The latest wave of layoffs at Microsoft's Xbox which is set to cut a total of 3,200 jobs by July 2027 is set to have significant consequences across every studio still under the umbrella. id Software is among the developers that has been impacted the most, as not only 136 developers were laid off from the studio, but also reportedly the entirety, or close by, of the id Tech team which worked on the great game engine that powers games such as DOOM Eternal, DOOM: The Dark Ages, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. "Key positions were cut and […]

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Grove Street Games made its name porting some of the biggest titles in gaming history, from the GTA III era to the fairly recent Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, but its latest project marks a sharp departure from that legacy. BeastLink is the studio's first original IP in over a decade, and it's swinging for the fences with a multiplayer kaiju action game built around one core idea: absolute, city-leveling destruction. Set in a world where humanity clings to survival in shattered strongholds while colossal Beasts rule the ruins, BeastLink tasks players with scavenging resources, battling […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/grove-street-games-beastlink-kaiju-multiplayer/

With modern PC games becoming increasingly heavy — especially open-world titles built on Unreal Engine 5 — default graphics presets rarely (if ever) provide the best balance between visual fidelity and performance. Gothic 1 Remake is no exception to that rule. Alkimia Interactive’s remake of the cult-classic RPG is clearly much more visually ambitious than the 2001 original, with a fully rebuilt Valley of Mines, dense settlements, physically richer materials, dynamic lighting, more detailed characters, thicker foliage, and a far more cinematic presentation. However, that jump in visual ambition also comes with a fairly steep hardware cost, and frankly, the […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/gothic-1-remake-pc-performance-analysis-tuning-guide-how-to-get-the-best-experience-on-pc/

Halo: Campaign Evolved marks the grand return of Master Chief and co. following the less-than-stellar release of Halo Infinite back in 2021. Of course, CE is set to be a campaign-only affair, with no PvP multiplayer in sight. That said, there have been plenty of rumours discussing Halo’s next mainline release. One such title is ‘Project Ekur’ – a Battle Royale which was later turned into an extraction shooter. Thanks to new reports, we have gotten a clearer picture on what to expect.

As shared by known Halo leaker Rebs Gaming (who accurately detailed Halo Campaign Evolved prior to its announcement), Project Ekur has undergone some pretty big changes since it was last reported. For the uninitiated, Project Ekur was initially known as Project Tatanka and was set to be a Battle Royale experience. Since then, the game evolved and shifted into an extraction shooter of sorts, being developed by Certain Affinity.

According to Rebs, the game has once again changed, with Ekur now switching out Infinite’s SlipSpace Engine for the much more ubiquitous Unreal Engine 5 – with this transfer being completed as of September 2023.

Beyond this, Ekur is now no longer an Extraction Shooter, with the project said to be taking the form of a “super big-team-battle idea” instead. Players will spawn in, “explore the map, find resources and battle other teams”. Though it does still feature some extraction elements, the game will feel more closer to that of Halo 5’s Warzone mode.

Perhaps the biggest piece of news however came in the revelation that Certain Affinity is no longer the team behind Project Ekur, with Halo Studios themselves now taking over responsibilities following the prototype shared by Certain Affinity.

All in all, it seems as though Project Ekur has gone through a ton of testing and prototyping. What the final product will wind up looking like, we will have to wait and see. Regardless, here’s to hoping that the team in charge have settled on a formula which works for both old-school Halo fans as well as new players.

KitGuru says: What do you think of Project Ekur so far? Which iteration of the game sounded the most fun to you? Will Ekur be released on PlayStation? Let us know your thoughts down below.

During the State of Unreal presentation in Chicago, Illinois, The Coalition's Studio Technical Director Kate Rayner presented the studio's technical objectives for Gears of War: E-Day. The team reportedly "rebuilt everything from scratch" to achieve the desired believability of a city thrown into chaos by the devastating surprise attack launched by the Locust Horde against humanity. That perhaps explains why it took so long: their previous game, Gears 5, launched in September 2019. Visually, for such a dark event in the Gears universe, The Coalition returned to a dark, gritty visual style where light and shadow play a major role. […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/gears-of-war-e-day-ue5-shadow-casting-lights-60fps-xbox/

With Unreal Engine 5 games becoming increasingly common on PC, it is always interesting to see which developers can actually tame Epic Games’ state-of-the-art engine rather than simply brute-forcing their way to good visuals at a massive performance cost. Fatekeeper is a very interesting case in that regard. THQ Nordic and Paraglacial’s dark fantasy first-person RPG is still in a very early access state, so it would be unfair to judge it as if it were a finished product. However, from a technical standpoint, Fatekeeper already manages to stand out as one of the most impressive Unreal Engine 5 releases […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/fatekeeper-pc-performance-analysis-tuning-guide-how-to-get-the-best-experience-on-pc/

