- Pentanet expands collaboration with NVIDIA off the back of successful AU launch
- RTX 3080 membership tier heading down under in 2023
- Pentanet plans to expand NVIDIA GeForce NOW into New Zealand
Following the successful launch of NVIDIA GeForce NOW™ in Australia, telecommunications company Pentanet is expanding its collaboration with NVIDIA to deliver more power and more play to gamers in 2023 and beyond.
Pentanet will continue its investment in the next-generation of cloud gaming infrastructure, bringing RTX 3080 SuperPODs to Australia. Set to launch early 2023, the RTX 3080 membership class for GeForce NOW gives users access to a dedicated GeForce RTX 3080 GPU in the cloud, which provides a significant performance boost over existing GeForce NOW membership tiers.
Each GeForce NOW SuperPOD consists of over 1,000 GeForce RTX 3080 GPUs that deliver more than 39 petaflops of graphics horsepower. Each instance is 35 teraflops of performance, nearly 3x that of an Xbox Series X, delivering cloud gaming's highest resolutions and fastest frame rates, paired with the lowest latency.
The GeForce NOW RTX 3080 membership enables games to run at up to 4K at 60 frames per second or 1440p at 120FPS on PC and Mac, up to 4KHDR at 60FPS on NVIDIA SHIELD® TV, and up to 120 FPS on select Android devices. GeForce NOW RTX 3080 members will also have exclusive access to RTX 3080 cloud gaming rigs — slices of the SuperPOD — configured with AMD Threadripper™ PRO CPUs, 28GB of DDR-3200 memory and PCI-GEN4 SSDs.
Since the “GeForce NOW Powered by Pentanet” platform launched in Australia in October 2021, the service has signed on over 270,000 members who have streamed more than 190 million minutes of gameplay from the cloud.
“When we first launched ‘GeForce NOW Powered by Pentanet’ in Australia, we were setting out to prove that a high-bandwidth, latency-sensitive application could run on Australia’s internet. With hundreds of thousands of members and a steady growth rate each month, we’ve demonstrated that not only is cloud gaming achievable, but there’s a growing appetite for it into the future,” said Pentanet Managing Director Stephen Cornish.
Gaming on the go while sipping a Bintang or skiing in Queenstown could also soon be a breeze with Pentanet setting its sights on GeForce NOW expansion into New Zealand and additional nearby countries.
These new regions have well-established gaming markets, adding millions of potential new gamers into the “GeForce NOW Powered by Pentanet” ecosystem. New Zealand has an active gaming community with 73% of the country’s five million strong population reportedly playing video games.
“Expanding our collaboration with NVIDIA is the next stage in the evolution of ‘GeForce NOW Powered by Pentanet,’ with new regions having a highly engaged gaming community. We already have some subscribers in New Zealand who have been with us since our beta program, and they’re loving the platform. The foundations are set for us to explore further activity in more regions to engage the audience of gamers who are keen to get onboard with cloud gaming,” said Mr. Cornish.
GeForce NOW enables users to turn almost any device into a high-performance gaming rig, with over 1,400 supported titles to stream and nearly 100 of the world’s biggest free-to-play games.
In September 2022, Pentanet launched new pricing tiers and added two hours of bonus play time for Priority members. This includes a new Basic tier for cost-conscious gamers, with monthly access to “GeForce NOW Powered by Pentanet” available for less than the cost of a cup of coffee or energy drink.
“It’s been a year since our initial launch, in which time we’ve learnt a lot about the way Aussie gamers play from the cloud. We’ve recently launched a suite of new membership tiers to create more accessible price points for the platform as well as to reward our Priority members with greater benefits and a more enjoyable playing experience,” said Mr. Cornish.
