Rain or shine, a new month means new games. GeForce NOW kicks off April with nearly 20 new games, seven of which are available to play this week. GFN Thursday celebrates the 10-year anniversary of ZeniMax Online Studios' Elder Scrolls Online by bringing the award-winning online role-playing game (RPG) to the cloud this week. Plus, the GeForce NOW Ultimate membership comes to gamers in Japan for the first time, with new GeForce RTX 4080 SuperPODs online today.

The Rising Sun Goes Ultimate
GeForce NOW is rolling out the green carpet to gamers in Japan, expanding next-generation cloud gaming worldwide. The Ultimate membership tier is now available to gamers in the region, delivering up to 4K gaming at up to 120 frames per second, all at ultra-low latency - even on devices without the latest hardware. Gamers in Japan can now access from the cloud triple-A titles by some of the world's largest publishers. Capcom's Street Fighter 6 and Resident Evil Village will be coming to GeForce NOW at a later date for members to stream at the highest performance. GeForce NOW will operate in Japan alongside GeForce NOW Alliance partner and telecommunications company KDDI, which currently offers its customers access to GeForce RTX 3080-powered servers, in addition to its mobile benefits. Plus, new GFNA partners in other regions will be announced this year - stay tuned to GFN Thursdays for details.

AMD in its Computex 2022 presentation announced several design wins for its Ryzen 6000U line of high-performance processors for ultra-thin notebooks. With configurable TDPs of 15 W and 28 W, these processors feature an 8-core/16-thread "Zen 3" CPU, an iGPU with up to 12 RDNA2 compute units, and a modern I/O that combines DDR5 memory with PCI-Express Gen 4, to bring gaming to ultra-thin form-factors without the need for a discrete GPU. The iGPU meets DirectX 12 Ultimate feature requirements, and AMD leverages technologies such as FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), to further improve gaming performance.

Among the new design wins are the ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED, a 13-inch ultra-thin weighing only 1 kg, and capable of average 60 FPS in "Godfall," taking advantage of FSR. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro X is another notebook in this class capable of 1080p gaming, powered by the Ryzen 7 6800HS, with up to 122 FPS in CS:GO, up to 266 FPS in "League of Legends," up to 59 FPS in "Shadow of the Tomb Raider," up to 64 FPS in "Final Fantasy: XIV," and up to 46 FPS in "Deus Ex: Mankind Divided."

AMD late Thursday released the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 graphics drivers. Version 20.7.1 beta adds optimization for "Disintegration." The software also introduces an improved AMD Bug Report Tool. A number of bugs were fixed with this release including stuttering observed on machines running RX 5000 series GPUs with Radeon Replay enabled; "Vega" based graphics cards experiencing performance loss with Performance Metrics enabled; an error switching between apps while previewing your stream; custom fan- and clock- tuning settings not applying in Radeon Performance tuning tab or retaining after reboot; and display resolution failing to stretch with display scaling enabled in CS:GO. Bugs related to Valorant, DOTA2, and DOOM Eternal were also fixed. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.7.1 Beta

Single player games may have entered a perceived decline since their heydays, as increasingly long, costly development times have drawn developers towards experiences that are more easily... monetized. This is typically done by cutting experiences into DLC pieces and adding always-on, recurring ways of recouping developer (or publishers') investment. There's no need in beating around the bush - we all know what these experiences look like, in one way, or another. Though it's true that these may not always have the intended effect, as users and the industry as a whole have been recoiling from particularly aggressive renditions of these monetization practices, which in turn, may lead companies to face considerable losses, be these monetary or in the much less liquid good will.

Square Enix is one of the companies that has excelled in the making of first player games, for one. however, for one reason or another, these may not have translated as the successful commercial releases that the company hoped (thinking of you, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided). As a result, the company has reportedly put the Deus Ex franchise on ice, but has recently made some tentative remarks on how they might bring it back. However, Square Enix themselves have put fears into gamers and fans' minds with their renewed interest in games as a service. which, according to Square Enix President & CEO Yosuke Matsuda, may not mean exactly what we've been told it means.

Feral Interactive today announced that action RPG Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is coming to macOS on December 12th, augmented with Metal 2, Apple's latest graphics API. Developed by Eidos Montréal and published by Square Enix on consoles and Windows PC, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is the latest instalment in the renowned cyberpunk Deus Ex series. Set in 2029, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided casts players as Adam Jensen, a mechanically-augmented covert agent in a world where discrimination against augmented humans has created a climate of fear. Armed with a new arsenal of state-of-the-art weapons and augmentations, but forced to operate in a society that distrusts his kind, Jensen must choose which approach to take as he struggles to unravel a global conspiracy.

Players will will tailor Jensen's augmentations to suit their individual play style as they forge their own routes through meticulously designed missions, constantly choosing between a variety of tactical options: hacking, stealth, social skills, and brute force. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided features superbly realised environments with wildly imaginative science-fiction elements. The game's main hub, a vast and breathtakingly detailed re-imagining of Prague, infuses the city's historic architecture with futuristic art, technology and interior design.