Nvidia's PS5 Pro GeForce Now gamescom comparison demo is one of the most audacious I've seen in years

Games events are always packed with a shed load of marketing bluster. Companies figure out the most impressive way to showcase their wares and then, well, deploy that. Some of that is more strait-laced; other times the truth is stretched.

With all that in mind as Gamescom 2025 gets underway in earnest, I have to give credit to Nvidia. The PC hardware monolith, currently enjoying a massively buoyant period thanks to the AI boom that’s seeing data centers plead with it for more GPU architecture, nevertheless remains quite focused on gaming. In a pre-Gamescom event, the company showed off what I can only describe as the single most audacious demo of a gaming technology I have ever seen.

The setup was as follows: Nvidia had placed two identical TVs next to each other. Both state-of-the-art LG C5 OLEDs, both clearly configured properly to give the best possible image in the demo room. Both displayed a live running copy of Cyberpunk 2077, idling away in Night City’s Afterlife bar. But there was one difference between the two images: one TV was running a locally downloaded copy of the game on a PlayStation 5 Pro. The use of a Pro is more than a little cheeky, because it should be noted that this isn’t a game with specific Pro enhancements. Still, it’s a high-end game on PS5 – and this was then compared to the adjacent screen. The other TV was running the same area of Cyberpunk 2077 in the cloud via GeForce Now – and without any additional hardware, as Nvidia’s game streaming service can be played via an app in the latest LG TVs, as well as on sets from other manufacturers now and coming soon. You could pick up a controller and play either demo, making it a true side-by-side comparison.

Eurogamer has written about GeForce Now before, and honestly not much about the service has changed with Nvidia’s Gamescom reveals. It’s just gotten a little bit . That means everything I wrote last month about enjoying using the service on Steam Deck stands, obviously. But nevertheless, that demo struck me. What was most striking was the similarity between the two presented versions of Cyberpunk rather than the differences; in this one can instantly see how much more viable this technology has become.