Epic Games is having the time of its life at the Game Developers Conference this year, unveiling the future of Unreal Engine with what seems like the closest we've been to photo-realistic graphics in Unreal Engine yet. The new 'Troll' short film was debuted at GDC 2019, which you can check out below:

Troll is a new short film from Goodbye Kansas and Deep Forest Films and features a Shrek-like princess in all-CG powered by Unreal Engine, with Epic's first debut of its new physics engine. We're looking at full real-time graphics here with real-time ray tracing, cinematic-quality lighting, soft shadows, and reflections all being done on Unreal Engine.

All of this is powered by a single NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card which is impressive, too. This is a short film and not a game, so don't expect a huge world from what we're seeing here, but to run cinematic-quality graphics like this in real-time on a single graphics card is damn good.

NVIDIA has released some interesting stats on their GPU adoption, with new numbers releasing during their recent Investor Day event detailing Turing, Pascal, and older-gen GPU adoption.

The company has said that Turing GPUs have sold 45% more than Pascal GPUs in the first 8 weeks of launch, and considering the harsh reception and huge prices of the GeForce RTX cards, it hasn't stopped NVIDIA from selling a bunch of them. But how much penetration has Turing had into gamers' PCs?

According to NVIDIA's own graph we can see that just 2% of NVIDIA's consumers have upgraded to a Turing GPU, while 50% are using Pascal (GTX 10/16 series) and 48% are using older-gen GeForce cards. Close to 90% of GeForce GTX 10 series owners that are upgrading are grabbing higher-end Turing-based GPU offerings, too. You can see that most people that have a GTX 1080 or GTX 1080 Ti are upgrading to a new RTX 2080 or RTX 2080 Ti, which is interesting to see.

If you thought Respawn's surprise release of Apex Legends affected Fortnite in any way, you'd be wrong. Epic Games announced at GDC 2019 that Fortnite is now home to over 250 million registered players, up 50 million players from December's milestone of 200 million.

Epic also announced that Fortnite reached another milestone in having 10.8 million concurrent players at once, up from 10.7 million. Epic boss Tim Sweeney explains: "It's a real game. It's a shooter. It's worldwide. It's the first shooter with a huge female population. Somebody estimated it at roughly 35 percent, which is unprecedented--why isn't it 50?--but it's unprecedented for anything like this. It's because it brings together players in a social experience".

Carmageddon was such a mega smash hit when it launched in the 90s and now its developer Stainless Games has announced its latest IP, something that is similar to its 90s hit in that its a vehicle-based multiplayer game that centers around destruction and all-out chaos: ShockRods.

ShockRods will be arriving in the summer on the PC through Steam Early Access, while Stainless Games will give gamers a sneak peek at the game at EGX Rezzed in London between April 4-6. The game is teased as: "Stainless Games are back with a brand new IP featuring all the over the top, in your face vehicle combat that you have come to expect from this world class dev studio".

The description continues: "ShockRods is a 6v6 or 12 player free-for-all arena shooter, bringing all the blisteringly fast-paced action, mayhem and overpowered weapons you would expect. ShockRods draws inspiration from the classic "kill or be killed" arena shooter greats of yesteryear with over the top weapons, explosions and insane mobility, but with a twist - the titular ShockRods; these customisable, hulking, technologically advanced vehicles, equipped with nitros and the ability to double jump, allow for truly thrilling and action packed gameplay. It's an easy to learn, hard to master, high octane, thrill-a-minute ride!".

Google might've changed gaming forever by ushering its new Stadia game streaming platform, but Microsoft is set to one-up the tech giant with its own Project xCloud.

Following Google's first strike in the Cloud Wars, Microsoft is biding its time with a streaming fusillade of its own. The home of Xbox is preparing its own ambitious "Netflix for games" cloud streaming service called Project xCloud, which will use its potent webwork of Xbox LIVE and live services to beam games to consumers' phones, desktops/laptops, and consoles. While Google has YouTube, Microsoft has its own strengths with its huge Xbox LIVE engagement ecosystem, and it plans to leverage this might to the fullest.

E3 2019 will be Microsoft's time in the lime light, and Xbox division head Phil Spencer hints the company will showcase its own Project xCloud streaming service en masse at the event. "Google went big today and we have a couple of months until E3 when we will go big," Spencer said in an internal memo published by Thurrot.

Today at GCD 2019, Oculus announced the new Oculus Rift S virtual reality headset.

