gaming

george-orwell’s-1984-as-a-’90s-pc-game-has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed

George Orwell’s 1984 as a ’90s PC game has to be seen to be believed

Quick, to the training sphere!

The Big Brother announcement promised the ability to “interact with everything” and “disable and destroy intrusive tele-screens and spy cameras watching the player’s every move” across “10 square blocks of Orwell’s retro-futuristic world.” But footage from the demo falls well short of that promise, instead covering some extremely basic Riven-style puzzle gameplay (flips switches to turn on the power; use a screwdriver to open the grate, etc.) played from a first-person view.

Sample gameplay from the newly unearthed Big Brother demo.

It all builds up to a sequence where (according to a walk-through included on the demo disc) you have to put on a “zero-g suit” before planting a bomb inside a “zero gravity training sphere” guarded by robots. Sounds like inhabiting the world of the novel to us!

Aside from the brief mentions of the Thought Police and MiniPac, the short demo does include a few other incidental nods to its licensed source material, including a “WAR IS PEACE” propaganda banner and an animated screen with the titular Big Brother seemingly looking down on you. Still, the entire gameplay scenario is so far removed from anything in the actual 1984 novel to make you wonder why they bothered with the license in the first place. Of course, MediaX answers that question in the game’s announcement, predicting that “while the game stands on its own as an entirely new creation in itself and will attract the typical game audience, the ‘Big Brother’ game will undoubtedly also attract a large literary audience.”

We sadly never got the chance to see how that “large literary audience” would have reacted to a game that seemed poised to pervert both the name and themes of 1984 so radically. In any case, this demo can now sit alongside the release of 1984’s Fahrenheit 451 and 1992’s The Godfather: The Action Game on any list of the most questionable game adaptations of respected works of art.

George Orwell’s 1984 as a ’90s PC game has to be seen to be believed Read More »

kaizen:-a-factory-story-makes-a-game-of-perfecting-1980s-japanese-manufacturing

Kaizen: A Factory Story makes a game of perfecting 1980s Japanese manufacturing

Zach Barth, the namesake of game studio Zachtronics, tends to make a certain kind of game.

Besides crafting the free browser game Infiniminer, which inspired the entire global Minecraft industry, Barth and his collaborators made SpaceChem, Infinifactory, TIS-100, Shenzen I/O, Opus Magnum, and Exapunks. Each one of them is some combination of puzzle game, light capitalism horror, and the most memorable introductory-level computer science, chemistry, or logistics class into which you unwittingly enrolled. Each game is its own thing, but they have a certain similar brain feel between them. It is summed up perhaps best by the Zachtronics team itself in a book: Zach-Like.

Barth and his crew have made other kinds of games, including a forward-looking visual novel about AI, Eliza, and multiplayer card battler Nerts!. And Barth himself told PC Gamer that he hates “saying Zach-like.” But fans of refining inputs, ordering operations, and working their way past constraints will thrill to learn that Zach is, in fact, back.

Announcement trailer for Kaizen: A Factory Story.

Kaizen: A Factory Story, from developer Coincidence and comprising “the original Zachtronics team,” puts you, an American neophyte business type, in charge of a factory making toys, tiny electronics, and other goods during the Japanese economic boom of the 1980s. You arrange the spacing and order of operations of the mechanical arms that snap the head onto a robot toy, or the battery onto a Walkman, for as little time, power, and financial cost as possible.

Kaizen: A Factory Story makes a game of perfecting 1980s Japanese manufacturing Read More »

half-life-3-is-just-the-hot-exclusive-valve-needs-to-propel-steamos-past-windows

Half-Life 3 is just the hot exclusive Valve needs to propel SteamOS past Windows


The ultimate system seller

Opinion: Just as Half-Life 2 helped launch Steam, a sequel could help establish non-Windows PC gaming.

We found this logo hidden deep in an abandoned steel forge, Credit: Aurich Lawson | Steam

A little over 20 years ago, Valve was getting ready to release a new Half-Life game. At the same time, the company was trying to push Steam as a new option for players to download and update games over the Internet.

