Game Tech News

AMD has released an updated driver for its RX 480 GPUs that should permanently resolve the GPU’s power draw issue. For those of you just tuning in, the brand-new Radeon RX 480 launched last week with an unusual power configuration. Specifically, it drew more current from the PCI Express slot on the motherboard than is allowed by the official PCI-SIG specification. While the chances of a problem or failure were low, AMD promised an updated driver that would resolve these issues permanently. The company released Catalyst 16.7.1 yesterday afternoon, and we’ve put the driver through its paces.

What the new driver changes

There are two changes being introduced in the 16.7.1 driver (the launch driver for the RX 480 was Catalyst 16.6.2 for those of you keeping score at home). First, AMD has changed how the GPU draws power from the system. Instead of splitting the load roughly 50/50 between the PCI Express slot and the six-pin power connector, the card now draws more power from the six-pin slot and less from the PCI Express slot. This change is baked into the driver and automatic. Testing from sites like PC Perspective and THG has confirmed that this shifts roughly 10W of power over to the PCI Express six-pin connector and reduces the amount of current being pulled off the PCI Express slot. While the six-pin connector is now operating somewhat out of spec, it’s also designed to handle 8-9 amps per pin and is overengineered by a considerable margin.

more...

When we covered DirectX 12 performance a few months ago, we noted a distinct split between AMD and Nvidia. Specifically, AMD picked up substantially more performance from the new API compared with Nvidia, which typically lost DX12 benchmarks even if it won them under DirectX 11. (Note that this refers to Maxwell, which was still Nvidia’s flagship GPU family back then). The exception was Rise of the Tomb Raider, which ran faster on the GTX 980 Ti as compared to the Fury X in both DX11 and DX12.

Crystal Dynamics recently released a patch for RotTR and Overclockers3D put it through its paces. What they found suggested substantial gains for AMD’s Fury X in DX12, but relatively flat performance for Nvidia owners. At 1080p, the Fury X’s performance leapt 25%, from 64 FPS to 80 FPS — and while it still loses to the GTX 980 Ti at that resolution, by 4K, the Fury X is once again in the lead. Total DX11 vs. DX12 performance with the latest patch for both GPUs is shown below:




more...

The augmented reality game Pokémon Go launched last week to immediate acclaim. Early reports of game-related problems focused on server issues as the developer, Niantic, struggled to cope with launch-related loads. A very different kind of problem has already raised its head, however. According to a police report from O’Fallon, Missouri, thieves have used Pokémon Go to target individuals for mugging.


more...

Bethesda’s recent Doom reboot has been a huge hit, even despite significant misgivings about the game’s multiplayer mode. The single-player game is a fast-paced return to Mars (and Hell, natch) that plays beautifully and fluidly. Now, the already-polished game is getting faster, courtesy of a major Vulkan patch. This makes Doom the first game to prominently adopt Vulkan as a way to further increase performance rather than simply as a proof-of-concept implementation.

more...

When Microsoft announced both Scorpio and the upcoming Xbox One S, there was plenty of concern that the company might have harmed sales of its current Xbox One family (including the S) by announcing the much more powerful Scorpio console too early. While Scorpio isn’t expected until Christmas 2017, it’s also expected to be an extremely powerful console — possibly more powerful than Sony’s own PS4 Neo.
Microsoft, it seems, is aware of this problem and has a solution already in mind to counteract it. The general manager of Xbox Services, Dave McCarthy, told the Daily Star that “Some of our retail partners today do trade-in programs and that’s definitely going to be partnerships we continue to move going forward. We want to make that transition as smooth as possible.”

“The compatibility thing is a big deal,” McCarthy said. “Because you feeling you have to give up your games isn’t a good feeling, so we take that angst out of the equation. We’ll try partnerships with our retail partners to smooth it even more with trade-in programs and things like that.”

It’s not clear what kind of trade-in value Microsoft might offer or whether there will be a difference between the Xbox One and the Xbox One S (presumably yes, but how the company chooses to value that difference at trade-in is its own question). Geek.com reports that the Xbox One can currently be traded in for $80 cash or $100 store credit. That’s not much cash for a system that retailed for $500 just three years ago, and it doesn’t look as if GameStop much cares if you have Kinect or not.


Gamestop trade-in values for consoles (values in store credit).

Scorpio’s hardware loadout is still uncertain. The simplest move for AMD and Microsoft would be a straight port of the current Xbox One CPU to 14nm. Simple, however, doesn’t always mean cheap. The Xbox One uses a GCN-derived GPU and AMD’s low-power Jaguar core as a CPU. Jaguar was a solid CPU design when it debuted three years ago, but AMD opted not to continue iterating on the core and didn’t port it to 20nm or 14nm.

more...

Earlier this year, Oculus announced that it would have to delay shipping out its next-generation VR headset due to an unspecified component shortage. This delay, combined with the fact that it shipped limited numbers of headsets to retail while pre-order customers waited for delivery, cost Oculus some significant good will — especially since HTC has been meeting shipments for its Vive since early June. Oculus has finally resolved its problems, however, and announced today that the last of its pre-orders has finally shipped out.

In a recent blog post, the company wrote:

All Rift pre-orders have now shipped, and new Rift orders from Oculus.com are shipping within 2 to 4 business days. If you have any questions about existing orders or your current shipment status, please reach out to us here.
We want to apologize for the delays in getting Rifts to doorsteps. We appreciate that without your support, VR wouldn’t be where it is today. Thank you for your patience over the past few months.
We’ve also started to ramp up inventory for retail partners online and in stores, and added more Rift demos at new retail locations across the US. Starting this month, you’ll be able to get your hands on Rift at select Microsoft Stores. In addition, our demo space will expand at Best Buy to more than 500 US stores now through the fall.

