Remedy Entertainment has revealed that patch 1.0.16.1—for Alan Wake 2—will optimize graphics card performance on older architectures. Digital Foundry's Video Producer, Alex Battaglia, previewed these improvements earlier in the week—he noted that Remedy's Northlight Engine-powered 2023 visual masterpiece was: "one of the most demanding for older hardware. Owing to its use of DX12 Ultimate mesh shaders, the game could run on older hardware but often delivered an unplayable experience, especially on Nvidia's GTX 10-series GPUs built on the Pascal architecture." That generation's lack of mesh shader support is observed as its main "undoing in Alan Wake 2," where a substantial portion of visual delivery is reliant on said technologies. Battaglia observed that: "the game does function on GPUs that don't support mesh shaders, but poor performance and visual errors are the problem: the GTX 1060 at 1080p on FSR 2 quality mode, married up with PS5's performance mode quality presets delivers a game typically running under 60 FPS, more usually hitting circa 15 FPS. Game frame-rate is so low, even game speed and audio playback are compromised."

Today, Remedy's Alan Wake social media account announced the release of the game's latest update: "We've been optimizing the PC version of Alan Wake 2, and as a result the minimum PC system requirements have been lowered. Please check the updated image (below)! These changes take effect with update 1.0.16.1, out on PC now." Certain owners of Team Green Pascal-era hardware, as well as Team Red RDNA 1.0/Navi 10 preservationists will be pleased to find out that Alan Wake 2's minimum specification tier now accommodates NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 and AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics cards. Digital Foundry's preview piece did mention incremental improvements for Vega-based GPUs, albeit with optimizations introduced within earlier Alan Wake 2 patches.

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) today announced the PlayStation 5 console (PS5) has surpassed 50 million units sold through to consumers, three years since its Nov. 2020 launch. Thanks to the support of PlayStation fans globally, the PS5 console has experienced strong momentum this year, driven by a slate of highly popular games and SIE's continued focus on bringing innovation to the gaming experience, including PS5 game streaming for PlayStation Plus Premium members.

"Achieving this PS5 sales milestone is a testament to the unwavering support of the global PlayStation community and their passion for the incredible experiences created by the talented developers from PlayStation Studios and our partners," said Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment. "We're grateful for all of our players who have joined the PS5 journey so far, and we're thrilled that this is the first holiday season since launch that we have a full supply of PS5 consoles—so anyone who wants to get one can get one."

"Alan Wake II," released earlier this week, is the latest third person action adventure loaded with psychological thriller elements that call back to some of the best works of Remedy Entertainment, including "Control," "Max Payne 2," and "Alan Wake." It's also a visual feast as our performance review of the game should show you, leveraging the full spectrum of the DirectX 12 Ultimate feature-set. In the run up to the release, when Remedy put out the system requirements lists for "Alan Wake II" with clear segregation for experiences with ray tracing and without; what wasn't clear was just how much the game depended on hardware support for mesh shaders, which is why its bare minimum list called for at least an NVIDIA RTX 2060 "Turing," or at least an AMD RX 6600 XT RDNA2, both of which are DirectX 12 Ultimate GPUs with hardware mesh shaders support.

There was some confusion among gaming online forums over the requirement for hardware mesh shaders. Many people assumed that the game will not work on GPUs without mesh shader support, locking out lots of gamers. Through the course of our testing for our performance review, we learned that while it is true that "Alan Wake II" relies on hardware support for mesh shaders, the lack of this does not break gameplay. You will, however, pay a heavy performance penalty on GPUs that lack hardware mesh shader support. On such GPUs, the game is designed to show users a warning dialog box that their GPU lacks mesh shader support (screenshot below), but you can choose to ignore this warning, and go ahead to play the game. The game considers mesh shaders a "recommended GPU feature," and not a requirement. Without mesh shaders, you can expect a severe performance loss that is best illustrated with the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT based on the RDNA architecture, which lacks hardware mesh shaders.

Alan Wake II by Remedy Entertainment promises to be the year's most visually intense AAA title. The publisher put out the various tiered system requirements lists that highlight just what it takes to max the game out. As with most publishers these days, the company put out separate lists for RT and non-RT experiences. The common minimum requirements across all tiers include 90 GB of SSD-based storage, Windows 10 or Windows 11, and 16 GB of main memory. At the bare minimum, you'll need a quad-core Intel Core i5-7600K or comparable processor. For all other tiers, Remedy recommends at least an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X or Intel equivalent processor (which would mean at least a Core i7-10700K), or an 8-core/16-thread processor that's as fast as the 3700X.

