Game Tech News

The original Homefront, released in 2011 by THQ, was an intriguing game with a laundry list of flaws. But in spite of its failures, a sequel was greenlit anyway. THQ then proceeded to implode, the franchise was sold, it changed hands yet again, and now Homefront: The Revolution is finally available for purchase. Was it worth five years of turmoil and heartbreak? Let’s take a look.

Since this game spent a large part of its development cycle under the care of Crytek, it’s built on the CryEngine. And as such, it’s not entirely surprising that the PS4 version has a native resolution of 1920×1080, but the Xbox One is stuck at 1600×900. Both console builds target 30fps, but neither one delivers anything close to a stable frame rate.

Digital Foundry tested the performance on the consoles, and both were found wanting. Interestingly, the Xbox One actually performs a bit better than the PS4 — likely because of the faster CPU clock speeds and the lower resolution.
Unfortunately for Xbox One owners, it doesn’t make much of a difference. The frame rate is erratic for long stretches on either console, and even when the engine can deliver 30fps, frame pacing problems make the game a bit stuttery.


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When the open beta of Overwatch launched earlier this month, the hype around Blizzard’s newest release hit a fever pitch. Gamers acquired a taste for this team-based shooter, and the weeks between the beta and the final release were nothing less than torturous if the countless posts on social media are to be believed. Thankfully, Overwatch is now officially available worldwide on the Xbox One, PS4, and PC. And from the early looks of things, it seems that everything is about a smooth as you’d expect it to be.

Critically, the game has been very warmly received. Metacritic currently has 10 reviews listed for the PC version, and it’s averaging a score of 94/100. Unfortunately, the console versions don’t have enough reviews to populate a score just yet. Over at our sister site IGN, the final review score isn’t quite ready. However, the review-in-progress is available, and it has a tentative score of 9.4/10. If the servers continue to remain steady, and there aren’t any surprise issues that pop up, it’s safe to assume that the score will hold.

A quick glance at the Overwatch forums shows that there are definitely some technical issues going around, but nothing seems particularly widespread. And if you check out the Overwatch hashtag on Twitter, it’s mostly just happy chatter from fans – not outrage. It’s a shame that there’s a small percentage of people who can’t play the game they purchased, but it’s par for the course — especially on the PC. No game will ever be completely bug-free.

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One of the consistent claims about the rumored PS4K upgrade is that Sony has absolutely mandated backwards compatibility. Developers are supposed to target both the PS4 and PlayStation 4K / PlayStation Neo, but they aren’t allowed to introduce features or capabilities on one platform that don’t work on the other. An anonymous developer has challenged that assertion, claiming that part of why Sony put the PS4K into production is because it couldn’t get VR to run at its target frame rates.

“PSVR was going to be terrible on a [launch] PS4,” a source told Edge Magazine in an apparently deleted tweet. “It was going to be truly awful. Something a bit more powerful starts to bring VR into range.”

The anonymous source also commented on Sony’s plans to upgrade the platform, saying: “I’m not interested in marketing strategies or adoption rates or whatever. I’m not considering that. But as someone who does the technology for video games, somebody doubling my GPU and adding 30% CPU is brilliant. I’d love that every two years. I’d love it every six months, if possible. All I want is the most powerful hardware that I can get my hands on.”


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An anonymous European developer has confirmed that a major European studio is working on a VR title for the Xbox One upgrade currently expected in 2017. Microsoft is expected to announce the new console at E3 this year, and the new title will likely debut there as well.

Microsoft intends to work with Oculus Rift to support VR on the Xbox One rather than building its own in-house solution, according to Ars Technica. At this stage in the game that’s probably wise; VR headsets historically take several years to develop and the new Xbox One (Xbox 1.5? Xbox Two? Xbone Xtreme?) will already be hitting markets behind PlayStation VR and the PlayStation 4K / 4.5 / Neo. Unlike Sony, which has mandated strict backwards compatibility requirements, Xbox One VR may only be available on the 2017 model due to VR’s high performance demands. This makes sense, given that the Xbox One typically lags the PlayStation in performance tests, even though its games typically run at a lower resolution.

