The clouds are becoming a far more crowded place with this week’s announcement by NVIDIA that the Grid is go. Wanting to be far more than just a cloud based gaming service for those on the move NVIDIA is calling it the Netflix of gaming, a new way to consume gaming content. By all accounts the big NV have done a technically excellent job building the Grid, the performance numbers don’t lie, this is the most playable gaming service yet but will anyone turn up to play?

For those lucky enough to live in North America and own an NVIDIA gaming device, Shield tablet or handheld, the service can now be accessed for free through the NVIDIA Hub application. Click on any of the 20 games available and the Grid will start sending the game to your device at 720p resolution and 60 frames per second, twice the frame rate of Sony’s PlayStation Now gaming service. If you’re keen to try the Grid thankfully NVIDIA have setup a Test Drive web page that will let you have a play anywhere in the world from the comfort of your PC.

By all accounts the Grid is the best cloud based gaming service so far; fast load times, zero lag, sustained high frame rates (60Hz) along with an easy to use service seems to be the consensus. Even the Test Drive web based gaming is rock solid and could be handy for gaming on the office Surface Pro 2.

NVIDIA’s gaming service will be a free until June 30, 2015. Pricing of the service after July 2015 is still unknown, and we get the distinct impression that NVIDIA is still trying to figure that one out. Here at Highpants we cannot overstate the need for the service to be affordable, make it cheap and take over fast and early, don’t follow Sony’s example please!

Gaming as a Service is the latest offering from the Clouds to get its own acronym (GaaS), oops pardon me. This is a service that will take time to mature but one that has the potential to be massive, whole new industry kind of massive.

Source: PC World
Reference: NVidia Test Drive
Reference: NVidia Grid Gaming Service