The bare minimum GPU requirement calls for an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 or Radeon RX 6600. With this, you can expect 1080p @ 30 FPS, and can use the "quality" setting with DLSS 2 or FSR 2. The non-RT "Medium" list, is either 1440p @ 30 FPS or 1080p @ 60 FPS. For 1440p @ 30 FPS, you'll need a GPU at least as fast as a GeForce RTX 3060 or Radeon RX 6600 XT. 1080p @ 60 FPS requires at least a GeForce RTX 3070 or Radeon RX 6700 XT. The "Ultra" non-RT preset with 4K @ 60 Hz, which is the best experience you can possibly have without ray tracing, demands at least a GeForce RTX 4070 or Radeon RX 7800 XT. Ray tracing is a whole different beast.

Remedy Entertainment announced last month, via a FAQ, that it plans to keep Alan Wake 2 exclusive to digital platforms for an October 17 (this year) release, with no consideration given to customers demanding physical copies. Eurogamer questioned the game's creative director Sam Lake, and director Kyle Rowley at Summer Games Fest (earlier this month)—the site's reporter demanded a more detailed explanation regarding the long-anticipated sequel's eschewing of physical media. Lake responded first: "Yeah, it is digital only, and kind of coming to this idea, both from Remedy and Epic's perspective, that's our current thinking. It just felt it makes sense for this, and the timing felt right." His colleague, Rowley added further insight: "As creatives obviously, by going digital-only it does allow us more time to polish the game. Like, a significant number of weeks actually. Because otherwise, the game that goes on the disc, obviously it has to be playable without a patch. We didn't want to release something that we weren't proud of basically, and that we didn't want players to play. So hopefully this way we can give you a better version of the game."

The gaming community has debated at length about the temporary nature of digital releases—termination of online services and changes in ownership rights have resulted in certain titles becoming completely inaccessible to players/fans. Preservationists have fought hard for the continued release of physical media, but some publishers have resorted to bundling a download code in a disc-less retail box. Remedy Entertainment's FAQ proposes that digital platforms provide a more cost effective option for customers: "There are many reasons for this. For one, a large number of players have shifted to digital only. You can buy a Sony PlayStation 5 without a disc drive and Microsoft's Xbox Series S is a digital only console. It is not uncommon to release modern games as digital-only...Secondly, not releasing a disc helps keep the price of the game at $59.99 / €59.99 and the PC version at $49.99 / €49.99...Finally, we did not want to ship a disc product and have it require a download for the game - we do not think this would make for a great experience either."

Yesterday, at The PlayStation Showcase event, Remedy Entertainment and Epic Games unveiled a brand new gameplay trailer and announced that Alan Wake 2, the long-awaited and highly anticipated sequel to the studio's award-winning psychological thriller will launch on October 17. Alan Wake 2 will be available digitally for PC on the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. Pre-orders for Alan Wake 2 are now available.

The trailer introduces Saga Anderson (played by Melanie Liburd), an accomplished FBI agent with a reputation for solving impossible cases, who arrives to investigate murders in the small town community of Bright Falls in the Pacific Northwest. Anderson's case spirals into a nightmare when she discovers pages of a horror story that starts to come true and questions how it may be connected to missing writer Alan Wake, whose own dark story eerily mirrors her own.

Remedy Entertainment ("Remedy") has signed an agreement with 505 Games, an international video game publisher and a subsidiary of Digital Bros Group, under which Remedy and 505 Games will co-develop and co-publish Control 2 (formerly known as Codename Heron), a sequel to Remedy's award-winning game Control.

Control 2's initial development budget amounts to EUR 50 million, and Remedy will retain the ownership of the game's intellectual property. The development, marketing, and post-launch investments as well as the future net revenues generated by the game will be equally split between 505 Games and Remedy. The game will be available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, and it will be built on Remedy's proprietary Northlight engine and tools. Remedy will publish the game on the PC platform and 505 Games will publish it on the console platforms. The project is currently in concept stage.

Control is one of the better single player releases of this year already, and has been enough of a success for Remedy and 505 Games to launch a content roadmap stretching all the way to 2020. The game is being served on PC exclusively through the EPIC Games Store, which, besides offering developers higher revenues than Steam, has also launched an all-out campaign to secure high-profile exclusives such as Control and Metro: Exodus (even if some of them are timed exclusives).