Requiring Steam in order to play Half-Life 2 led to plenty of grumbling from players in 2004. But the high-profile Steam exclusive helped build an instant user base for Valve’s fresh distribution system, setting it on a path to eventually become the unquestioned leader in the space. The link between the new game and the new platform helped promote a bold alternative to the retail game sales and distribution systems that had dominated PC gaming for decades.

Remember DVD-ROMs?

Remember DVD-ROMs? Credit: Reddit

Today, all indications suggest that Valve is getting ready to release a new Half-Life game. At the same time, the company is getting ready to push SteamOS as a new option for third-party hardware makers and individual users to “download and test themselves.”

Requiring SteamOS to play Half-Life 3 would definitely lead to a lot of grumbling from players. But the high-profile exclusive could help build an instant user base for Valve’s fresh operating system, perhaps setting it on the path to become the unquestioned leader in the space. A link between the new game and the new platform could help promote a bold alternative to the Windows-based systems that have dominated PC gaming for decades.

Not another Steam Machine

Getting players to change the established platform they use to buy and play games (either in terms of hardware or software) usually requires some sort of instantly apparent benefit for the player. Those benefits can range from the tangible (e.g., an improved controller, better graphics performance) to the ancillary (e.g., social features, achievements) to the downright weird (e.g., a second screen on a portable). Often, though, a core reason why players switch platforms is for access to exclusive “system seller” games that aren’t available any other way.

Half-Life 2‘s role in popularizing early Steam shows just how much a highly anticipated exclusive can convince otherwise reluctant players to invest time and effort in a new platform. To see what can happen without such an exclusive, we only need to look to Valve’s 2015 launch of the Steam Machine hardware line, powered by the first version of the Linux-based SteamOS.

Valve offered players very little in the way of affirmative reasons to switch to a SteamOS-powered Steam Machine in 2015.

Credit: Alienware

Valve offered players very little in the way of affirmative reasons to switch to a SteamOS-powered Steam Machine in 2015. Credit: Alienware

At the time, Valve was selling SteamOS mainly as an alternative to a new Windows 8 environment that Valve co-founder Gabe Newell saw as a “catastrophe” in the making for the PC gaming world. Newell described SteamOS as a “hedging strategy” against Microsoft’s potential ability to force all Windows 8 app distribution through the Windows Store, a la Apple’s total control of iPhone app distribution.

When Microsoft failed to impose that kind of hegemonic control over Windows apps and games, Valve was left with little else to convince players that it was worth buying a Windows-free Steam Machine (or going through the onerous process of installing the original SteamOS on their gaming rigs). Sure, using SteamOS meant saving a few bucks on a Windows license. But it also meant being stuck with an extremely limited library of Linux ports (especially when it came to releases from major publishers) and poor technical performance compared to Windows even when those ports were available.

Given those obvious downsides—and the lack of any obvious upsides—it’s no wonder that users overwhelmingly ignored SteamOS and Steam Machines at the time. But as we argued way back in 2013, a major exclusive on the scale of Half-Life 3 could have convinced a lot of gamers to overlook at least some of those downsides and give the new platform a chance.

A little push

Fast forward to today, and the modern version of SteamOS is in a much better place than the Steam Machine-era version ever was. That’s thanks in large part to Valve’s consistent work on the Proton compatibility layer, which lets the Linux-based SteamOS run almost any game that’s designed for Windows (with only a few major exceptions). That wide compatibility has been a huge boon for the Steam Deck, which offered many players easy handheld access to vast swathes of PC gaming for the first time. The Steam Deck also showed off SteamOS’s major user interface and user experience benefits over clunkier Windows-based gaming portables.

The Steam Deck served as an excellent proof of concept for the viability of SteamOS hardware with the gaming masses.

Credit: Kyle Orland

The Steam Deck served as an excellent proof of concept for the viability of SteamOS hardware with the gaming masses. Credit: Kyle Orland

Still, the benefits of switching from Windows to SteamOS might seem a bit amorphous to many players today. If Valve is really interested in pushing its OS as an alternative to Windows gaming, a big exclusive game is just the thing to convince a critical mass of players to make the leap. And when it comes to massive PC gaming exclusives, it doesn’t get much bigger than the long, long-awaited Half-Life 3.

