PS5 and Nintendo Switch India Sales Near a Million: Where Does Nvidia’s Newly Launched GeForce Now Service Stand in a Crowded Gaming Arena?
GeForce Now is a bet that Indians will pay for content. And I'm here for it.
At a pace reminiscent of 1990s Indian bureaucracy, Nvidia’s finally laid bare a sliver of its GeForce Now launch plans for the country. Indian gamers can now sign up for the GeForce Now Early Access waitlist. Considering an announcement of “soon” was made back in February, it’s about time the trillion-dollar megacorp finally made pricing details known despite not having a firm release date yet, just an early access period beginning April 16. As per a press release from the company:
GeForce Now is opening in beta ahead of the full launch, offering custom early-access passes for premium cloud gaming at a special introductory price. Each pass provides 90 days of unlimited play, with the option to purchase another pass to extend access. The Performance 90-Day option will be available for INR 999, and the Ultimate 90-Day option will be available for INR 1,999. 200GB of persistent storage will also be available to purchase as an add-on at INR 299 for the 90-day period. A free tier will also be available in the coming weeks.
For what it's worth, the pricing is as fair as it gets when compared to what Xbox Game Pass costs here, starting at INR 499 a month. And while Xbox Game Pass grants you the games as well, Nvidia’s solution leans heavily on users spending on game purchases via Steam, Epic Games Store, Ubisoft Connect and GOG. Or at the very least, to link an Xbox Game Pass subscription to it. Granted there are over a 100 free-to-play games you can stream via GeForce Now, but you’re essentially paying to rent Nvidia’s servers.
“India is home to one of the world’s most dynamic and rapidly expanding gaming communities,” said Vishal Dhupar, Nvidia managing director of Asia-South in the aforementioned press release. “With the launch of GeForce Now in India, we are enabling gamers to experience RTX 5080‑class performance instantly without the cost or complexity of high‑end hardware. GeForce Now significantly lowers the barrier to entry for PC gaming, making premium PC gaming more accessible than ever.”
Interestingly, GeForce Now is entering India at a time when consumers demand more bang for their buck than ever.
The State of India PS5, Nintendo Switch, and Gaming PC Sales in 2026
The biggest beneficiaries of BGMI’s and Free Fire’s ascendancy in India has been the PC and console space. Sony should hit a million PS5s sold this year assuming GTA 6 launches which would make it the first console to hit that milestone eclipsing the PS2’s narrow miss of it 13 years ago.
And while the PS5 should get a price hike of about INR 10,000 for the disc version and INR 5,000 for the digital version (which is poor value in the long-term anyway given how expensive digital game prices tend to be on the PS Store), the expectation is that the hardware will continue to sell at its existing rate of about 50,000 units per quarter. Assuming GTA 6 makes its 2026 release date, I won’t be surprised to see that number double, getting India to the million-seller milestone.
On the PC side of things, gaming laptop sales in the INR 50,000 to INR 75,000 category have held steady despite erratic pricing. Though several sources in the supply chain speaking on condition of anonymity fearing retribution admit that this has fraying since the beginning of the year with prices creeping up over 20 percent in some cases.
A combination of AI guzzling up every resource users would need for local compute combined with Apple’s aggressive MacBook Neo have seen demand shrink by about 15 to 20 percent.
“We usually move 30 to 40 Windows gaming laptops a month,” says a Mumbai-based retailer. “Our suppliers have hiked prices with AI and the ongoing Iran war, so demand has dropped by half. Most of our buyers are students or first-time laptop owners. Converting them over to MacBook Neo has been easier.”
Meanwhile the Nintendo Switch continues to sell strong. Despite being 9 years old at this point, the value conscious Indian buyer has taken to it, with sales rivalling the PS5.
Sure it won’t get GTA 6, but it too will hit a million units sold in India by this year considering its the cheapest console available in India right now retailing for about INR 30,000 or thereabouts depending on where you’re buying. Majority of the sales happen to be at brick and mortar retail given the flexibility in pricing that stores tend to have.