The company also notes that it’ll have lots more to share about Oculus Touch at its OC3 (Oculus Connect 3) event later this year, along with more than 30 launch titles to showcase. OC3 is October 5 – 7 this fall, which implies that Oculus Touch won’t debut before Q4 2016 at the earliest. Oculus will probably launch Touch at the event, but whether that means immediate availability or a holiday ship date is still unknown.



The Rift’s lack of Touch isn’t trivial — more than a few reviewers have ultimately given the nod to HTC’s Vive over the Oculus Rift precisely because the Vive’s handheld controllers add an additional layer to the VR experience that the Rift currently lacks. On the other hand, the Oculus Rift has generally won out over the HTC Vive in terms of head-fit and ease-of-use (Your mileage may vary, of course). A good set of controllers at a reasonable price could do much to cut the perceived gap between the two systems — provided Oculus brings its Touch controllers in at a reasonable price.

more...

One of the problems with maintaining access to classic game libraries is the physical age of the hardware required to play various titles in their original incarnations. Classic Famicom and NES systems tend to suffer problems with their front loading mechanisms, while aging CD-ROM drives in PlayStation-era hardware cause problems of their own. Now, one hacker has found a way around a similar problem in Sega Saturn hardware — even though solving the issue required cracking the console’s DRM.

The Sega Saturn was the follow-up to the Sega Genesis / Sega MegaDrive (outside North America) and competed head-to-head against the Sony PlayStation. The Saturn’s hardware was arguably more powerful than the PlayStation’s, but also much more difficult to program, with a dual-core CPU, a custom sound processor, two video display processors, and associated controller chips. Its 3D engine used quadrilaterals, rather than triangles, as the underlying primitive structure, which also made it more difficult to program.The platform sold 9.26 million units over its lifetime, but only sold well in Japan, which accounted for over half its unit shipments. Even so, there were a number of critically acclaimed titles for the platform, including Virtua Fighter, Nights into Dreams, Sega Rally Championship, and Panzer Dragoon Saga.


more...

Summertime is associated with beaches, family vacations, and big action movies, but it’s traditionally something of a desert for major video game releases. So if you’re dying for something new to play while you wait for No Man’s Sky and Deus Ex, why not take this opportunity to explore the Japanese catalog on the PS4?

Games like Phantasy Star Online 2 and Dragon’s Dogma Online aren’t available on the US PlayStation Store, and some titles like Puyo Puyo Tetris will likely never be officially released in the US because of licensing conflicts. To sidestep those issues, this post will walk you through the basics of machine translation, acquiring free-to-play games, and purchasing imports.



Dealing with Japanese text

Before we do anything, we need to address the translation issue. When you’re using a Web browser on a PC, this process is relatively simple. Google Chrome has built-in page translation, and other browsers can take advantage of similar functionality through add-ons.

Signing up for Japanese accounts is typically pain-free thanks to machine translation, but there’s a catch. Just like English-based online services, spammers and other ne’er-do-wells try to ruin everyone’s good time. As such, Japanese anti-spam implementations can make signing up for some accounts particularly challenging for those of us with little-to-no experience with Japanese characters. Sadly, there’s no bypassing these little headaches, but we can tackle them with help from the Google Translate app.

more...

When Pokémon Go launched last week, we theorized that Microsoft’s HoloLens could be a huge platform for the game. While HoloLens’ high price makes any kind of official port extremely unlikely, that hasn’t stopped HoloLens developers from creating mock-ups of how the game might play when paired with Microsoft’s headset.

First up, there’s CapitolaVR and a video created by David Robustelli. This build was created in Unity with the HoloLens SDK. It shows Pokémon being randomly generated in the environment before being captured by Pokéballs.

“For now the Pokémon are randomly generated within a mapped environment,” Robustelli told UploadVR. “We are now focusing on how to use different gestures for specific interactions. For example, like opening your inventory or activating your map and zooming in and tilting your map. The thing is there is a huge amount of possibilities that are unexplored and which could work for games like these. A more challenging thing is how to access the Google Maps API and enabling it within a running app. But I’m sure that in the upcoming years when more and more people are developing for this hardware also more things will be standard to use in tools and apps.”

more...

Pokémon GO has been an unbridled success since it launched about two weeks ago, and that comes amid sometimes crippling server issues. Developer Niantic was forced to slow its global rollout so it could add server capacity, and there are still some days that the game just won’t connect. This past weekend was particularly bad, and now a hacking group called OurMine is claiming responsibility for the downtime.

If you have not heard of Pokémon GO, I can only assume you’ve been living under a rock sans internet access for the last few weeks. Announced last year, the game grew out of a 2014 April Fools prank at Google that scattered all the original 151 Pokémon around Google Maps. It was a big hit, and Niantic (owned by Google at the time) started working with The Pokémon Company to make it into a real game. Pokémon GO lets you wander the real world, hunting Pokémon and locating gyms in which to do battle.

The number of people playing the game is almost beyond belief — you’ll encounter people out*playing the game almost everywhere. Niantic rolled the game out to 26 additional countries over the weekend, which many blamed for the problems. The game was inaccessible most of Saturday, throwing up server errors whenever most players tried to connect. OurMine says it carried out a DDoS attack on Niantic’s servers, and that was to blame for the outage, not an influx of new players.



According to a representative of OurMine, the group only wants to “protect” Niantic’s servers. So, obviously the best way is to flood them with traffic and ruin everyone’s Saturday. OurMine says it will stop attacking Pokémon GO if someone from Niantic contacts the group so they can “teach them how to protect their servers.” That does not seem likely to happen. This situation is very reminiscent of the Lizard Squad hacks of several years ago that targeted popular gaming services like Xbox Live and PSN.


more...