We know it might sound ludicrous to suggest that Valve’s biggest game in years should ignore the Windows platform that’s been used by practically every PC gamer for decades. Keep in mind, though, that there would be nothing stopping existing Windows gamers from downloading and installing a free copy of the Linux-based SteamOS (likely on a separate drive or partition) to get access to Half-Life 3.

Yes, installing a new operating system (especially one based on Linux) is not exactly a plug-and-play process. But Valve has a long history of streamlining game downloads, updates, and driver installations through Steam itself. If anyone can make the process of setting up a new OS relatively seamless, it’s Valve.

And let’s not forget that millions of gamers already have easy access to SteamOS through Steam Deck hardware. Those aging Steam Decks might not be powerful enough to run a game like Half-Life 3 at maximum graphics settings, but Valve games have a history of scaling down well on low-end systems.

Valve’s leaked “Powered by SteamOS” initiative also seems poised to let third-party hardware makers jump in with more powerful (and more Half-Life 3-capable) desktops, laptops, and handhelds with SteamOS pre-installed. And that’s before we even consider the potential impact of a more powerful “Steam Deck 2,” which Valve’s Pierre-Loup  Griffais said in 2023 could potentially come in “the next couple of years.”

Time for a bold move

Tying a major game like Half-Life 3 to a completely new and largely untested operating system would surely lead to some deafening pushback from gamers happy with the Windows-based status quo. An exclusive release could also be risky if SteamOS ends up showing some technical problems as it tries to grow past its Steam Deck roots (Linux doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to things like game driver compatibility across different hardware).

The Lenovo Legion Go S will be the first non-Valve hardware to be officially “Powered by SteamOS.” A Windows-sporting version will be more expensive

The Lenovo Legion Go S will be the first non-Valve hardware to be officially “Powered by SteamOS.” A Windows-sporting version will be more expensive Credit: Lenovo

Despite all that, we’re pretty confident that the vast majority of players interested in Half-Life 3 would jump through a few OS-related hoops to get access to the game. And many of those players would likely stick with Valve’s gaming-optimized OS going forward rather than spending money on another Windows license.

Even a timed exclusivity window for Half-Life 3 on SteamOS could push a lot of early adopters to see what all the fuss is about without excluding those who refuse to switch away from Windows. Failing even that, maybe a non-exclusive Half-Life 3 could be included as a pre-installed freebie with future versions of SteamOS, as an incentive for the curious to try out a new operating system.

With the coming wide release of SteamOS, Valve has a rare opportunity to upend the PC gaming OS dominance that Microsoft more or less stumbled into decades ago. A game like Half-Life 3 could be just the carrot needed to get PC gaming as a whole over its longstanding Windows dependence.

Photo of Kyle Orland

Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.

Half-Life 3 is just the hot exclusive Valve needs to propel SteamOS past Windows Read More »

details-on-amd’s-$549-and-$599-radeon-rx-9070-gpus,-which-aim-at-nvidia-and-4k

Details on AMD’s $549 and $599 Radeon RX 9070 GPUs, which aim at Nvidia and 4K

AMD is releasing the first detailed specifications of its next-generation Radeon RX 9070 series GPUs and the RDNA4 graphics architecture today, almost two months after teasing them at CES.

The short version is that these are both upper-midrange graphics cards targeting resolutions of 1440p and 4K and meant to compete mainly with Nvidia’s incoming and outgoing 4070- and 5070-series GeForce GPUs, including the RTX 4070, RTX 5070, RTX 4070 Ti and Ti Super, and the RTX 5070 Ti.

AMD says the RX 9070 will start at $549, the same price as Nvidia’s RTX 5070. The slightly faster 9070 XT starts at $599, $150 less than the RTX 5070 Ti. The cards go on sale March 6, a day after Nvidia’s RTX 5070.

Neither Nvidia nor Intel has managed to keep its GPUs in stores at their announced starting prices so far, though, so how well AMD’s pricing stacks up to Nvidia in the real world may take a few weeks or months to settle out. For its part, AMD says it’s confident that it has enough supply to meet demand, but that’s as specific as the company’s reassurances got.

