One of the first things you may want to consider is what each service is going to cost you. This way, you can start to analyze whether the rest of the features and functions are valuable based on what you’re spending. Each one of these game streaming services is a little bit different and therefore has a different associated cost. Here are the cost comparisons for Google Stadia, GeForce NOW, xCloud, and Shadow.
Stadia
When it comes to price, Stadia isn’t the most expensive service. Not from a monthly standpoint. While it did take $130 to buy into Stadia up until recently when Google started offering the service for free for a two-month trial, you no longer need to buy the $130 Premiere bundle. When the trial period is over though (or after the offer to claim it ends), you will have to pay for the Stadia Pro subscription if you want to keep the benefits of it. And that’ll cost you $9.99 a month. That’s not a terribly expensive monthly cost, but some have felt that it isn’t worth it because it isn’t giving you access to enough stuff for that price. Either way, you can access Stadia Pro for under $10 a month. The trial period for Pro also ends with the arrival of the Stadia Base service, so you can always stick with Stadia Base (which is free) and just pay for the games you want individually each time.
GeForce NOW
Just like with Stadia there are two pricing tiers here for NVIDIA’s game streaming service. One is free, which is the base package, and one has a monthly fee which is the founders package. The founders package is the premium tier and costs $4.99 a month (there’s also a 90-day trial still being offered on it). So it’s half the cost of Stadia but, there are also differences in what you get. For instance you don’t get any free games every month along with the GeForce NOW membership. With Stadia Pro you do. There’s also a limit on what games you can play, as GeForce NOW has withdrawn a few games from its service at the request of publishers. But, all of the games you do have access to are games you’ve already purchased on your PC. Through Steam, The Epic Games Store, etc. So if you’ve purchased games through any PC store fronts, then GeForce NOW lets you access them on the go from your phone. It even works with laptops that may have otherwise not been able to handle some of the more demanding games. If you want a less expensive game streaming option, then don’t rule out GeForce NOW.
xCloud
xCloud might be just be one of my personal favorites. It’s currently free and there’s a ton of games that you can stream to your Android smartphone. And soon enough it’ll be available on Windows 10 PCs as well after Microsoft finishes internally testing and rolls it out. The fact that it’s free though comes with one huge caveat. It’s in beta. More specifically a closed beta. Which means you can’t just sign up and start playing immediately. You should however signup anyway if you haven’t already, and we’ve linked to how you can do that at the beginning of this post. Because eventually you will likely get an invite to participate in the beta. Microsoft has said that it’s going to continue sending out invites and bringing more users online. You aren’t really getting any new games for the most part. So if you’re looking for a tried and true service that offers a mix of old and new releases, like DOOM Eternal, then xCloud is not for you. But it is free for now, so you might as well take advantage of what while you can.
Shadow
Last on our list is Shadow and it also happens to be the most expensive. At least when it comes to the monthly price. You basically pay for games the way you do on GeForce NOW because Shadow lets you stream your already existing library of PC games. The monthly cost is a little bit higher though than the other two paid options. Currently it will cost you $14.99 a month. That’s also just for the standard Boost plan. There’s also an Ultra and an Infinite plan that will be available sometime in the future for $29.99 and $49.99 respectively. Also worth noting is that the above-mentioned costs are for the month to month pricing. Shadow does also offer prices based on signing up for an annual plan. Though these make the monthly payments essentially cheaper, you have to keep the plan for an entire year. Still, if you choose to go that route, then the Boost plan drops to $11.99, which is much closer to Stadia for really something that’s quite a bit more powerful. Additionally the Ultra and Infinite plans will drop to $24.99 and $39.99 respectively once they launch.
