Gaming - Page 259

Sony's beefed-up PlayStation 5 Pro consoles continue to ramp up with rumors, solidifying what we've heard over the last few months... but there's one very interesting tidbit here: RDNA 4 is being used.

AMD's current-gen RDNA 3 GPU architecture is found both inside the Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards as well as inside the PlayStation 5 console. But, the new PlayStation 5 Pro console will reportedly feature an integrated graphics processor that uses BVH8 traversal shaders, and while that might not sound like much, it's huge news.

This confirms that the PlayStation 5 Pro is using AMD's next-gen RDNA 4 RT (ray tracing) engine, also confirming that RDNA 4 doubles the throughput per cycle, something that hasn't been mentioned in any open-source patch yet, says leaker Kepler. The BVH8 traversal shaders are an 8-level bounding volume hierarchy for ray tracing, compared to the 4-level hierarchy on the RDNA 2-based GPU inside of the APU in the PS5.

Last week, the internet was blessed with some specifications for Sony's upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro, revealing a significant performance uplift compared to the standard PlayStation 5.

The original specifications leak began from Moore's Law is Dead, which was later backed up by Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson, a notable insider within the industry. Henderson wrote that the leaks were real and that Insider Gaming had seen leaked PS5 Pro documents sourced from a verifiable PlayStation developer portal. Now, Henderson has posted a new report revealing even more PS5 Pro specifications, such as System Memory, CPU, and Audio specs.

Insider Gaming has claimed to have learned more specifications of the upcoming console, and for comparison sake, the publication has included the specs of the standard PlayStation 5. The PS5 Pro system memory is rumored to have 576 GB/s (18GT/s), which is a 28% increase over the standard console. As for CPU, the PS5 Pro is rumored to have an identical CPU to the PS5 but includes a "High CPU Frequency Mode" that bumps the CPU to 3.85GHz, which is a 10% increase over the standard console.

In December, Ninja Theory, the developers behind the award-winning Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, released a trailer for the next installment in the series.

The trailer for Senua's Saga: Hellblade II was released at The Game Awards 2023 and showcased what I'm now considering to be the gold standard for video game trailers. The teaser showcased next-gen graphics, intense gameplay, phenomenal cinematic sequences, epic sound design, and incredible motion capture technology. Hellblade 2 will be set in "Viking Iceland," where Senua will journey to save those who have fallen victim to tyranny while attempting to overcome the darkness both within her and around her.

Notably, the in-game shots seen in the trailer were captured using the Xbox Series X, which is a testament to both the capabilities of Microsoft's flagship console and the work Ninja Theory has put into the title. Just like the in-game shots of the trailer, Ninja Theory's recently released screenshots were captured using "photo mode", which Ninja Theory says will be returning in Senua's Saga: Hellblade II.

The leaked PlayStation 5 Pro specs appear to be accurate, according to a new report from Insider Gaming.

Sony's new PS5 Pro sounds like a heavy upgrade over the original console. Recent reports from Moore's Law is Dead sparked debate among gamers, as the YouTuber outlined substantial power jumps with the Pro model. Now Insider Gaming's Tom Henderson says the leaks were real. Henderson, who has close ties with the going-ons in the industry, has since been proven trustworthy with his reporting.

Insider Gaming claims to have seen the leaked PS5 Pro documents and that the information came from a verifiable PlayStation developer portal. According to Henderson, the PS5 Pro codenamed "Trinity" will have 33.5TFLOPs of power, representing a 225% increase in raw performance over the base PlayStation 5 model. Apart from the sizable performance increase, the Pro is said to utilize two new advanced proprietary technologies: a built-in AI accelerator, and something called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution Upscaling (PSSR), which is Sony's in-house answer to NVIDIA's DLSS and AMD's FSR upscalers.

The Embracer Group has divested another company, this time one of its biggest revenue-generating divisions.

Just years after the Great Expansion from COVID-19 spending, the games industry is now facing a Great Contraction. Companies are laying off workers en masse, cutting production budgets, and essentially stocking firewood for a harsh winter. This financial pressure has led Embracer Group, a once-mighty gaming empire with dozens of games in development at any one given time, to sell pieces of itself off in order to stabilize its accounts.