Specs and speeds: Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT

RX 9070 XT RX 9070 RX 7900 XTX RX 7900 XT RX 7900 GRE RX 7800 XT
Compute units (Stream processors) 64 RDNA4 (4,096) 56 RDNA4 (3,584) 96 RDNA3 (6,144) 84 RDNA3 (5,376) 80 RDNA3 (5,120) 60 RDNA3 (3,840)
Boost Clock 2,970 MHz 2,520 MHz 2,498 MHz 2,400 MHz 2,245 MHz 2,430 MHz
Memory Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit 384-bit 320-bit 256-bit 256-bit
Memory Bandwidth 650 GB/s 650 GB/s 960 GB/s 800 GB/s 576 GB/s 624 GB/s
Memory size 16GB GDDR6 16GB GDDR6 24GB GDDR6 20GB GDDR6 16GB GDDR6 16GB GDDR6
Total board power (TBP) 304 W 220 W 355 W 315 W 260 W 263 W

As is implied by their similar price tags, the 9070 and 9070 XT have more in common than not. Both are based on the same GPU die—the 9070 has 56 of the chip’s compute units enabled, while the 9070 XT has 64. Both cards come with 16GB of RAM (4GB more than the 5070, the same amount as the 5070 Ti) on a 256-bit memory bus, and both use two 8-pin power connectors by default, though the 9070 XT can use significantly more power than the 9070 (304 W, compared to 220 W).

AMD says that its partners are free to make Radeon cards with the 12VHPWR or 12V-2×6 power connectors on them, though given the apparently ongoing issues with the connector, we’d expect most Radeon GPUs to stick with the known quantity that is the 8-pin connector.

AMD says that the 9070 series is made using a 4 nm TSMC manufacturing process and that the chips are monolithic rather than being split up into chiplets as some RX 7000-series cards were. AMD’s commitment to its memory controller chiplets was always hit or miss with the 7000-series—the high-end cards tended to use them, while the lower-end GPUs were usually monolithic—so it’s not clear one way or the other whether this means AMD is giving up on chiplet-based GPUs altogether or if it’s just not using them this time around.

Details on AMD’s $549 and $599 Radeon RX 9070 GPUs, which aim at Nvidia and 4K Read More »

amd’s-fsr-4-upscaling-is-exclusive-to-90-series-radeon-gpus,-won’t-work-on-other-cards

AMD’s FSR 4 upscaling is exclusive to 90-series Radeon GPUs, won’t work on other cards

AMD’s new Radeon RX 90-series cards and the RDNA4 architecture make their official debut on March 5, and a new version of AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) upscaling technology is coming along with them.

FSR and Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) upscalers have the same goal: to take a lower-resolution image rendered by your graphics card, bump up the resolution, and fill in the gaps between the natively rendered pixels to make an image that looks close to natively rendered without making the GPU do all that rendering work. These upscalers can make errors, and they won’t always look quite as good as a native-resolution image. But they’re both nice alternatives to living with a blurry, non-native-resolution picture on an LCD or OLED display.

FSR and DLSS are especially useful for older or cheaper 1080p or 1440p-capable GPUs that are connected to a 4K monitor, where you’d otherwise have to decide between a sharp 4K image and a playable frame rate; it’s also useful for hitting higher frame rates at lower resolutions, which can be handy for high-refresh-rate gaming monitors.

But unlike past versions of FSR, FSR 4 is upscaling images using hardware-backed machine-learning algorithms, hardware newly added to RDNA4 and the RX 90-series graphics cards. This mirrors Nvidia’s strategy with DLSS, which has always leveraged the tensor cores found in RTX GPUs to run machine-learning models to achieve superior image quality for upscaled and AI-generated frames. If you don’t have an RDNA4 GPU, you can’t use FSR 4.

AMD’s FSR 4 upscaling is exclusive to 90-series Radeon GPUs, won’t work on other cards Read More »

salty-game-dev-comments,-easier-mods-are-inside-command-&-conquer’s-source-code

Salty game dev comments, easier mods are inside Command & Conquer’s source code

Inside the source code are some wonderful reminders of what Windows game development from 1995 to 2003 was really like. One experienced modder posted some gems on Bluesky, like a “HACK ALERT!” text string added just to prevent the Watcom IDE from crashing because of a “magic text heap length” crash: “Who knows why, but it works,” wrote that poor soul.

