PlayStation CEO Says That The "Future" Of VR Is Still Years Away
The PlayStation 5 begins its global rollout on November 12, and fans are wondering what the next several years of PlayStation are going to look like. Now, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan has spoken about all things PlayStation in a new interview, and he's made some interesting comments on the immediate future of VR.
Talking to The Washington Post, Ryan said that he believes the "future" of VR is going to take some time. "I think we’re more than a few minutes from the future of VR,” he said. “We definitely believe at some point in the future, VR will represent a meaningful component of interactive entertainment. Will it be this year? No. Will it be next year? No. But will it come at some stage? We believe that."
What this means, essentially, is that Sony still believes in VR--having sold 5 million PlayStation VR units--they don't think the next big step in VR is happening for a while yet. "We’re very pleased with all the experience that we’ve gained with PlayStation VR, and we look forwarding to seeing where that takes us in the future,' Ryan adds.
While the PS5 will not have a new VR headset at launch--or for a while, by the sound of it--it will support the PS4 VR headset.
Xbox CEO Phil Spencer has previously said that Microsoft is not pursuing VR for the Series X because no one is asking for it.
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Apple has launched its Apple One bundle. Here’s how to find the right version for you, and how to subscribe to it.
As promised, Apple has now launched its Apple One bundle of services. There are three tiers available, each potentially saving you money depending on which Apple services you already use. Apple has added the ability to switch from paying separately for each of those services like Apple Music, or extra iCloud storage, and instead pay one single price.
To do this, you need to choose what tier you want, then elect to move to it. Apple helps you along the way by recommending what it believes is right for you, based on your existing subscriptions.
How to subscribe to Apple One
On your iPhone, go to Settings
Tap on your name at the top
Then tap on Subscriptions
You may have to wait a few seconds, but Apple One will appear as an option
Tap on that and Apple will display the three pricing tiers with details
Apple also highlights which tier it recommends
Tap pick a tier, then make sure you read the details
Tap on Start Free trial
That last section about a free trial is potentially confusing. You certainly get a month’s free trial of any service that you do not current use, but beyond that, you don’t. So you may very well find that in each description of the pricing tiers, there’s a line saying “Your existing subscriptions are not eligible for trial.”
Go to Settings, then tap on your name and choose Subscriptions
If you do, you still get the button marked Start Free Trial. Tap on it.
What’s happening is that Apple is charging you for the first month when you subscribe, but it then prorating what you’ve already spent. So after you’ve confirmed your purchase, you can see pricing details on each of your previously separate subscriptions.
For instance, you may see “Apple News+ (Monthly) This subscription will be included in Apple One starting on 30 November 2020.”
As part of this business of transferring from separate subscriptions, which may very well have different renewal dates, you will find that Apple refunds you part of your payment immediately.
Changing your mind
Once you’ve gone through this special new signup process, Apple One gets listed alongside all your other subscriptions on your iPhone. Go to Settings, tap on your name, then choose Subscriptions.
While you will still see all your prior Apple services listed, at least until their renewal date occurs, you can tap on Apple One in the list to get more details.
Next, pick your Apple One tier and confirm
Those details include all the regular information about your renewal date, but also repeats the three tiers. You can tap on Plan Details to find out more about what each offers, or you can tap to change to a different tier.
If you really change your mind, then this section in Settings also has the option to either Cancel Apple One, or Choose Individual Services.
You may well decide to go back to individual services. Apple One potentially represents a saving, but if you don’t use all of services in each tier, it will make more sense to pay for them individually.
Rather than joining up and cancelling, though, it’s better to work out in advance whether Apple One truly saves you money each month.
If you’ve already made that calculation, too, you should still consider it carefully because Apple One’s pricing plans include an option that Apple hadn’t previously mentioned. A key difference between the tiers is how much extra iCloud storage you get, but it turns out that you can choose any tier and then elect to add more storage on top of it. So you could choose the lowest-price plan, the Individual tier, which gets you 50GB, but then separately add on another 50GB, 200GB, or 2TB for $0.99, $2.99, or $9.99 on top of your regular Apple One tier.
This week at Bungie, there is just a lot going on right now.
What a week. It started out with a brand new ViDoc showcasing Bungie developers giving you a behind-the-scenes look at what we’ve been cooking up from home. Now we’ll pause the TWAB for 15 minutes so you can go watch it in all its glory. Even if you already watched it, go watch it again. Don’t worry, we’ll wait on you.
We followed that up by pushing out the Beyond Light launch trailer this morning featuring some good vibes and a familiar soundtrack. It’s one of the last action-packed previews of Beyond Light you’ll get before it launches in less than a fortnight. We’ll pause the TWAB one more time so you can watch it, but this is it. No more pauses after this!
