gaming's viability.
Right, so Gamescom always throws up a bucketload of marketing bluster, doesn't it? Every company's trying to out-magic the next with fancy demos, usually spinning the truth into a shiny, iridescent yarn. You know that feeling when you cast a spell and it works a bit too well, but then you realise it was just clever stage lighting? Yeah, that. But this year, Nvidia? They pulled off a stunt so audacious, so utterly *brazen*, it made me spill my digital cuppa. Honestly, fair dinkum, this was something else.
I’ve been tinkering with this story all morning, and bloody hell, it’s wilder than it first appeared. Nvidia, the PC hardware monolith currently enjoying a massively buoyant period thanks to that whole AI boom (which frankly has data centres practically begging for more GPU architecture), still remains remarkably focused on us gamers. And at a pre-Gamescom event, they showed off what I can only describe as the single most audacious demo of a gaming technology I have ever seen.
So, picture this: two identical, state-of-the-art LG C5 OLED TVs, sat side-by-side. Both clearly configured for peak visual wizardry in the demo room. Both humming along, showing *Cyberpunk 2077* idling away in Night City's Afterlife bar – that neon-soaked haven for fixers and mercs. Now, one TV was running a locally downloaded copy of the game, chilling on a **PlayStation 5 Pro**. A bit cheeky, right? Especially since it’s worth noting that *CP2077* doesn't even have specific Pro enhancements. Still, it’s a high-end game on Sony’s beefiest console, so it’s the top of the pile for a comparison. You’d think that’s the gold standard for a console experience, wouldn’t you?
And then, the other TV. Same game, same scene, but this one was streamed in the cloud via **GeForce Now**. No extra hardware needed, mind you, as Nvidia’s game streaming service can be played directly via an app in the latest LG TVs (and others, apparently, coming soon). It’s like Nvidia just waved a digital wand and conjured Night City onto a screen without a bulky console in sight. The original report from Eurogamer noted that not much about the service itself had fundamentally changed, just gotten “a little bit better” – but that demo, mate, that demo struck a chord.
Because here’s the rub: you don't often see this kind of direct punch-up in gaming demos. Publishers, developers, hardware manufacturers – they all tend to shy away from it. Who can blame them, really? We players can often get lost in the weeds, obsessing over black-and-white comparisons. Forums and comment threads will deep-dive into preview-to-release 'downgrades,' the advantages of one port versus the deficiencies of another, and so on. We are, to put it mildly, a discerning bunch, and easily distracted by pixels. So for Nvidia to put it all out there, side-by-side, practically daring you to compare? That’s not just confidence, mate, that’s outright digital swagger. And yeah, you guessed it – the streamed version definitely looked equivalent to, and in places, *better* than the locally installed PS5 version. Bloody hell.
This wasn't just a magic trick for kicks. Nvidia’s been riding high on that AI boom, selling GPUs faster than I can brew a potion, but they haven't forgotten us gamers. This Gamescom, they laid out their plans for GeForce Now, and it's less about subtle spell improvements and more about a full-on power surge.
First up, the big one: if you’re on the top-tier GFN subscription, you’re about to get graphical performance equivalent to a **GeForce RTX 5080**. Yes, that’s a grand’s worth of GPU power, just… there, in the cloud. And get this: *no price increase* attached to that. Existing subscribers will just notice they can push their streamed games a good deal harder settings-wise. That’s like finding an ultra-rare loot drop in your inventory when you weren't even looking. A genuine power-up, not a dodgy microtransaction disguised as one.
Then there’s the **'Install to Play'** feature. Previously, GeForce Now operated with a list of around 2000-some games that had been carefully curated and tested by Nvidia for compatibility – pre-installed on their GFN server machines, meaning each game launches instantly. Games will continue to be added to this list, but Nvidia has now announced 'Install to Play.' This means you can choose to stream other games outside of that carefully crafted list. You'll have to manually install them onto the remote GFN machines, and there are caveats – it's limited to a list of 2200 *additional* games, and you can only install up to 100GB of stuff without paying for additional storage. But still, this has effectively doubled the number of GFN-compatible games. It's not quite 'play anything', but it's a massive step towards unbinding the digital shackles and giving players more choice.
And the third, and in my opinion most crucial, element? Shipping alongside these updates are tweaks and upgrades to improve latency and image quality. This was also demonstrated with a side-by-side comparison, this one of *Black Myth Wukong* running in the same context as it would on GFN currently versus what it'll soon look like with the new tech. The funny thing is that the current version isn't bad at all, but in that classic march-of-technology way, once you've seen the new version, with better colour precision, sharper detail, and less HUD and UI weirdness, it’ll be hard to go back. It's like upgrading your scrying pool from blurry mist to crystal clear HD; you just can't unsee that kind of improvement.
This whole show, from the audacious *Cyberpunk* demo to the granular tech improvements, tells a clear story: GeForce Now isn't just a quirky experiment anymore. It’s truly viable. In fact, the demo room was full of balls-to-the-wall demonstrations, from a commitment to supporting twitchy racing games with steering wheel support to being willing to publicly demonstrate GFN's latency by using an LDAT (a super high-end latency-testing device used by monitor manufacturers and the like) to showcase its rapid response time.
With that said, it still doesn't quite feel like Nvidia is pitching GeForce Now as the primary place anyone should play games. The fact you need to piggyback on a game library from another service (like Steam or Epic) has always set this apart from experiments like Stadia (RIP, gone but not forgotten) or Microsoft's XCloud efforts, which felt intended to supplant dedicated hardware entirely. GeForce Now feels like a complementary addition, not a replacement – but the argument for its place alongside (or even *instead of*) a console is more plain than ever. The technology is progressing at such speed that it really can compete.
Look, I'm still not entirely convinced that streaming is *the* singular future of all gaming, not yet anyway. The "game streaming gold rush" of 2018/19 had us all thinking we’d be living in the cloud by now, gaming entirely from our smart fridges or something. But whatever the digital landscape looks like down the line, I'm increasingly certain that services like GeForce Now will be an indelible part of it. These kinds of demos, where a company lays it all out on the line and dares you to compare, just cement that opinion.
This fascinating insight into Nvidia's strategy at Gamescom 2025 comes courtesy of Alex Donaldson's original report for Eurogamer, titled 'Nvidia's PS5 Pro GeForce Now gamescom comparison demo is one of the most audacious I've seen in years'.
Tags: GeForce Now, Cloud Gaming, Nvidia, Gamescom, PS5 Pro
Original article: Eurogamer