This writer’s personal favorite is this little bit in the RampOptions.cpp file in Generals, credited to John K. McDonald Jr., which expresses concerns about “TheRampOptions” existing with a set value:

if (TheRampOptions)

// oh shit.

return;

In addition to helping out modders and entertaining experienced coders, the GPL-licensed source code releases do a lot to help preserve these games, such that they can be reworked to run on future platforms. Projects like OpenRA and OpenSAGE already offer open source reimplementations of those games’ code, but having the original source can only help. C&C community stalwart Luke “CCHyper” Feenan worked with EA leaders to get the code back into a build-ready state and said in a press release that the updated code should make the classic games easier to patch in the future.

As part of the source code release, the Command & Conquer team dropped off 35 minutes of footage, newly found in the archives, of alpha and archive footage from the later Sage-engine based Generals and Renegade games.

Archival footage from alpha versions of Command & Conquer: Generals and Renegade, released by EA as part of their source code release.

It’s heartening to see that with the right combination of people and purpose, classic games can find renewed interest and longevity inside a big publisher.

Salty game dev comments, easier mods are inside Command & Conquer’s source code Read More »

the-playstation-vr2-will-get-a-drastic-price-cut,-but-that-might-not-be-enough

The PlayStation VR2 will get a drastic price cut, but that might not be enough

Sony’s first PlayStation VR for the PlayStation 4 hit stores at the right price at the right time and ended up being one of VR’s biggest hits. The PlayStation 5’s PlayStation VR2? Not so much, unfortunately. In either an effort to clear unsold inventory, an attempt to revitalize the platform, or both, Sony has announced it’s dropping the price of the headset significantly.

Starting in March, the main SKU of the headset will drop from $550 to $400 in the US. Europe, the UK, and Japan will also see price cuts to 550 euros, 400 pounds, and 66,980 yen, respectively, as detailed on the PlayStation Blog. Strangely, the bundle that includes the game Horizon: Call of the Mountain (originally $600) will also drop to the same exact price. That’s welcome, but it’s also a little bit difficult not to interpret that as a sign that this is an attempt to empty inventory more than anything else.

The headset launched in early 2023 but has suffered from weak software support ever since—a far cry from the first PSVR, which had one of the strongest libraries of its time. It didn’t help that unlike the regular PlayStation 5, the PSVR2 was not backward-compatible with games released for its predecessor.

About a year ago, there were reports that Sony was temporarily pausing production because it wasn’t able to move the inventory it already had. Later, the company released an adapter and some software for getting it running on PCs. That made it one of the most attractive PC VR headsets, at least on paper. However, setup was clunky, and some features that were supported on the PS5 weren’t supported on PC.

PSVR2 games are still getting announced and released, but the VR market in general has slowed down quite a bit in recent years, and most of the remaining action (such as it is) is on Meta’s Quest platform.

The PlayStation VR2 will get a drastic price cut, but that might not be enough Read More »

now-the-overclock-curious-can-buy-a-delidded-amd-9800x3d,-with-a-warranty

Now the overclock-curious can buy a delidded AMD 9800X3D, with a warranty

The integrated heat spreaders put on CPUs at the factory are not the most thermally efficient material you could have on there, but what are you going to do—rip it off at the risk of killing your $500 chip with your clumsy hands?

Yes, that is precisely what enthusiastic overclockers have been doing for years, delidding, or decapping (though the latter term is used less often in overclocking circles), chips through various DIY techniques, allowing them to replace AMD and Intel’s common denominator shells with liquid metal or other advanced thermal interface materials.

As you might imagine, it can be nerve-wracking, and things can go wrong in just one second or one degree Celsius. In one overclocking forum thread, a seasoned expert noted that Intel’s Core Ultra 200S spreader (IHS) needs to be heated above 165° C for the indium (transfer material) to loosen. But then the glue holding the IHS is also loose at this temperature, and there is only 1.5–2 millimeters of space between IHS and surface-mounted components, so it’s easy for that metal IHS to slide off and take out a vital component with it. It’s quite the Saturday afternoon hobby.