That’s all we got for you this week…
Nah, just kidding. We got a lot more to cover. Let’s get to it.
Progression Changes
The start of any new Destiny expansion begins with a Power climb as you experience the campaign and play through the story missions. After finishing that up and completing some additional quests and activities, you’re usually around what we call the “Soft Cap” and will need to start earning Powerful rewards to continue to increase Power so you can tackle some of the more aspirational activities in the endgame. After you reach the “Hard Cap” then there is an additional 10 Power you can earn through earning pinnacle rewards if you choose to hit the “Pinnacle Cap.”
Here are the new Power Caps you are aiming for when the next Season begins on November 10:
Soft Cap: 1200
Hard Cap: 1250
Pinnacle Cap: 1260
When you first log in next Season, all of your weapons and armor will be at 1050 Power or higher. If you have anything already over 1050 it will be unchanged, and anything under will be brought up to 1050. All new players will start at 1050 as well.
Powerful Reward Changes
We’ve heard a lot of feedback from players for more opportunities to earn Powerful rewards from the activities you enjoy most. We have a change coming that will allow you to have a chance to earn Powerful rewards from strikes, Gambit, Crucible, and from Seasonal drops all the way up until the Hard Cap. It will still be much quicker to continue to complete all the Powerful reward sources each week, but if you just want to play strikes or Crucible matches all day every day, you can continue to earn Powerful rewards.
We hope this helps you to continue increasing your Power during the period when you are still close to the Soft Cap and may find completing some of the Powerful sources like The Ordeal very difficult.
Tokens and Collections
Destiny is at its best when you are shooting aliens, getting loot, and becoming more powerful. That gameplay loop breaks down when the best way to increase your Power can be standing in the Tower, handing tokens to Lord Shaxx.
Starting next Season, gear received from Collections and turning in tokens will have a lower Power than in previous Seasons. Gear earned through token purchases will be 20 Power below your Power Level and Collection buybacks will be capped at 1050 Power.
Economy Changes
Some currencies and items have changes coming either at the end of this Seasons or in the near future. Here is what to expect when you login next Season.
Materials with No Home
With several destinations going into the Destiny Content Vault, many of you have been wondering what is going to happen to the currencies found in the areas currently underneath the Pyramids. The simple answer is that there are no changes to these currencies in Season of the Hunt, and you will be able to continue to spend them at vendors normally.
Starting in Season 13, Phaseglass Needles, Alkane Dust, Simulation Seeds, and Seraphite will be no longer accepted by vendors. For those of you that still have unspent stockpiles at the end of Season of the Hunt, Spider will be kind enough to offer a small Glimmer exchange to take them off your hands. But you’ll realize the best value by spending them before that point, so make sure you turn in your stockpiles before the end of next Season.
There are other items that will be removed from your inventory at the end of Season of Arrivals. Some, like Faction Tokens, have not had a purpose in quite a while, and others, like Expired Ramen Coupons, never really had a purpose but held some sentimental value. We know that it might hard to part with those, but it’s time to let them go.
Bounties
Back in late April, we shared some plans on how to tackle the problem of “bounty fatigue.” We have made some shifts to seasonal bounties and reduced their importance on earning seasonal currency and seasonal progress. We’re happy with these changes, but still want to continue to improve the bounty system overall.
One of the plans we previewed was to eventually replace weekly bounties with a new mechanism to provide players with a set of non-expiring and account-scoped objectives each week that will grant lots of Season rank progress. We’re still working on that system and will share more on it before its targeted release of Season 13.
Season Pass
The Season Pass you’ve come to know since Shadowkeep is largely staying the same. There will be new weapons and armor to earn off both the free track and the owned path. One big change we are making is adding Bright Dust to the Season Pass.
As mentioned before, we wanted to change the way you earn Bright Dust and move more towards account-specific paths to give players with only one character significantly more Bright Dust than they’ve been earning over the last year. Here is the high-level look at the changes coming next Season.
Season Pass free path will now offer 7,500 Bright Dust
Season Pass owned path will now offer 3,000 Bright Dust
Weekly Bounties will now award 100 Bright Dust
With these changes, the vast majority of players will be earning more Bright Dust than before. One of our goals here is to not have a system that pushes you to try to grind out every weekly bounty on all three characters every single week. Whether you are a three-character player or only play a Hunter, Bright Dust will be more available when earning ranks on the Season Pass. We will also be making a change to the timing of Season Pass rank purchases which will be available starting in week five instead of week nine.