Also keep in mind that the Nintendo Switch has been available since 2017 at retail in the country even if Nintendo has no official presence in India yet.
“The Nintendo Switch 1 has replaced the Xbox Series S for us,” says a Delhi-based store owner. “Customers want a cheap console to play Mario and Pokemon. Most of them buy it with a game or two, come back a week later and ask us to mod it to play games at a lower price.”
This suggests that Microsoft tactically erred by stopping Xbox console sales in India. Then again, Xbox hasn’t been relevant here since its 2020 launch. Granted it did launch its Xbox Cloud Gaming service but the response has been muted with concerns over poor service and general apathy from the company. As I mentioned in my last post, Xbox India is on life support.
Right Service, Right Time?
With Sony occupying the premium audience (despite what its cringe-y ads might portray), Nintendo grabbing the value-conscious crowd, albeit unofficially through parallel imports and grey market stocks (while the company has hired a CEO for India it hasn’t revealed any plans just yet), and PC OEMs coming to terms with AI, where does this leave GeForce Now?
I believe Nvidia has the opportunity to capture an audience that’s PC-gaming curious. The upfront cost of PC gaming along with the friction to get games running as they should are what has driven many to consoles. With a trend towards lower upfront costs, GeForce Now is the right service at the right time.
In my limited time testing GeForce Now during its media access period that began a couple of weeks ago, the visual fidelity and fluidity hold up well enough. Then again, I’m based in a city that has the company’s servers so your mileage may vary.
I still prefer my games on my premises running on hardware I own rather than adding another layer of dependency which is what GeForce Now entails. Though it does make for an interesting use case on the go when I don’t have access to my consoles or gaming laptop.
For what it’s worth, when I played around with GeForce Now mainly for Starfield and Pragmata, I found it to be a treat to use. It’ll be interesting to see if the service continues to be smooth when it's open to all or if it is derided by users like Xbox Cloud Gaming is right now. This isn’t the only challenge however.
The Biggest Challenges for GeForce Now in India
Perhaps the key problem for Nvidia is communicating the value proposition of GeForce Now to an audience that’s never quite come to terms with paying for content. This isn’t just for video games either. Despite several video streaming services, piracy continues to prosper thanks to a mix of heavy-handed pricing and censorship.
Convincing mobile-first gamers to create a Steam or GOG account, an Nvidia account, and buy games digitally to play them on their smartphones or tablets or TVs via GeForce Now may be a bridge too far in terms of friction.
This is usually solved with compelling content and marketing of such to ensure an influx of users. However when most use cases demand users to pony up an additional INR 2,000 or so on average, it’s unlikely that the mobile-first gaming audiences brought up on Free Fire and BGMI may bother. Unless they’re courted in a manner that makes them aware how much more they’d be spending on a console or PC.
It’ll be interesting to see if Nvidia takes that approach, particularly as it could mean alienating its partners such as Asus, HP, and Lenovo to name a few. What’s likely is targeting existing PC users.
Nvidia revealed at its GeForce Now event in February that gaming PC and laptop sales in India were up 150 percent over the last five years. This tracks with the uptick in Steam traffic from India as well as the surge in popularity (and profits) of certain games in the country such as Valorant and GTA 5. Along with this, the average broadband speeds as per its estimates are about 50Mbps which is good enough for services like it to flourish.
With that in mind, I’d expect those who bought a PC or a laptop a few years back but have been priced out of new hardware to be the audience. Along with those owning the latest and greatest looking for convenience when they don’t have access to their PCs or laptops.
That said, it would be tone-deaf not to bring up that some of these problems which warrant GeForce Now’s existence have been brought about by Nvidia itself. This is courtesy of its focus on AI (that doesn’t add value), circular financing of said AI, and a CEO weaselling out of announced deals for the aforementioned AI financing.
The real path to profitability from GeForce Now users will be getting them to upgrade to PC gaming down the line with an Nvidia GPU to boot. Until then, this is likely going to be a complementary service for those already invested in PC gaming hardware.