Now, an Italian earnings report from 505 games highlights that the developers received a lump, $10.5 million upfront from EPIC; according to the report, "Revenue comes from the computer version of Control (...) The game was released on August 27 but the structure of the marketplace who requested the PC exclusivity has made possible to gain the revenue starting from this quarter." It appears EPIC is offering a safety net for developers in exchange for the exclusivity deals, paying upfront the amount of revenue developers expect to receive from the games' sales throughout the PC platform. In this case, the $10.5 million correspond to a total of 200,000 individual sales of Control. Until that number is achieved, EPIC keeps the full revenue from every sale. Any units sold starting from 200,000, and the revenue is split between the developer and EPIC. It's a win-win, really: EPIC gets more and more traction and publicity on its store, and developers guarantee they get the minimum amount they'd expect to earn by selling the game across the full spectrum of PC marketplaces.

Control is one of the best non-surprising surprises of this year's gaming scene. Remedy's tale of science fiction and paranatural objects and events is joined with a strong narrative, some of the best environments and art direction we've seen this side of 2019, and strong gunplay to boot. That Remedy isn't finished with exploring the world of Control is a given, and now we have some idea of how things will (para)naturally pan out.

First off, a free content drop coming later this year is a Photo Mode and a new game mode, dubbed Expeditions, which will shore-up endgame content for players who want to get engrossed, without end, in the gameplay of Control. There will also be two paid expansions for the game. The Foundation drops in 2020 with new story missions, enemies, and game mechanics, and will explore the nature of The Oldest House. The second Expansion, AWE (Altered World Event in the games' lingo) will explore the Investigations Sector of the Oldest House and the Federal Bureau of Control. This last one is the most intriguing, and could (tinfoil hat galore) mean a mesh of Control and Alan Wake. We know from Control's lore that the events depicted in Alan Wake are considered an Altered World Event in the game, and that they occur in the same universe. Also, the teaser image recreates the legendary Alan Wake cover art. Perhaps we'll find closure to Alan Wake outside the game proper? I'll be here to see, definitely. Finishing off, the Expansion pass will reportedly be set at a $24.99 pricing, which means individual expansions could go for $14.99 each.

"Control" by Remedy is the season's hottest AAA release, not just because it's an above-average story-driven action RPG, but also because it's an eye candy-shop. With the ability to use NVIDIA RTX real-time raytracing across a multitude of features, the game is particularly heavy on graphics hardware. Tweaktown tested the game's stability at extremely high display resolutions, including 8K, and found that the game can use up to 18.5 GB of video memory, when running in DirectX 12 with RTX enabled. There's only one client-segment graphics card capable of that much memory, the $2,499 NVIDIA TITAN RTX, which ships with 24 GB of GDDR6 memory. Its nearest client-segment neighbor is the AMD Radeon VII, but it only packs 16 GB of HBM2.

When a game needs more video memory than your graphics card has, Windows has an elaborate memory management system that sheds some of that memory onto your system's main memory, and the swap file progressively (at reduced performance, of course). Video memory usage drops like a rock between 8K and 4K UHD (which is 1/4th the pixels as 8K). With all RTX features enabled and other settings maxed out, "Control" only uses 8.1 GB of video memory. What this also means is that video cards with just 8 GB of memory are beginning fall short of what it takes to game at 4K. The $699 GeForce RTX 2080 Super only has 8 GB. The RTX 2080 Ti, with its 11 GB of memory has plenty of headroom and muscle. Find other interesting observations in the source link below.

NVIDIA is reportedly going to introduce a new gaming bundle come the release of their new SUPER, Turing-refreshed graphics cards come July 2nd. The new bundle picks up RTX-enabled titles that were developed with NVIDIA's support, and will include access to MachineGames' Wolfenstein: Young Blood, as well as Remedy's Control.

It seems that the EPIC Game Store exclusivity saga is still coming strong, with not one, but two AA games coming to PC that are exclusive to the new games distribution platform. Obsidian's The Outer Worlds is likely one of the most anticipated RPG games this side of Fallout 76, and Remedy has always been known for great single-player games that push the boundaries of the medium - and sometimes wreck those boundaries completely, as it happened with Quantum Break.

Now, both games are known to be part of EPIC's Game Store in a time-limited exclusive format for one year after launch, much like has happened with Metro Exodus - though here there is no sudden Steam departure to be met with. The Outer Worlds will also be available in Microsoft Store, true (Obsidian is now part of Microsoft's Game Studios, remember?).

