EPIC Games has announced that a new version of its industry-spanning Unreal Engine is now available. Version 4.25 adds Beta support for development specifically geared for upcoming, next generation Xbox Series X and PS5 consoles, thus allowing non-first-party studios to accelerate their development on the platform using the tried and true Unreal game engine. Part of this support includes development modules for next-gen audio features - remember these consoles will feature hardware-accelerated audio that's supposed to kick audio development in games towards the next gear.

It remains to be seen what exactly developers will be ready to achieve, but has consoles become the most common development dominator for upcoming games, their specs will definitely facilitate advancements in game development for the future. High core-count CPUs and GPUs, right alongside high-speed storage in the form of NVMe-based systems will now become the norm, which means us PC gamers will also reap some benefits from these development requirements. Version 4.25 of the Unreal Engine also adds production-ready support for Niagara VFX (used for water animations), as well as for the Chaos physics and destruction system that is already employed in Fortnite. New shading capabilities are also in store for developers.

The Crysis Twitter account today once again became active, after almost four years of inactivity, to post a two-worded tweet - "RECEIVING DATA". The tweet is an indication of something happening and the current industry rumors are pointing to a nonother then a remaster of the beloved title. Yes, we are talking about a remaster of one of the Crysis games, possibly the last entry added in 2013 - the Crysis 3. Originally developed by a German developer Crytek and published by Electronic Arts, the game is powered by CryEngine. The game is being worked on by both teams of EA and Crytek, however, the possible launch of the game is determined by EA, as it has rights to the game still. During the Q2 earnings call, EA's CEO mentioned that they are working delivering "some exciting remasters of fan favorites" for the fiscal year of 2021, so we can expect the game in a timeframe close to us.

It seems like the popular question "but can it run Crysis?" will gain traction again, as the game will likely be a real treat for the eyes. Implementing Crytek's latest CryEngine 5.6, it will feature all the latest bells and whistles of computer graphics. That means that Ray Tracing and support for 4K textures are going to be present. Meant for next-generation hardware of PCs and consoles like PS5 and Xbox Series X, the remastered Crysis game would need a powerful system to run on, however, judging by rumors of next-generation hardware it should be enough to power it without a problem. To see more about CryEngine 5.6, please check out the video below.

Sony in a YouTube stream keynote by PlayStation 5 lead system architect Mark Cerny, detailed the upcoming entertainment system's hardware. There are three key areas where the company has invested heavily in driving forward the platform by "balancing revolutionary and evolutionary" technologies. A key design focus with PlayStation 5 is storage. Cerny elaborated on how past generations of the PlayStation guided game developers' art direction as the low bandwidths and latencies of optical discs and HDDs posed crippling latencies arising out of mechanical seeks, resulting in infinitesimally lower data transfer rates than what the media is capable of in best case scenario (seeking a block of data from its outermost sectors). SSD was the #1 most requested hardware feature by game developers during the development of PS5, and Sony responded with something special.

Each PlayStation 5 ships with a PCI-Express 4.0 x4 SSD with a flash controller that has been designed in-house by Sony. The controller features 12 flash channels, and is capable of at least 5.5 GB/s transfer speeds. When you factor in the exponential gains in access time, Sony expects the SSD to provide a 100x boost in effective storage sub-system performance, resulting in practically no load times.

Sony has announced via Twitter that their lead system architect Mark Cerny will "provide a deep dive into PS5's system architecture, and how it will shape the future of games" tomorrow. This is likely the start of Sony's marketing campaign for the release of the PS5 which is due out Holidays 2020.

The Japanese company has remained puzzlingly tight-lipped regarding their next-gen games console, which is a far cry from Microsoft's position, who have been releasing details and teasing their next-gen Xbox Series X system for a while now. It remains to be seen how Sony's system will differ from Microsoft's Xbox Series X, since most specs are rumored to be close on both consoles. The underlying Zen 2 architecture for the CPUs is confirmed in both consoles, and so should the fabrication process and RDNA2-based graphics with dedicated ray tracing hardware. It remains to be seen how the companies will aim to differentiate their offerings.

People Can Fly and Square Enix today released a gameplay trailer for their upcoming, next-gen game Outriders. The game, which will be available in current-gen systems as well as Xbox Series X, PS5 and PC, is a 1-3 player, drop-in drop-out co-op RPG shooter which promises to be set in a futuristic, dark sci-fi universe. The premise is as such: humanity as we know it abandoned Earth in search of a new home, which they thought they had found in the form of Enoch. A worldwide, storm-like event dubbed The Anomaly (which may have been produced by more than weather phenomena, I wager) forced humanity back into cryo-suspension whilst they waited for the proverbial storm to pass. The eventually reawakened ones find burning powers within themselves that will force them to confront their humanity, evolve - and eventually, to become something different.

People Can Fly describe the game as "Players will create their own Outrider and embark on a journey across a hostile planet. With rich storytelling spanning a diverse world, they will leave behind the slums and shanty towns of the First City and traverse forests, mountains and deserts in pursuit of a mysterious signal." You can expect an arsenal of weapons and supernatural powers, though the exact nature of the game's world and systems (open-world, quasi-open world, or some such) still haven't been clarified. Expect the game to drop come holiday 2020, right alongside the next-generation console launch. A reveal stream will be available via Twitch in about two days - there's a countdown timer in the official Outriders page.

Sony's own lead system architect Mark Cerny spilled the beans on the company's upcoming "PlayStation 5" games console - the name isn't confirmed, but it's a PlayStation, and it's the fifth, so, following from the previous nomenclature just makes sense, doesn't it? One particular detail, however, is of most interest to us PC hardware junkies, and that one little fact is the confirmed Navi GPU that will power it. This is, almost certainly, a semi-custom Navi-based GPU, however; but the tidbit that PlayStation 5 will have raytracing support is the one game changer for hardware expectations - on paper, at least.

Of course, Navi is expected to debut much sooner in the consumer space than on next-gen consoles, but the fact that PlayStation 5 development kits are already being seeded - and an increasing rate, according to Sony - bodes well for the feature's inclusion on AMD's consumer-based cards. Either that or the company is taking a software approach to raytracing, which, if NVIDIA's 1000 and 10*0 series is any indication, wouldn't go very well with performance intentions. This does mean that raytracing is about to receive a much-needed market penetration boost for its adoption by developers. NVIDIA will of course be able to wave the flag of having been the first company to introduce the technology to consumers.