We have more plans for improving how you earn Bright Dust coming in Season 13 and will continue to monitor your feedback.
I’ve been talking a lot. Let’s change it up. Here is Design Lead Justin Dazet to tell you about some changes Spider is making to his wares and to answer a question we have been seeing about the customization updates we are making to your Ghosts.
Spider’s Dealings
Justin Dazet: Spider is going through some changes in Beyond Light. Though a notoriously savvy black-market dealer, our favorite four-armed friend has been largely the same for quite some time now. But the impending journey to Europa has finally given him a reason to tune up the materials exchange and make two key changes.
First, Spider will no longer be selling Legendary Shards. This exchange was removed mainly because it was not seeing enough use, particularly when compared with the other exchange offers. After reviewing player balances and the frequency with which this exchange was accessed, it was an easy decision to free up the space for something much more interesting.
In place of the Legendary Shard exchange, Spider is now selling Enhancement Prisms. These highly valued items come at a cost – 400 Legendary Shards per Prism – and he’s stingy with them so you can only purchase three a week. But we wanted to give those of you with higher balances a way to transmute your Legendary Shards into something a little more valuable than planetary materials and Upgrade Modules.
Second, we’ve taken another look at how the Enhancement Core exchange works and made some changes. The ascending cost mechanism has been removed, and in its place, Spider will now sell you five Enhancement Cores a day for fixed price of 30 Legendary Shards each. While this does limit the number of Cores you can acquire from him each day, we feel a consistent price is a clearer experience with less chance to accidentally spend large quantities of Legendary Shards.
More importantly it’s also cheaper. In the old purchase model, you’d pay 310 Legendary Shards for five Enhancement Cores (10, 20, 40, 80, and then 160). In the new model you’ll only pay 30 Shards each, which equals out to 150 Legendary Shards for five Enhancement Cores. So, while it does limit your acquisition rate, it actually will save you 160 Legendary Shards every five Cores!
Got to Go Fast
Finally, we’ve seen a few people wondering if you’ll be able to equip the Ghost mod Speed Demon with other mods like Guiding Light in the new system, and we have some good news for you: You won’t need to. Starting in Beyond Light all Sparrows, both Legendary and Exotic, will innately summon instantly, even without the Transmat Preloader perk. As a result, there is no need for a Ghost mod to impact this functionality, so Speed Demon was not carried forward into the new system.
If you’re already driving around a Sparrow with Transmat Preloader, you can keep using it and it will work just fine. Or you can pull it from Collections again and get two new perks. Newly created Sparrows will no longer roll on Transmat Preloader, so you have a chance to get yourself an extra perk and still retain that instant summon speed.
Hop on that newly instant-summoning Sparrow and zip on over to check out Spider’s new offers. He’s ready and waiting to wrap those four greedy arms around some of your wealth and make you a deal you can’t refuse.
Eververse
Starting in Season of the Hunt, Bright Engrams will now contain all Eververse content from Season 1 to three Seasons prior to the current Season (excluding content from special events like Festival of the Lost, the Dawning, etc.). Here are some practical examples:
Season 12: Bright Engrams contain all content from Seasons 1 through 9.
Season 13: Bright Engrams contain all content from Seasons 1 through 10.
As always, as you open more Bright Engrams, your chances for earning things you don’t own increases. There will be instances of duplicate drops, but the Engram will be weighted to grant you things you might be hunting.
Down to the Wire
It’s time now to check in with our Player Support team for the latest on known issues and important information on the state of the game.
This is their report.
WORLD ACTIVITIES
When Beyond Light and Update 3.0.0 release on November 10, 2020, some world activities will be removed. These removals are not related to the Destiny Content Vault but are general game updates.
Players should complete any activities and quests they have left if they want to claim rewards from them.
Flashpoints (Weekly Engrams should be claimed before November 10 or they will be removed).
All Destination Adventures.
World Quests from Year-1 locations, such as Enemy of my Enemy, Exodus Black, and Data Recovery.
INVENTORY ITEM REMOVAL
With the start of Year 4 and the introduction of the Destiny Content Vault on November 10, certain items will be deprecated from player inventories that correspond with Vaulted destinations, activities, and campaigns.
Click here to review a list of items, quests, and currencies that will be removed from player inventories at the start of Year 4. Some items listed can be used or turned in for rewards, such as Glimmer, weapons, and armor, so be sure to do that before November 10.
14-HOUR DOWNTIME
On November 9, Destiny 2 will be taken offline for maintenance.
Maintenance will begin at 7 PM PST (0300 UTC), ending on November 10 at 9 AM (1700 UTC) with the launch of Destiny 2: Beyond Light and Update 3.0.0.
