The first Activision Blizzard game has landed on NVIDIA's GeForce NOW cloud platform, and it's the publisher's biggest franchise: Call of Duty. More specifically, GeForce NOW users will be able to access the newly released Modern Warfare III, last year's Modern Warfare II, and the free-to-play Warzone via Call of Duty HQ. For now, only the Steam version is supported, so those who play Call of Duty via Battle.net won't be able to stream to GFN.
NVIDIA's cloud service had lost Call of Duty and all other Activision Blizzard games when it exited beta in early 2020. The publisher requested the removal at the time. NVIDIA unsuccessfully tried to get them back for over three years; it took Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard and the Xbox company's willingness to bring their games to GeForce NOW to make it happen.
Some might scoff at the idea of playing Call of Duty via cloud. However, owners of a GeForce NOW Ultimate membership can enable the so-called Reflex 240 FPS streaming mode to get the lowest possible latency. As seen in the showcase video below, the latency can get as low as 23ms in Rainbow Six: Siege.
All of the Call of Duty games also support Reflex, which means users equipped with a G-Sync or G-Sync compatible display will be able to take advantage of GFN's variable streaming rate to the client, delivering smooth and instantaneous frame updates to the display.
Even if you don't have a GeForce NOW Ultimate membership, though, Call of Duty's single player campaign, cooperative Zombie mode, and even casual competitive mode should still be enjoyable via the cloud.
Here's the full list of GFN additions for this week:
● Last Train Home (Steam)
● Gangs of Sherwood (Steam)
● SteamWorld Build (Steam, Xbox and available on PC Game Pass)
● Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles (Steam)
● Call of Duty HQ, including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and
Call of Duty: Warzone (Steam)
● Galactic Civilizations IV (Steam)
● Halls of Torment (Steam)
● Kona II: Brume (Steam)
● Laika: Aged Through Blood (Epic Games Store)
● Pillars of Eternity (Xbox, available on PC Game Pass)
● RESEARCH and DESTROY (Xbox, available on PC Game Pass)
● Roboquest (Epic Games Store)
● StrangerZ (Steam)
Throughout the rest of December, GeForce NOW users can look forward to new releases like Stargate: Timekeepers (out on December 12), Pioneers of Pagonia (December 13), Soulslinger: Envoy of Death (December 14), Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, The Day Before, BEAST, and The Anacrusis (this one through the Xbox app/Microsoft Store). There are also a bunch of good old games soon to be compatible with the Xbox app/Microsoft Store, including Age of Wonders 4, Control, Darksiders III, The Medium, Metro Exodus, Mortal Shell, Observer System Redux, Pathologic 2, and Sable.
In other GFN news, subscribers can now claim a 30% discount for the Backbone One controller via the Rewards portal. Free users will have access to the discount starting on December 7.