That is the typical overclocking bargain: You assume the risk, you void your warranty, but you remove one more barrier to peak performance. Now, though, Thermal Grizzly, led by that same previously mentioned expert, Roman “der8auer” Hartung, has a new bargain to present. His firm is delidding AMD’s Ryzen 9800X3D CPUs with its own ovens and specialty tools, then selling them with two-year warranties that cover manufacturer’s defects and “normal overclocking damage,” but not mechanical damage.

Now the overclock-curious can buy a delidded AMD 9800X3D, with a warranty Read More »

portal-randomized-feels-like-playing-portal-again-for-the-first-time

Portal Randomized feels like playing Portal again for the first time

For most modern players, the worst thing about a video game classic like Portal is that you can never play it again for the first time. No matter how much time has passed since your last playthrough, those same old test chambers will feel a bit too familiar if you revisit them today.

Over the years, community mods like Portal Stories: Mel and Portal: Revolution have tried to fix this problem with extensive work on completely new levels and puzzles. Now, though, a much simpler mod is looking to recapture that “first time” feeling simply by adding random gameplay modifiers to Portal‘s familiar puzzle rooms.

The Portal Randomized demo recently posted on ModDB activates one of eight gameplay modifiers when you enter one of the game’s first two test chambers. The results, while still a little rough around the edges, show how much extra longevity can be wrung from simple tweaks to existing gameplay.

Make special note of that “gravity changed” note in the corner.

Make special note of that “gravity changed” note in the corner. Credit: Valve / gamingdominari

Not all of the Portal Randomized modifiers are instant winners. One that adds intermittent darkness, for instance, practically forces you to stand still for a few seconds until the lights flip back on (too slowly for my comfort). And modifiers like variable gravity or variable movement speed have a pretty trivial effect on how the game plays out, at least in the simplistic early test chambers in the demo.

Portal Randomized feels like playing Portal again for the first time Read More »

fresh-leaks-suggest-half-life-3-development-may-be-nearing-completion

Fresh leaks suggest Half-Life 3 development may be nearing completion

Don’t you dare give me hope

The newly discovered engine updates are a particularly good sign for the HLX project after credible reports that the game had gone into a friends and family playtesting phase at Valve near the end of 2024. While many Valve projects have seen major changes after that kind of testing, McVicker says that these new engine updates are “confirmation indeed that HLX survived the holiday break, does not seem to be going through any form of reboot, and [that] an announcement seems to be inching ever closer.”

A December video from “Gabe Follower” suggesting that Half-Life 3 had entered a friend and family testing phase.

While McVicker doesn’t go into detail on every single engine variable hinted at in the latest Valve game updates, he provides a summary version with informed speculation on what all those variables could mean for HLX. That includes signs of a “heavily evolved” physics engine from Half-Life 2 that can seemingly track object traits such as buoyancy, flammability, deformation, as well as fluid simulation and dynamic sound properties based on an object’s status.

Most intriguingly, McVicker talks up signs that HLX may include a new NPC “mood system,” letting these AI-controlled characters react “verbally and non-verbally” to what they can see, hear, or even smell in the immediate area. The code also hints at “dynamically adjustable nav meshes” that will let NPCs navigate easily around destructible environmental hazards, and at a system for in-game objects to be placed semi-randomly during multiple playthroughs, a la Left 4 Dead‘s director system.

We know it’s easy to be skeptical after so many years of fruitless speculation regarding Half-Life 3. But when McVicker says that signs suggest that an actual Half-Life 3 announcement could come this year, let’s just say we want to believe.

Fresh leaks suggest Half-Life 3 development may be nearing completion Read More »

wb-axes-shadow-of-mordor-maker-in-setback-for-clever,-sadly-patented-game-system

WB axes Shadow of Mordor maker in setback for clever, sadly patented game system

Game studio Monolith, part of Warner Bros. Games until yesterday’s multi-studio shutdown, had a notable track record across more than 30 years, having made Blood, No One Lives Forever, Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, F.E.A.R., and, most recently, the Lord of the Rings series, Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War.