PlayStation 4 COLLECTOR’S EDITION CODES
Earlier this week, we informed PlayStation 4 players who purchased the Destiny 2: Beyond Light Collector’s Edition that they may have received an email about a possible account lockout if they used their Collector’s Edition codes. The issue resulting in account lockouts for early code redemption has now been resolved, and players can now safely redeem their codes prior to November 10.
TITLES AND SEALS
With Moments of Triumph and Season of Arrivals coming to a close, players are strongly encouraged to claim and equip the titles located in their Seals so that they will correctly count as claimed.
KNOWN ISSUES
While we continue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our #Help Forum:
The Warlock’s top tree on the Dawnblade subclass can trigger the Icarus Dash cooldown when playing on PC.
Players can’t dismount from their Sparrow using the dismount button on a controller if their Ghost is out.
Some players report that they’re receiving the Baboon error more frequently.
Players who observe other issues should report them to our #Help forum.
Nominees
It’s now time for our Movies of the Week. For those unfamiliar with our weekly tradition, this is where we find a few of our favorite fan films to feature. To enter, just make a Destiny 2 related video and upload it somewhere we can see. Our Creations page is always a good place we like to pull from. If you win, we will send you a special emblem as a reward for your effort. Without further interruption, here are this week’s winners!
Destiny Lo-Fi/HipHop Beats to Wait for Beyond Light to
Memories
It’s been a fun week filled with several early mornings for us on Pacific time. It’s always nice to start off your day delivering a new ViDoc or exciting new launch trailer. The train carrying the hype is nearing its destination though, and Beyond Light will be arriving in less than two weeks! It’s almost time to start counting the sleeps until the big launch.
Next week we will have a preview of some of the patch notes coming with the big update on November 10. We want to leave plenty for you to discover on your own in Beyond Light and Season of the Hunt and are excited to let the game do the talking, but we will still check in next week for one last TWAB before launch.
Indie studio The Game Bakers has just released a new story trailer for its futuristic title Haven, and has also announced that the game will be coming to Switch (and PS4) later than other versions.
Haven is locked in for release on December 3rd on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Xbox One. Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 owners will have to endure a longer (and, as of now, uncertain) wait, as the game is listed for release on those platforms in “early 2021.”
Haven focuses on the young couple Yu and Kay, and charts their escape to a mysterious planet where hostile forces threaten to tear them apart.
Talking Dynasty Warriors 9: Empires with Producer Akihiro Suzuki
Needless to say, Dynasty Warriors Producer Akihiro Suzuki knows a thing or two about the Three Kingdoms. He’s been working on the Dynasty Warriors series since the historically-based franchise’s birth, helping grow the 1 vs. 1,000 game into a global brand, while helping celebrate the original game’s 20th anniversary at TGS with the surprise news of the forthcoming Dynasty Warriors 9: Empires. I caught up with Suzuki to find out more about this action-strategy game hitting Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S in early 2021.
Jon Robinson, Public Relations, Koei Tecmo America: Dynasty Warriors: 9 Empires marks the fourth Xbox system the franchise has been on. Walk us through the highlights of how each new Xbox system has allowed you to do more with the game.
Akihiro Suzuki, Producer, Dynasty Warriors 9: Empires: With the specs improving with each successive generation, we have been able to greatly increase the chaotic enemy actions that is a key element to what makes the series fun. At the same time, the increase in processing speed used to control the AI of the various troops that appear on the battlefield has allowed us to simulate a more realistic battlefield.
Robinson: What graphical upgrades can gamers expect to see in Empires on the Xbox Series X|S?
Suzuki: There will be improvements on the Xbox Series X|S versions in the visual quality, framerate stability, and crowded chaotic gameplay.
Robinson: The Dynasty Warriors franchise has been around for over 20 years now. What is it about this franchise that people keep coming back for?
Suzuki: I think that one of the reasons is that we have been able to retain and deliver the series concept of “the exhilaration of 1 vs 1,000” throughout while adding new features into each new game. There are features such as new actions and new game modes, but the addition of new characters allow us to show new episodes from the Three Kingdoms story and their relationships with existing characters, has allowed us to bring forth new drama to the storytelling in each game.
Robinson: As a history fan, have your opinions of certain characters in the games changed throughout the years as you learn more behind the real men featured as characters in your games?
Suzuki: My opinion has changed about Sima Yi. In the early games, I had the impression that as a rival to Zhuge Liang, he was a supporting character. But not only did he have many military exploits, he was victorious in the faction within Wei, and lived through the Three Kingdoms era to create the foundation of the Jin dynasty, so now I think that he is a hero that rivals Cao Cao.
