This is seems like a shameless push to convert users already using streaming to GeForce Now and keep subscriptions up. As the GPU supply issues have mostly resolved.
They just announced a huge two year pandemic subscriber gain back in August. However no mentions of what number were paid and of what tier though. Well of course gamers probably flocked to services like that when they couldn’t get or didn’t want to pay stupid high mark ups. Now I wonder how many of those subscribers are sticking around. Selling a GPU is great, but perpetually renting one out in a time shared service is what really gets the investors salivating. Now they need to keep those numbers up at the very least and growing if possible.
Other than the PR hit, it’s a win win win for Nvidia. They get rid of the technical debt of having to maintain the local streaming tech, sounds like they cleared out a lot of old stock just before this announcement, and anybody that isn’t absolutely pissed about it they may convert to a investor pleasing sub.
Remains to be seen how bad the PR backlash is, but Nvidia seems to be convinced they are the goose that lays the golden GPUs and sure people will be mad. However even if they are mad, they are still buying for now.