How will Microsoft upgrade the Xbox One?

If rumors are true, Sony’s PlayStation Neo is a straightforward update with an improved GPU architecture, a faster CPU clock, and faster GDDR5 memory. Microsoft, in contrast, may have to make some tough choices about the future of its platform.


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It’s been a good year for Geralt of Rivia. The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt was released to critical acclaim and massive financial success in May of 2015, and the Hearts of Stone expansion received similar praise just five months later. Blood and Wine, The Witcher 3’s final expansion, is finally available, and it’s impressive in every way. Not only does it offer dozens of hours of high quality monster slaying adventures, but early reports say it looks and performs better than the base game itself.

Based on 29 aggregated reviews, the PC version of Blood and Wine currently has a metascore of 92/100 on Metacritic. At our sister site IGN, the PC version received a 9/10 for its rich storytelling, vibrant new scenery, and clever improvements to the combat upgrade system. Unfortunately, it seems that the console versions of the game weren’t widely available for review ahead of the official release.


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When Nvidia launched the GTX 1080 earlier this month, it established its new Pascal-derived GPUs as leaders in the top of the market. Now, as expected, the GTX 1070 has dropped, piledriving both Nvidia’s previous cards and every top-end GPU AMD has to offer.

First, let’s hit the technical specifications. The GTX 1070 packs 1,920 CUDA cores, 120 texture units, and 64 ROPS. That works out to 75% the cores and texture units of the larger GTX 1080, but the pixel fill rate is theoretically the same between the two cards, since they have the same number of ROPS. Base clock is 1.5GHz with boost clocks up to 1.68GHz and 8GB of 8Gbps GDDR5 memory (the GeForce GTX 1080 uses 8GB of 10Gbps GDDR5X memory). Memory bandwidth is 256GB/s, which puts the new GTX 1070 in between the older GTX 980 (224GB/s) and the 980 Ti (336GB/s).

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The trend in mainstream laptop design is to make it as unrealistically thin as possible, even if that means sacrificing battery life and performance. Improvements in mobile CPUs have made super-thin laptops much faster than they once were, but what if that’s not enough? For the discerning on the go gamer, Asus has announced a new version of its monstrous GX700 gaming laptop called the GX800 at Computex 2016. It has all the latest hardware with a giant liquid-cooling docking station. It takes the phrase “desktop replacement” seriously.


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We’re less than two weeks away from E3 2016, and in spite of the incessant “E3 is dying” narrative, there’s a lot going on. Sure, the focus is shifting to live streams and satellite events held around the world, but we’re still going to get a deluge of exciting gaming news.

Let’s take a look at some of the largest companies in gaming, and explore what we might see out of them this month. Mind you, there are far too many indie games, side projects, and unannounced titles to cover everything in a single post, so let’s hit the highlights.



Nintendo

The Legend of Zelda is the only Nintendo game coming to E3 this year. Attendees will get hands-on time with this elusive release, and Nintendo will be hosting a live video stream demoing the game for the world, but that’s about it. A few minor announcements might slip out, or maybe even a mention of the new 3DS Pokemon games, but Zelda is what Nintendo is banking on this year.

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After months of speculation, AMD finally revealed its own next-generation GPU at Computex 2016 this week. The new RX 480 is a midrange card that AMD claims will deliver dramatic performance improvements in VR and 3D gaming. It’s all part of AMD’s overall strategy to reduce the cost of buying into the VR ecosystem, while improving their competitive positioning against Nvidia’s midrange products.

The RX 480, which will ship on June 29, is a 14nm GPU built at GlobalFoundries. It’s a fourth-generation GCN card*based on the Polaris 10 architecture. The RX480 will pack 2,304 GCN cores, which works out to 36 compute units. Its boost clock is above 1.08GHz and it’s backed by a 256-bit memory bus and either 4GB or 8GB of GDDR5 depending on the SKU. Board power is 150W and the launch price is $199. Anandtech estimates a clock range between 1.08GHz and 1.3GHz to achieve AMD’s stated >5TFLOPS metric.