Let's face it: the days of running FurMark for 30 minutes, watching nothing explode, and calling your GPU "stable" are long gone. Modern GPUs from NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel are smarter, more power-hungry, and far more dynamic in their clock-speed behavior than the older graphics cards we grew up overclocking. GPU synthetic/stress tests like FurMark, OCCT, and 3DMark absolutely still have their place, but treating any single tool as the holy grail of stability is a big mistake. Today's GPUs constantly juggle clocks, voltages, and temperatures on the fly. A GPU overclock (or undervolt) that flies through a traditional rasterized […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/how-to-properly-stress-test-your-gpu/

Powered by Unreal Engine 5, Phantom Blade Zero is set to be one of the most stunning action games launching in the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S generation, but developer S-Game's choice of engine will not prevent those playing on low-end hardware from enjoying the game, as game director Qiwei "Soulframe" Liang promised a smooth experience on every format, even on Steam Deck. Speaking with PC Gamer, Liang highlighted how aware the team is of the rising prices of gaming hardware due to the AI boom, and said that the final polishing phase will ensure players will have a […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/unreal-engine-5-phantom-blade-zero-low-end-hardware/

[Update - June 11, 5:00 PM EST] Although Halo: Campaign Evolved is set to be quite demanding at Ultra settings, a new early look from Digital Foundry suggests the game can run well on a variety of systems, including handhelds like the Xbox ROG Ally X. Original story follows. [Original Story] The skepticism surrounding Halo: Campaign Evolved for its ditching of the Slipspace Engine in favor of the Unreal Engine 5 for its return to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S seems to have been well-founded, as an NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPU, the best consumer GPU available, doesn't hit […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/halo-campaign-evolved-stumbles-unreal-engine-5-rtx-5090/

Over the weekend, Xbox revealed more footage of Halo: Campaign Evolved, showing that the move to Unreal Engine has brought the biggest visual fidelity boost in the series' long history. Now, Halo Studios has announced the game's PC system requirements, showing a fairly accessible 1080p/60FPS experience. 

While we always expected Unreal Engine to be a great change for Halo visually, there was some concern on the impact the engine change could have on performance and optimisation. However, it does look like Halo Studios has got the PC system requirements as low as possible while still targeting 60FPS at all tiers.

The minimum PC system requirements for Halo: Campaign Evolved call for an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 or Intel Core i7-10700K CPU, 16GB of RAM and an RTX 2060, RX 6600 or Arc A580 graphics card. The medium requirements bump this up to a Ryzen 7 5700X or Core i5-12600K CPU and an RTX 3070 or RX 7600 GPU for 1440p/60FPS gameplay.

The High and Ultra tiers both target 4K/60FPS, presumably at the equivalent graphics preset setting. For High, you'll want at least a Ryzen 7 7700 or Core i7-12700K, 32GB of RAM, and an RTX 3080 Ti or RX 9070 graphics card. For Ultra, this is bumped up to a Ryzen 9 7900X or Core i9-13900K CPU and an RTX 4080.

As always, the system requirements are more of a guideline than a hard rule. For instance, if you have a Ryzen 5 5600X instead of a Ryzen 7 5700X, that isn't going to stop you from being able to get 1440p/60FPS if you have a strong enough graphics card.

However, it is worth noting that Nvidia no longer brings game-specific optimisations to its drivers for older GTX 10 series graphics cards, so you will want to be on an RTX 2060 or newer to avoid potential issues like crashes.

KitGuru Says: Are you planning on picking up Halo: Campaign Evolved?  

With PC games becoming increasingly complex nowadays — especially open-world games built on Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5 — default/maxed-out graphics settings rarely, if ever, strike the optimal balance between visual fidelity and performance that most PC gamers seek, and LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is no exception to this rule. TT Games’ latest LEGO Batman adventure is certainly a much more visually ambitious game than the studio’s older LEGO titles, with its open-world Gotham City, dense streets, detailed LEGO characters and assets, physically convincing plastic materials, attractive effects, and state-of-the-art UE5-powered visuals. However, this added visual ambition […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/lego-batman-legacy-of-the-dark-knight-pc-performance-analysis-tuning-guide-how-to-get-best-experience-on-pc/