Real time ray tracing won't be cheap. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 Series graphics cards are quite expensive, but even with that resources the cost to take advantage of this rendering technique will be high. We didn't know for sure what this cost would be, but the developers at Remedy have shown some preliminary results on that front. This company is working on Control, one of the first games with RTX support, and although they have not provided framerate numbers, what we do know is that the activation of ray tracing imposes a clear impact.

It does at least in these preliminary tests with its Northlight Engine. In an experimental scene with a wet marble floor and a lot of detailed furniture they were able to evaluate the cost of enabling RTX. There is a 9.2 ms performance overhead per frame in total: 2.3 ms to compute shadows; 4.4 ms to compute reflexions; and 2.5 ms for the global denoising lighting. These are not good news for those who enjoy games at 1080p60.

At NVIDIA's event at Koln, Germany, NVIDIA's Mark Smith took the lid of some of NVIDIA's game developing partners that are working on breinging RTX's improvements to gamers' systems. The presentation started with Christian Holmquist and Jonas Gammelholm, both with DICE, going through the graphical improvements enabled on Battlefield V through the usage of RTX.

Reflections of tank's muzzle flashes in character's eyes, reflected flames and smoke in water bodies, perfect ray tracing on reflective surfaces even with off-screen sources of lighting, static cube maps are replaced with actual transparent, reflective surfaces... And these effects are relevant even in gameplay; these aren't some screenshot-only, squinting-effort effects. You can immerse yourself in them even in the fast-paced combat of Battlefield V.

(Update 1: Added the full 21 games list for RTX support.)

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang at the company's Koln event announced partnerships with multiple games studios. This is part of NVIDIA's push to bring real time ray tracing and NVIDIA's RTX platforms' achievements to actual games that gamers can play. These encompass heavy hitters such as Battlefield V (DICE), Hitman 2 (IO Interactive), Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Crystal Dynamics), Metro Exodus (4A Games) and Control (Remedy Entertainment).

However, not all games are made equal, and NVIDIA knows there are significant gaming experiences coming from other, smaller studios. That's why partnerships have been established with the studios developing games such as We Happy Few (Compulsion Games), Atomic Heart (Mundfish), Assetto Corsa Competizione (Kunos Simulazioni), just to name a few. Of course, RTX's nature as a technology depends on NVIDIA's push for the initial implementation wave, and the company will be looking to bring developers up to speed with all needed programming skills, needs and difficulties inherent to the adoption of any new development framework. However, that DICE have already implemented an Alpha Version of NVIDIA's RTX technology into Battlefield V is surely a good sign.

Microsoft today announced an extension to its DirectX 12 API with DirectX Raytracing, which provides components designed to make real-time ray-tracing easier to implement, and uses Compute Shaders under the hood, for wide graphics card compatibility. NVIDIA feels that their "Volta" graphics architecture, has enough computational power on tap, to make real-time ray-tracing available to the masses. The company has hence collaborated with Microsoft to develop the NVIDIA RTX technology, as an interoperative part of the DirectX Raytracing (DXR) API, along with a few turnkey effects, which will be made available through the company's next-generation GameWorks SDK program, under GameWorks Ray Tracing, as a ray-tracing denoiser module for the API.

Real-time ray-tracing has for long been regarded as a silver-bullet to get lifelike lighting, reflections, and shadows right. Ray-tracing is already big in the real-estate industry, for showcasing photorealistic interactive renderings of property under development, but has stayed away from gaming, that tends to be more intense, with larger scenes, more objects, and rapid camera movements. Movies with big production budgets use pre-rendered ray-tracing farms to render each frame. Movies have, hence, used ray-traced visual-effects for years now, since it's not interactive content, and its studios are willing to spend vast amounts of time and money to painstakingly render each frame using hundreds of rays per pixel.

In what is a tight slap in the face of those who even question the future of PC gaming, Alan Wake, which was launched for the PC platform years after its console launch, is reported to have earned back Remedy's development and marketing costs of the game's venture to the PC platform within the first 48 hours of sales on Steam. "We made it a priority to create the best PC version of the game we possibly could, as opposed to a sloppy port we ourselves would hate to play, and judging by the amount of encouragement and positive feedback that has been pouring in, that's really paid off!" said CEO Matias Myllyrinne in a thank you note to the game's fans. "Rest assured that we are still listening to your requests and will maintain efforts to make necessary updates to the build now that it's been released," he added. The game is also reported to be also available via Origin, soon.