The Oculus Rift S isn't a dramatic jump over the existing Rift insofar as power, and isn't what you'd expect from a true next-gen successor. If anything the Rift S is an iterative refresh over Facebook's original HMD and serves as the new dedicated desktop-powered model. The Rift S will sit higher above the middling self-contained $199 Oculus Go in the company's VR hierarchy.

The Oculus Rift S has quality-of-life upgrades across the board including convenient Oculus Insight inside-out motion tracking built right into the headset, alleviating the need for external sensors. Using five sensors built into the HMD, Oculus Insight tracks and maps out physical environments in real-time to preserve immersion for room-scale VR experiences. The Rift S' visuals have been upgraded too. It sports a single LCD panel with boosted 2560x1440 resolution and improved colors and pixel density. The headset uses the same higher-end VR optics found in the new wireless Oculus Go, which have been optimized to eliminate the screen door effect.

Disney has seemingly resurrected Lucasfilm Games, an old label dating before LucasArts. But it's not what you think.

New job openings for Lucasfilm Games have sent some mixed signals. Gamers and industry reporters think this means Disney could start making its own games again, namely Star Wars titles, but this isn't the case. The five jobs in question aren't for game developers, but for producers, marketing specialists, and brand coordinators--all the people who serve as administrative gatekeepers and manage, review, and approve the content, not actually create it.

These jobs are for the very same gatekeepers that made Star Wars games development so difficult. While working on titles like Star Wars 1313, Visceral's cancelled Project Ragtag game, and even EA Vancouver's scrapped big open-world game, developers had to run their ideas through middlemen at Lucasfilm. Every little decision would have to be approved by administrators (and before Disney bought Star Wars, George Lucas himself) before it made it into a game build. And often times these additions wouldn't even release in the final game.

Some of Microsoft's key first-party indies are coming to the Nintendo's handheld-console hybrid with Xbox LIVE integration, but this doesn't mean Game Pass will follow.

At GDC 2019, Microsoft today confirmed Cuphead is coming to Nintendo Switch with Xbox LIVE features. Studio MDHR will use the new Xbox Game Stack toolset to migrate undisclosed Xbox LIVE functionality to the Switch port (we'll likely see cross-play, friends lists, and achievements arrive). The Xbox online platform will be introduced in a post-launch update following the game's Switch release on April 28, 2019.

"Growing out of these recent discussions, we are partnering with Studio MDHR to investigate bringing Xbox Live features beyond Xbox and PC to Nintendo Switch," reads a post on the Xbox Wire. "Yes, this means that fans will now have the opportunity to experience Studio MDHR's award-winning debut game on Nintendo Switch with Xbox Live! We'll be working with Studio MDHR to implement Xbox Live features into Cuphead on the Nintendo Switch in the coming months."

Epic has secured more timed exclusives for its PC gaming storefront, including hugely anticipated titles like Obsidian's new Fallout-esque The Outer Worlds.

During today's Unreal GDC 2019 livestream, Epic Games revealed a host of new exclusives coming to the Epic Store that won't be available on Steam for a year. Games like Obsidian's upcoming FPS RPG The Outer Worlds, which was on Steam's storefront for months after its reveal, are now marked for the Epic Store instead of Steam. The Outer Worlds will launch on the Windows 10 storefront, though, and being published by Take-Two's new Private Division label.

Remedy's ambitious new sci-horror shooter IP Control is another big one crossing over (it too has been on Steam for a long while). We know Remedy is making another game outside of Control, and this too could be on the Epic Store. This move kind of feels like a bait-and-switch: most of these games have been pre-orderable on Steam and will instead jump to a competing platform (like Metro: Exodus).

CD Projekt RED's next major AAA game should be set in the Witcher RPG series, the developer reiterates.

Back in 2016, CD Projekt RED outlined a new five-year plan that sees Cyberpunk 2077 and a big new AAA RPG both released by 2021. As of March 2018, that plan is still in place.

The studio is only working with two IPs, Cyberpunk and The Witcher, and there's no reason to speculate further, CD Projekt RED President Adam Kicinski said in a Pareto Securities stream from 2018. "We've never said the new AAA RPG is a new IP. We've said in our strategy that we have two franchises--Cyberpunk and The Witcher. That's it for now. So speculating about another IP...there's no reason to speculate another IP. We're working on two franchises, full stop. So if there's another game it'll be Cyberpunk or The Witcher. Nothing else."