With PC games growing increasingly complex nowadays — especially those built on Epic Games' infamous Unreal Engine 5 — default/maxed-out graphics settings rarely, if ever, strike the optimal balance between visual fidelity and performance that most PC gamers seek, and Directive 8020 is sadly no exception to this rule. As a demanding UE5-powered cinematic horror game, it should come as no surprise that the game's maxed-out High graphics preset, even without ray tracing or path tracing enabled, can be quite GPU-heavy. However, what is a bit more disappointing is that Directive 8020 ends up being heavier on the GPU than […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/directive-8020-pc-performance-analysis-tuning-guide-how-to-get-best-experience-on-pc/

There is a question that keeps coming back in enthusiast circles every few years: Do computer chips actually get slower as they age? It sounds simple, but the answer is more interesting than a clean yes or no. Your old CPU or GPU usually doesn’t wake up one day and decide to become 10% slower just because it’s been inside your system for five years. In most normal cases, if an older PC feels slower, the culprit is more likely to be accumulated dust, dried/pumped-out TIM (thermal interface material), background apps, operating system bloat, security patches, newer/more demanding games, or […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/do-computer-chips-actually-get-slower-with-age-the-real-science-behind-silicon-aging/

With some of its core features like Lumen and Nanite, Unreal Engine 5 is a demanding game engine that often struggles to run properly on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, so it's not surprising to see that very few games powered by the Epic engine are available on Nintendo Switch 2. However, this could change in the future, as Yoshi and The Mysterious Book will be powered by Unreal Engine 5, a first for a first-party Nintendo game. The news has been confirmed in a new report from GoNintendo, following the game's Japanese box art emerging online that showed the Unreal […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/nintendo-switch-2-doubted-over-unreal-engine-5-performance-yoshi-and-the-mysterious-book-test/

With PC games growing increasingly complex nowadays — especially ones built on Epic Games's infamous Unreal Engine 5 — default/maxed-out graphics settings rarely (if at all) strike the optimal balance between visual fidelity and performance that most PC gamers seek, and early access sensation Windrose is no exception to this rule. As a demanding UE5 game, it should come as no surprise to many that the game's maxed-out Epic graphics settings will be very GPU-heavy and thus should require some tweaking to achieve better performance on most rigs, without completely sacrificing visual fidelity. This guide should hopefully help you strike […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/how-to/windrose-pc-performance-analysis-tuning-guide-how-to-get-best-experience-on-pc/

In the world of PC gaming, "badly optimized" is a phrase that gets tossed around more than a grenade in a crowded lobby. Usually, the story goes like this: a shiny new game launches, players crank everything to Ultra, watch their frames per second (FPS) counter like a hawk, and reach a verdict in seconds. If the frame rate isn't high enough to their liking, then the game is deemed "unoptimized". If it runs like butter, then it’s "well optimized". The reality, however, is that PC game optimization is a massive, complicated puzzle. Performance isn't just about how hard a […]

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During the Road to Launch event, developer Rebel Wolves unveiled detailed PC specifications for their debut game, the highly anticipated fantasy open world action RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker. The specs look fairly demanding on paper: the GeForce RTX 5090, the most powerful graphics card on the market, is required to play the game at 4K resolution and 60 frames per second while using the Ultra preset. However, the developers clarified that the following target resolution, frame rate, and presets were calculated without taking into account upscaler and frame generation, which will be supported (including NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR). […]

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Today, Funcom announced Conan Exiles Enhanced, a free upgrade that brings the game from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5. Conan Exiles Enhanced will launch on the game's eighth anniversary: May 5, 2026. The upgraded version was developed in collaboration with Inflexion Games, the studio behind the survival game Nightingale. Conan Exiles Enhanced introduces four specific rendering improvements: The Enhanced version targets smooth 60+ FPS across Low, Medium, High, and Ultra settings on most PCs, with Steam Deck support. Notably, despite the graphics improvements, the client size has been dramatically reduced from 120GB to just 40GB. But there's more: the Exiled Lands and […]

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NVIDIA has just released its latest DLSS 4.5 SDK, which allows developers to integrate the latest tech, such as Dynamic Frame Gen & More, into their latest games. NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 Dynamic Frame-Generation, Updated Ray Reconstruction, & Enhanced Upscaling Tech Is Now Available To Devs With The Latest Streamline SDK Release Today, NVIDIA is finally releasing the highly anticipated DLSS 4.5 Streamline SDK. With this release, devs have the ability to easily integrate all the DLSS 4.5 goodies that come with the 2nd Gen transformer AI models, such as enhanced upscaling, frame-gen, Ray Reconstruction, and dynamic frame-generation support to their […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/nvidia-dlss-4-5-sdk-now-available-enabling-devs-to-integrate-dynamic-frame-gen-in-games/