Remember that neat Microsoft engineering trick that boosted previous-gen's games' performance on their latest and greatest Xbox Series X|S consoles? Well, Microsoft has released a new update for FPS Boost which increases the number of titles from the previous 23. The update adds the FPS boosting capability to a mind-boggling 74 games in one go, increasing their performance up to 60 FPS at their respective rendering resolutions.

Of course, one might want some more changes to be made to the game. However, remember that this a wholly Microsoft endeavor - there's no developer work required or being done here. some developers have released "next-gen" updates to some of their releases from the Xbox One and PS4 era, but FPS Boost is developer agnostic, and works via the Direct 3D API on the Xbox consoles. Titles getting an FPS Boost include Assassin's Creed Unity (maybe now finally is the time to play that one Assassin's Creed game, uh?), Deus Ex Mankind Divided, Alien Isolation (get some scares at double the framerate, what's not to love?) Wasteland 3, and Far Cry 5 all moving to 60 FPS.

Microsoft has recently announced an expansion of their Xbox Cloud Gaming Beta with the addition of backward compatibility for select Xbox 360 and original Xbox titles. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members can now stream 16 backward compatible games through the Xbox Cloud Gaming Beta (formally Project xCloud). Microsoft has also enabled touch support for select titles while the rest will require a controller, the games are currently only playable on Android with no support for Apple devices. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers with a compatible device can now try out backward compatibility and you can view the complete list of available games below.

Microsoft has been praised for its continued support of previous console generations with the latest Xbox Series X maintaining compatibility with some games going back to the original Xbox along with controller and accessory inter compatibility. It seems that for the first few years most games will be released for both the Xbox One and Xbox Series X families of consoles. Sony seems to be taking a much conservative approach and hoping to take full advantage of the new PS5 features and updated DualSense controller to create iconic exclusives for the console.

In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Sony's Interactive Entertainment's CEO, Jim Ryan confirmed that the company plans to create games "that can really only be enjoyed on PS5." This approach will likely irritate PS4 users who have invested heavily in the console with controllers and other accessories, Sony believes that this approach will help the company to make the most out of their new console hardware.

Microsoft today announced that when it launches sometime in Holiday 2020, the Xbox Series X next-generation entertainment system will support "thousands of games" at launch. This is thanks to the console retaining compatibility with all older Xbox generation, not just the Xbox One, but also the Xbox 360 and the very fist Xbox. This is thanks to translation layers that let you play the older games on the latest hardware. In some cases, the Xbox Series X can add HDR, and turn up frame-rates to 120 FPS on some of the older games. The Xbox Series X will have several Microsoft Studios exclusives at launch, with the company reporting that all its 15 studios are busy developing exclusives. Several games launched in the past few years for the Xbox One X could receive content upgrades to the Xbox Series X to leverage its hardware.

AMD succeeded in delivering on its backwards-compatibility promise for the 3rd generation Ryzen processors on motherboards based on AMD 300-series and 400-series chipsets. This promise was very close to being derailed suggests a community thread on MSI forums. According to MSI representatives active on the forum, the capacity of the SPI flash EEPROM chip that stores the motherboard UEFI firmware is woefully limited to cram in the AGESA ComboAM4 1.0.0.3a microcode on many of its motherboards.

The company had to make several changes to its UEFI BIOS package that's currently being circulated as a "beta," to accommodate support for 3rd generation Ryzen processors along with AGESA ComboAM4 1.0.0.3a. First, it had to kick out support for A-series and Athlon processors based on the 28 nm "Bristol Ridge" silicon. Second, it had to [and this is a big one], kick the RAID module, breaking SATA RAID on many of its motherboards. Third, it had to replace its feature-rich Click BIOS 5 setup program with a barebones "GSE Lite" Click BIOS program, which lacks many of the features of the original program, and comes with a dull, low-resolution UI. This program still includes some essential MSI-exclusive features such as A-XMP (which translates Intel XMP profiles to AMD-compatible settings), Smart Fan, and M-Flash.

Intel's 9-series chipset, which is built for the company's next-generation Core "Broadwell" processor family, and slated for the second half of 2014, may face backwards-compatibility issues with current-generation Core "Haswell" processors, and the ability of current 8-series platforms to support "Broadwell," even though the two processor families share a common LGA1150 CPU socket, according to a VR-Zone report.

The report notes that a number of electrical connections between the CPU socket and chipset are different, and the chip follows a different power supply (as in power distribution within the chip/motherboard) than "Haswell." Such differences could pose backwards-compatibility issues. Although a generation ahead of Haswell, Broadwell isn't its immediate successor. Intel plans to roll out a refreshed Core "Haswell" processor family in a few quarters from now, which in addition to fully-integrated clocking mode, could introduce a few other platform changes. The report notes that 9-series chipset motherboards could be more compatible with Haswell (refresh), than the current Haswell platform. Intel 9-series chipset could introduce support for SATA-Express, the next big consumer internal storage interface that succeeds SATA 6 Gb/s.

PCI-SIG (Special Interest Group), the organisation responsible for development of PCI specifications announced that generation 3 PCI-Express (PCI-E 3.0), is off its target launch time from late-2009 to Q2 2010. Although work on the bus is almost finished, there seems to be problems with implementing backwards-compatibility with older generations of PCI-E. Assuming PCI-E 3.0 is standardised in Q2 2010, one can expect implementing products (motherboards and expansion cards supporting PCI-E 3.0) only by a year later.

PCI-E 3.0 packs features that overcome the bottlenecks of PCI-E 2.0, such as the removal of the 8P/10b encoding scheme that added at least 20% data overhead for the 5 GT/s PCI-E 2.0, reducing it to 4 GT/s effective. At 8 GT/s the new bus will have effectively twice the bandwidth.