Gaming News - Page 18

PGL has just announced its upgraded gaming PC setups for its CS2 Major Copenhagen 2024 event, where Counter-Strike 2 pros will fight for a $1.25 million prize pool.

PGL is ready to deliver an "unparalleled esports experience" at the PGL CS2 Major Copenhagen 2024 event with upgraded PCs featuring AMD's Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor, and NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card. PGL chose the heart of this cutting-edge setup for its exceptional performance capabilities and the "ability to handle the demands of CS2" at what I'm sure are going to be the highest FPS the team can manage.

The systems have been fully optimized by "Afromnazareth" who is a PC optimizer in Paris, France. PGL explains that the team has "meticulously optimized this bespoke gaming setup to ensure that every participant experiences CS2 in the highest fidelity without compromise. The AMD RYZEN 7800 X3D stands out as a game-changer in the esports arena, promising to elevate the competitive play of CS2 to new heights".

Sony's upgraded PlayStation 5 Pro is a hot topic for a fresh round of rumors, where we're hearing that the PS5 Pro will feature up to 45% faster rendering performance over the standard PS5, but a whopping 2-3x performance boost in ray tracing when it drops later this year.

Inside the PlayStation 5 Pro console is a beefed-up "Trinity" semi-custom SoC from AMD, with the GPU being larger and using faster system memory, which should see 20Gbps GDDR6 memory inside. The new Trinity SoC has a new, more powerful ray tracing architecture, with 2-3x performance over the regular PS5. Moore's Law is Dead's sources said they've "seen 4x speedup in some cases," which is incredible if true.

AI is another big part of the PlayStation 5 Pro console. The Trinity SoC features a custom architecture for matching learning (ML), which is used for Sony's upscaling and anti-aliasing solution, PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, or PSSR for short.

Intel's APO (Application Performance Optimization) feature is now supported by a lot more games, boosting frame rates nicely for newer Intel CPUs.

By newer we mean Alder Lake (12-gen) and onwards, but there's a bit of a catch there which we'll come back to.

APO, which offers fps boosts in the order of 10%, or perhaps more - the mileage will vary depending on the game and exact Intel CPU - only originally arrived with support for two games (Metro Exodus and Rainbow 6 Siege).

Google has taken something of a different direction with its Google Play Games app for Windows 11 (or Windows 10) PCs, adding actual PC games to the service.

For the uninitiated, Google Play Games previously allowed for playing certain Android games on a Windows PC, with the app being released a few years back.

Now, though, the library will contain not just mobile games but actual PC titles - though the question is, which ones?

Nintendo Switch 2 rumors, speculation, and inside information have been popping up everywhere lately. The latest confirms what many have been saying about the upcoming console: it will support NVIDIA's AI-powered DLSS rendering, boosting performance while maintaining next-gen image fidelity.

This comes from YouTuber Moore's Law is Dead, who states in a recent video that "most" games in development for the Nintendo Switch 2 will use DLSS. However, it won't be mandatory. That last bit is what we would have expected to see, as specific titles like 2D games would probably not have any need for leveraging upscaling technology.

Where it gets interesting is the news that Nintendo passed on using NVIDIA's cutting-edge Ada Lovelace architecture for the Switch 2 in favor of a more affordable and cost-efficient Ampere chip. According to Moore's Law is Dead, some Lovelace features, like efficiency tweaks, were added to the custom chip.

Late last year, first-party PlayStation developer Insomniac Games was the victim of a significant hack and data breach that saw details on upcoming games (including a playable section of the studio's Wolverine game) and internal Sony information. The hack revealed that the studio was also working on an unannounced multiplayer Spider-Man game called Spider-Man: The Great Web - which was canceled.

Alongside the cancelation of Naughty Dog's multiplayer The Last of Us project, studio closures, and skyrocketing development costs, Sony is seemingly moving away from focusing on multiplayer always-online live service games. A trailer for Insomniac's Spider-Man: The Great Web leaked overnight, showcasing a game that looks pretty far along development-wise.

The trailer shows co-op gameplay reminiscent of the Into the Spider-Verse animated movies, where various web slingers team up to tackle crime and villains in the game's open-world New York City. The trailer also shows the franchise's female web-slinger, Gwen, as a playable character. There even looks to be a Venom-style playable character.

It took a few years for Cyberpunk 2077 to live up to its initial hype and potential. In addition to fixing a litany of technical issues with the game, developer CD Projekt RED has spent the time since the game's 2020 debut adding new features, overhauling systems, and creating a more worthy follow-up to the iconic The Witcher 3.

Culminating with the release of the critically acclaimed Phantom Liberty expansion in 2023, the team seems ready to stop development and shift its focus toward the sequel.

Cyberpunk 2077 game director Gabe Amatangelo spoke with veteran journalist Stephen Totilo, telling him, "We're done." With the surprise addition of a functioning metro system late last year and things like custom paint jobs for vehicles in 2024, players shouldn't expect more new content.

Oh great, if Helldivers 2 wasn't already hard enough... flying bugs are coming, it seems. In a new video shared by "Projectpatdc" on the Helldivers 2 subreddit, we're seeing flying bugs... and I'm scared.

But it's the response from Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead and its CEO that has me in stitches, Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt tweeted: "I've heard rumors of flying bugs in Helldivers 2. I want to officially refute such preposterous claims. Everyone knows that 'Bugs can't fly.' And I'm not alone in thinking this. The Ministry of Truth agrees that this is propaganda from bug sympathizers that want to brainwash good people".

The evidence is there: flying bugs are taking to the skies in Helldivers 2, but the developer is being coy about it and I love it. You can clearly see in the official Helldivers 2 box art that there are flying bugs, but the developer is keeping hush-hush about it, referring to the bugs as propaganda. So good.

Blizzard recently added a new end-game mode to Diablo 4 late into Season 3 called 'Gauntlet.' A weekly fixed dungeon challenge offers players rewards and the chance to have their names immortalized if they manage to top the leaderboards (broken down into various classes and group sizes).

It's a welcome addition to the game, especially for those players who have reached the 'end-game' or Level 100. A new Gauntlet dungeon to tackle goes live each week, with players vying for the top spot.

However, things aren't quite going as planned, with several players reporting others using exploits to boost their rankings. We're not talking about outright cheating with additional apps or tools, but instead using elements of the overworld and Sanctuary to get a head start - loopholes, if you will.

A principal applied scientist at Microsoft has "successfully" gotten OpenAI's multimodal variant, GPT-4V, to play DOOM, resulting in the researcher issuing a warning about the implications of advanced AI-powered systems.

The Microsoft scientist is Adrian de Wynter, who is also a researcher at the University of York in England, penned a recent research paper with the title "Will GPT-4 Run DOOM?". In short, GPT-4 cannot run DOOM as the large language model is unable to execute DOOM's source code directly. However, its multimodal variant, GPT-4V, or GPT-4 with Vision, which is a large language model designed to take in images and answer questions about them, was capable of acting as a "proxy for the engine".

To achieve this, Wynter designed a process that includes a Manager capturing screenshots of the game engine that are then sent to GPT-4V, which returns natural-language descriptions of those images. Those descriptions are then sent back to the Manager, which sends them to GPT-4, which replies with decisions based on the history it has been sent. Wynter combined that process with an Agent model that's designed to translate its responses into keystroke commands that are then entered into the game.