The Game Awards have made an interesting switch for its marketing push for 2020. Last year, the awards ceremony partnered with Steam and Xbox to debut a series of demos that let players try out the nominated games before making a purchase.
This year the ceremony has made a bet on cloud-based gaming, and is also hosting its demos on Nvidia’s GeForce Now service.
Geoff Keighley’s celebrity-filled extravaganza hasn’t completely said “goodbye” to Steam just yet. Valve’s marketplace is still hosting a 20 percent-off sale for the nominees (as is the Xbox marketplace), and demos are still available on the platform as they were last year.
But adding GeForce Now to the picture creates an interesting opportunity for developers and players. Because the demos were previously based on Steam, players still needed a Steam account and a capable machine to try out some of the year’s top-rated games.
This year, they can try some of the 2020 nominees on any device that supports GeForce Now, including mobile devices and lower-powered computers.
Those games include Little Nightmares 2, Disc Room, A Juggler’s Tale, and more of the indie and mid-sized games nominated in 2020.