Blade Shadow Now Available in California: Get a High-End Gaming PC for $35/Month

• Blade is a French startup company the specializes in cloud gaming;
• After two years of operation, Blade is now available in the USA (California);
• Priced at $35 per month, you can rent a streaming box and gain access to a remote Windows 10 PC. 

More than two years after the initial launch, Blade Shadow is now available in the USA. Currently available in California, this is the first time that Blade, which was founded in France in 2016, enters the US market. During the last two years, the company was working on perfecting its technologies that allow you to play the most demanding games even if you don’t have a gaming PC.

The Shadow service wants to be the Netflix for games. The idea is to use Blade’s device to access Shadow and stream games over the Web. This means that you need to rent a streaming box that acts as a video decoder. The box comes with an AMD Falcon CPU whose role is to handle complexities such as resolution changes and frame rates. In addition, you can also connect peripherals such as a mouse, keyboard, monitor, and headset. As you can see, the entire product works as the desktop component. In addition to the Shadow Box, you can also use the service on your Mac and Android, while iOS support is coming soon.

So, how this service actually works? You need to rent the Box and connect the required peripherals. One of the big requirements is connecting the Box to the Web via Ethernet (15MBbps at least). Then, you get a full-fledged Windows 10 PC in the cloud. Instead of having its own game library, you can free to play just about any game you already own (or plan on buying). This is a big difference from Nvidia’s GeForce NOW that relies on a number of supported games. Make sure to use the provided link to check out what GeForce NOW offers, which is currently in beta.

Aside from GeForce NOW (whose pricing is still unknown), Sony already offers something similar. For $19.99 per month, PlayStation Now lets you stream games over the Web using a preloaded library. It brings support for numerous PS4 games, where the service can be used on PCs as well. There’s also a New York-based LiquidSky who is charging users by the hour. For $19.99, you can buy 80 hours of server time.

When it comes to the Blade Shadow, there are different pricing plans to choose from. The service costs $34.95 a month with a one-year commitment or $39.95 for a three-month commitment. If you don’t want to commit but instead pay on a monthly basis, this will cost you $49.95. However, you need to be located in California, for now. For that money, you can count on using a powerful remote machine. That machine is powered by a Xeon processor, 12GB of DDR4 RAM, 256GB of storage, and a high-end Nvidia Quadro P5000.

Even though it would be cheaper to buy a gaming PC, Blade Shadow is definitely an interesting option. We’ll be keeping our eye on this service, and bring you updates as they come.