Pentanet & CloudGG Founder Stephen Cornish pulls back the curtain on some changes coming to GeForce NOW Powered by CloudGG in the near future.
In 2017 I started my own telco, Pentanet, in an effort to improve my latency in League of Legends (turns out I’m still bronze). Since then, Pentanet has grown to now operate a considerable network presence across Australia, and in 2021 we took a leap of faith and brought GeForce NOW to ANZ on behalf of our fellow gamers. From humble beginnings testing 1080p 60fps, we have gone through generational upgrades to now provide streaming up to 4k 120fps on our Ultimate tier.
We’re always listening to the CloudGG community feedback and have a shared desire to not only upgrade our existing zones with the latest hardware, but to add additional zones, reduce queue times, and keep GFN affordable for everyone - all whilst we navigate ANZ’s higher than global average power and connectivity costs.
What many in the community may not realise is that, as a business, we currently operate the platform at a cost-neutral level. This means we make just enough to 'keep the lights on’ but are limited in how we can build out and invest in all the things that our community want to see grow. So, the time has come for us to evolve as we look to usher the next generation of performance and users into our community. These changes will help us improve service quality, upgrade features, and continue to improve the experience we provide:
- Firstly, we are making some adjustments to monthly plan pricing on November 19. These will align us with the increased operating costs that we have shielded our userbase from over the last few years. Six-month plan prices are not being adjusted, and remain the best value for your cloud gaming buck.
- Additional RTX 4080 capacity will be coming online imminently at our AU East server location.
- We are looking to upgrade Priority to support 1440p resolution, as well as ultrawide monitors, and the ability to save graphics settings across sessions. More news on this will be announced later.
- Basic membership will be retired due to its overall capacity consumption outweighing its economic feasibility in the current landscape. Existing Basic members are encouraged to choose a new plan, otherwise they will automatically be moved to the free Trial membership on their next payment date after November 19.
- We will also need to temporarily pause free Trial membership on November 19 until at least the new year. This will allow us some breathing room to bring our new capacity online and ensure the service runs optimally for our premium members first.
- On the upside for free Trial users, we are looking to introduce a way to have a limited trial of Ultimate in the new year. To enable this, we will require all accounts to be verified via SMS to ensure the RTX 4080 capacity is not misused.
The biggest change coming to GeForce NOW Powered by CloudGG in the new year will be the introduction of a monthly playtime cap on our plans. This is the most practical way for us to achieve our goals of improving service quality, reducing queue times, and enabling zone expansions. However, (take a quick breath!) as a thank you to our current community, we’ve decided that anyone with an active paid membership when we launch monthly playtime, will be honoured as a ‘CloudGG Pioneer', and will remain on their uncapped plan indefinitely unless they downgrade or cancel their membership.
We understand change can be daunting, but we’re confident that these changes strike the best balance between looking after the CloudGG community, while enabling us to sustain growing demand. It’s through these changes that we can bring next gen capacity online to more of ANZ, continue to improve features, and ensure that GeForce NOW Powered by CloudGG endures long into the future. Thank you for being a part of our community, and for supporting us in making cloud gaming flourish down under.
GG – Stephen, Founder of Pentanet & CloudGG
Editor's note: Wording has been updated to reflect that CloudGG Pioneers will be able to upgrade (either from monthly to six-monthly, or to a higher tier) and retain their uncapped status.
