NVIDIA Geforce Now is bringing cloud-based gaming to your PC

Until now, NVIDIA has been pushing its Geforce Now cloud-based gaming service through its first-party Shield hardware running Android. As of CES 2017 however that's going to change. Starting in March, Geforce Now will be on the PC and Mac.

The service will launch in early access first to those in the U.S. followed by a full rollout later in the spring. After a free trial you'll pay for access, with differing tiers for GTX 1060 and GTX 1080 owners, for example.

But this is being pitched at integrated graphics users, aka those found on Ultrabooks or the likes of the Surface Pro 4. It gives access to your games in the cloud, allowing you to hook into services like Steam, UPlay, Origin and so on, and allows you to stream them to your device.

The heavy lifting is done by NVIDIAs Pascal-powered data centers, so in theory as long as you have a good internet connection you'll be able to play Doom on your Surface. When you load up Geforce Now on your machine you'll be taken to a virtual desktop where you can access your game services and play just as you would natively on your own PC.

It's a different angle to the so-far Android exclusive Geforce Now offering, but if it works as intended it'll open up the world of PC gaming to virtually any previously underpowered computer. We'll be watching this one closely when the time comes.