The reports were right. Embracer has chosen to sell Saber Interactive, one of its best-earning games divisions. The rationale is simple: Embracer wants to reduce its spending, and divesting a group will eliminate that group's production costs while also delivering a premium in the process. Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch bought Saber's independence, as well as the rights of 12 other studios for a total purchase price of $247 million. Karch opened a new company, Beacon Interactive, a Florida-based LLC for the rights buyout, and Beacon now owns the rights to these studios.

Created by NVIDIA using its powerful RTX Remix tools, Portal with RTX showcases what full path tracing can bring to an experience and how RTX Remix can transform a classic PC game like Portal into a cutting-edge modern masterpiece.

Path tracing is, of course, hardware intensive, and to play Portal with RTX at a decent frame rate, you'll need the help of DLSS 3 Frame Generation and a GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics card. Today, NVIDIA announced that it has updated and leveled up Portal with RTX to make it compatible with DLSS 3.5, allowing the new Ray Reconstruction tech to improve ray-traced image quality.

DLSS 3.5 is a game changer for RT image quality, as seen in Cyberpunk 2077 and Alan Wake II, so it's great to see it added here. The update also supports RTX IO (aka DirectStorage) for faster loading times and a smaller storage device footprint (Portal with RTX now takes up 37% less disk space).

Star Wars Outlaws, from Ubisoft and Massive Entertainment (The Division, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora), is described as the first open-world Star Wars game and will launch later this year.

The story is set between Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. In it, you play Han Solo-like scoundrel Kay Vess as you "fight, steal, and outwit your way through the galaxy's crime syndicates."

As part of its latest DLSS update and round-up, NVIDIA has confirmed that Star Wars Outlaws will launch later this year and feature ray tracing, DLSS 3 Frame Generation, and Reflex support. The announcement arrives alongside a new RTX-powered ultrawide trailer showcasing snippets of some of the game's planetary (and out-of-space) environments.

Black Myth: Wukong is one of the most highly anticipated game releases for 2024. It is an epic action adventure based on the legendary Monkey King and Journey to the West myth, powered by the latest Unreal Engine 5 technology. The game fully uses NVIDIA's RTX technologies, and several impressive RTX On trailers have dropped over the years.

With the launch set for August 20, today comes word from NVIDIA and developer Game Science that Black Myth: Wukong will be one of the most visually impressive and cutting-edge (see: hardware intensive) PC games ever when it arrives in the second half of this year. In addition to DLSS 3.5 support (including Frame Generation and Ray Reconstruction), Black Myth: Wukong supports full path-traced lighting.

Yes, this is the latest game to support full ray tracing, also known as path tracing. This technique presents realistic and cinematic lighting, shadows, global illumination, and reflections. It powers Cyberpunk 2077's incredible RT Overdrive mode, Alan Wake II's highest detail mode, and NVIDIA's path-traced Portal with RTX mod.

We've got some news about the AI upscaling on the beefed-up PlayStation 5 Pro console, which is reportedly called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR).

In a new video, leaker Moore's Law is Dead has sources that have explained to him that PSSR is Sony's new Multi-Frame Super Resolution (MSFR) implementation. It uses PlayStation Machine learning (PSML) to perform super-resolution processing on input data to generate color buffers with a current maximum resolution of 4K, although support for resolutions up to 8K are coming in a future version of the SDK.

PSSR is a machine learning-enhanced version of Temporal Anti-Aliasing Upscal (TAAU). It will replace a game's existing temporal anti-aliasing or temporal upsampling. The inputs are "quite similar to DLSS or FSR" with full HDR support.

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.

A week ago, Microsoft teased a new update to DirectX 12 for developers that will usher in "a new era of performance and efficiency." Today, we've got more details on what the new 'Work Graphs' entail and what to expect from PC games that take advantage of this potential game changer. Will it help eliminate or minimize poorly optimized releases? Potentially, the big thing with 'Work Graphs' is that it will help eliminate CPU bottlenecks.

For those needing a crash course in GPU rendering in PC gaming, a CPU bottleneck is a situation where the CPU is limiting the overall performance of the game - leaving untapped GPU horsepower on the table. In my recent review of the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER, you can see this in action when playing Horizon Zero Dawn at 1080p. In the chart above, 8 of the most powerful GPUs deliver roughly the same performance because the CPU, engine, or other factors bottleneck performance.

'Work Graphs' aims to reduce the need to use the CPU for tasks and scheduling and switch to a more robust GPU-driven rendering system.