The R9 380X is the toughest competition AMD has at the $199 price point (most of the GPUs in this bracket are R9 380s, but PowerColor has an R9 380X priced at $199). The R9 380X is a 2048:120:32 design (cores, texture units, and ROPS respectively) backed up by 182GB/s of memory bandwidth. We don’t know how many TMUs or ROPS the RX 480 will have, but memory bandwidth should be much higher, at 256GB/s (the RX 480 has 8Gbps GDDR5 memory and a 256-bit memory bus).

One persistent rumor we’ve heard is that AMD’s Polaris desktop GPUs would match or beat the R9 390’s performance at roughly half the TDP. That seems quite achievable based on the RX 480’s core count (2,304 versus 2,560 on the R9 390), likely higher clock speed, improved efficiency, and memory compression improvements that were introduced in GCN 1.2 and likely further improved with Polaris’ fourth-generation GCN architecture.*Overall performance will likely beat the R9 390 and approach the R9 390X, but at a much lower price (the cheapest R9 390X is currently $299 at Newegg) and vastly better power consumption.

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This article is the first of a planned two-part project. Part 1 will focus on the Razer Blade Stealth ultrabook and its built-in characteristics, while Part 2 will measure the performance of the Razer Core, the GPU add-on product for the Razer Blade Stealth.

The Razer Blade Stealth is the first ultrabook from a company that’s typically focused on building gaming laptops, but there are precious few signs that the Stealth represents a major new product area for the enthusiast-focused company. It’s significantly less expensive than the New Razer Blade, which currently starts at $1,999, or the Razer Blade Pro, which has a $2,499 base price. In contrast, the Razer Blade Stealth we’ll be reviewing today starts at $999.



The specs on the Razer Blade Stealth are nothing to sneeze at. Razer sells two versions of the laptop, but they’re more alike than they are different. Both are equipped with a Core i7-6500U, 8GB of RAM, a 12.5-inch display, and Intel HD 520 graphics (and neither version has gaming prowess on its own as a result). The differences are in screen resolution and available storage — there’s a 2560×1440 panel variant that conforms to the sRGB color standard and ships with 128-256GB of storage as well as a 4K panel variant that conforms to the Adobe RGB wider color gamut and offers either 256GB or 512GB of storage. Both versions use the Killer Networking Killer 1535 802.11ac wireless modem and offer Bluetooth 4.1 support.



Specs on the two system configurations.

We’re reviewing the 2560×1440 version of the laptop today, which comes with a 256GB SSD for $1,199. We’re not thrilled with the price you pay to upgrade your storage — while all OEMs gouge on storage and memory upgrades, charging $200 to step from 128GB to 256GB works out to $1.56 per gigabyte of additional storage. It’s been a long time since SSDs were anywhere near that expensive.

The Blade Stealth measures 12.6 x 8.1 x 0.52 inches and weighs in at 2.75 pounds. All versions of the Razer Blade Stealth have the same port configurations: one USB Type-C 3.1 port with Thunderbolt 3 (useful for the Razer Core peripheral), a pair of USB 3 ports, a headset jack, a 2 megapixel webcam, and an HDMI output. Both the 1440p and 4K versions of the laptop are touchscreens, and while I generally prefer a keyboard and mouse, a touchscreen is genuinely useful when working on an airplane or in any confined space.

External design, Razer Chroma

The Razer Blade Stealth’s all-aluminum chassis has a matte black finish that gives the ultrabook a sleek, understated look. This is somewhat spoiled by the glowing Razer logo on the top of the laptop, but the glow can be disabled if you don’t fancy it. The one downside to the laptop’s finish is that it picks up fingerprints and oils easily. This isn’t a system you want to use without washing your hands first, unless you want to spend a non-trivial amount of time polishing it to get oil off later.



The bottom of the laptop is well-designed, with two “feet” that run the entire length of the chassis. This helps ensure that the system won’t overheat — and that’s not a trivial consideration given how thin modern laptops have become.



The Razer Blade Stealth mounts its speakers on the actual keyboard area instead of on the bottom of the system and the sound quality from them is surprisingly good for a design*of this type, provided you don’t expect amazing subwoofer-quality bass. PC laptops are infamous for weak trackpads, but again, Razer’s is better than average.




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