Those games, derived from J.R.R. Tolkien’s fiction, had a “Nemesis System,” in which the enemies that beat the player or survive a battle with them can advance in level, develop distinct strengths and weaknesses, and become an interesting subplot and motivation in the game. Monolith’s next game, the now-canceled Wonder Woman, was teased more than three years ago, and said to be “powered by the Nemesis System.”

Not only will Wonder Woman not be powered by the Nemesis System, but likely no other games will be, either, at least until August 2036. That’s when “Nemesis characters, nemesis forts, social vendettas and followers in computer games,” patent US2016279522A1, is due to expire. Until then, any game that wants to implement gameplay involving showdowns, factions, and bitter NPC feelings toward a player must either differentiate it enough to avoid infringement, license it from Warner Brothers, or gamble on WB Games’ legal attention.

It’s bad enough that talented developers were let go. That one of their most notable innovations ends up locked up in a corporate vault, for more than a decade after they ceased to exist, is quite the sad footnote.

Nobody wants to end up Crazy Taxi‘d

Patent filing showing the process workflow for WB Games'

Credit: Warner Bros./USPTO

That WB Games was granted this patent is eye-opening, but not necessarily shocking. For 20 years, Namco held a patent on loading screen mini-games. That patent was issued despite plenty of “loading screen games” existing before 1995, including Invade-a-load. Similar patents have been issued for the Mass Effect dialogue wheel, a “sanity meter” in Eternal Darkness, and basically the entire concept of Crazy Taxi, such that Sega tried to eliminate The Simpsons: Road Rage entirely and recoup all its revenue. That case was settled out of court, and you haven’t seen Crazy Taxi-like arrows above game vehicles to this day. Ars’ Kyle Orland wrote in 2007 about how a 1989 patent for racing against your best time, or a “ghost racer,” led to license payments from games made in the mid-2000s.

WB axes Shadow of Mordor maker in setback for clever, sadly patented game system Read More »

framework’s-first-desktop-is-a-strange—but-unique—mini-itx-gaming-pc

Framework’s first desktop is a strange—but unique—mini ITX gaming PC

In Framework’s first-party case, the PC starts at $1,099, which gets you a Ryzen AI Max 385 (that’s an 8-core CPU and 32 GPU cores) and 32GB of RAM. A fully loaded 128GB with a Ryzen AI Max+ 395 configuration (16 CPU cores, 40 GPU cores) will run you $1,999. There’s also an in-between build with the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 chip and 64GB of RAM for $1,599. If you just want the mini ITX board to put in a case of your choosing, that starts at $799.

None of these are impulse buys, exactly, but they’re priced a bit better than a gaming-focused mini PC like the Asus ROG NUC, which starts at nearly $1,300 as of this writing and comes with half as much RAM. It’s also priced well compared to what you can get out of a DIY mini ITX PC based on integrated graphics—the Ryzen 7 8700G, an AM5 ITX motherboard, and 32GB of DDR5 can all be had for around $500 collectively before you add a case, power supply, or SSD, but for considerably slower performance.

The volume of the Framework Desktop’s first-party case is just 4.5 liters—for reference, the SSUPD Meshroom S is 14.9 liters, a fairly middle-of-the-road volume for an ITX case that can fit a full-size GPU. An Xbox Series X is about 6.9 liters, and the Xbox Series S is 4.4 liters. Apple’s Mac Studio is about 3.7 liters. The Framework Desktop isn’t breaking records, but it’s definitely tiny.

Despite the non-upgradeability of the main components, Framework has tried to stick to existing standards where it can by using a flex ATX power supply, ATX headers on the motherboard, regular 120 mm fans that can be changed out, and of course the mini ITX form factor itself. Credit: Framework

So the pitch for the system is easy: You get a reasonably powerful 1440p-capable gaming and workstation PC inside a case the size of a small game console. “If the Series S could run Windows, I’d buy it in a second” is a thought that has occurred to me, so I can see the appeal, even though it costs at least three times as much.

But it does feel like a strange fit for Framework, given that it’s so much less upgradeable than most PCs. The CPU and GPU are one piece of silicon, and they’re soldered to the motherboard. The RAM is also soldered down and not upgradeable once you’ve bought it, setting it apart from nearly every other board Framework sells.

Framework’s first desktop is a strange—but unique—mini ITX gaming PC Read More »