Robinson: How is the Empires gaming experience different than the experience of playing a typical Dynasty Warriors game?
Suzuki: It combines the simple controls and 1 vs 1000 exhilaration of the Musou action of the DW series, and the tactical strategy elements of conquering territories. Players can enjoy weaving together their very own Three Kingdoms.
Robinson: What can you tell us about the game’s evolved battle system?
Suzuki: The battles have changed compared to past games, and now the area around a castle used as the battlegrounds to conquer the castle has evolved into siege battles. Since the high-stakes situation changes constantly, players should make use of various strategies and their forces in the pursuit of capturing enemy castles. I hope everyone enjoys this new style of battle.
Robinson: How will the character relations influence gameplay?
Suzuki: It will impact the effect of strategies and abilities in battle. Also, becoming sworn siblings or spouses will influence the in-game events and ending.
Robinson: What can we expect from the expanded character creator?
Suzuki: The facial editing will allow for more customization compared to previous Empires games, and it’s similar to Nioh 2’s Character Creation. In editing body parts, it has been a system where the upper body, lower body, arms and feet could be changed, but in this game, we added a new feature. While I can’t talk about the specific details yet, I hope that you can imagine what is possible from the screenshots released showing off the character creator.
Robinson: What is your favorite type of character to create to rule the Three Kingdoms?
Suzuki: I create a lot of characters from the Three Kingdoms story. Using tales and legends of those characters as the base, I then come up with the parts that are lacking as I create the characters. It’s also fun to create family members of DW characters, such as Lu Xun’s son Lu Kang, and Ling Tong’s father Ling Cao. Also, I always create King Wutugu.
Unity teams up with Lego to teach kids about game development
Unity has teamed up with the folks at Lego for its latest Microgame project, joining forces with the iconic brick building brand to help introduce game development concepts in an easily accessible and fun way.
In a blog post, Unity says even those with no game development experience should be able to get a game up and running within an hour. The Lego Microgame requires creators to download Unity, and from there introduces them to how the game engine works using a series of in-engine tutorials.
Once the fundamentals have been explained, Unity encourages Microgame users to customize and create their own 3D levels in the editor with the help of downloadable mods that introduce new mechanics and concepts like customizable enemies, new characters, and more.
The Microgame project itself isn’t new; Unity has previously used the program as a way to introduce game development concepts to a wider audience. As with the latest Lego flavored Microgame, past versions of the program give fledgling game makers a starting point and allow them to edit their projects with a variety of mods and customizations.
Unity says that bringing Lego into the mix aims to help some game development concepts compare to something many people are already familiar with.
“Combining famous Lego elements with Unity’s extensibility and workflows made the Lego Microgame a perfect vehicle to demonstrate how virtual bricks connect like the real ones,” explains Unity. ”By simulating this physical-to-virtual world Lego creation, we’re giving new users a relatable, authentic experience right out of the box, with an ever-expanding list of ways to integrate additional features into your games.”
Gamasutra: Simon Carless’s Blog – Call for data: (Steam) game revenue over time!
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[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]
So we haven’t done a ‘call for anonymized data’ post recently on the GameDiscoverCo newsletter, but one subject has been coming up quite a bit recently. Sure, let’s say your game made $50k in its first week on Steam. But at the end of Year 1, will you have $100k or $250k? And how about at the end of Year 2 or Year 3?
I’d like to use all of your (anonymous and abstracted) data to try to get a good sense of if there are any trends on revenue scaling/’long tail’, or if they are changing over time. If you can help (submit data on one or multiple games!), please fill out this survey now.
So again, help us out by completing the short survey, tell your friends, and we’ll reflect the compiled data back your way. Please spread the word – we’ll leave it open until Friday, November 6th.
Bonus: results from previous GameDiscoverCo surveys!
Since many of you are new to the GameDiscoverCo newsletter, I thought it might be useful to recap the two public Steam surveys I’ve done so far.
Il’ll quickly go through the results, and whether I still trust the data in them:
‘Steam sales to reviews’ explained
Firstly, the ‘how many sales does a game have, looking at its Steam reviews?’ question. The results of this particular survey can be summarized in just one handy graph:
As I said back in August 2020: “If you launched your game in 2020, you have an average of 41 sales per review and a median of 38 sales per review. And it seems like the current non-outlier range is between 20 and 60 sales per review – for a game launching from scratch this year.”
So a game with 1,000 Steam reviews released in 2020 might have sold anywhere between 20,000 and 60,000 copies. (The actual gross/net revenue depends on things like average sales price and discounting, so we’re not going into that here!)
Going back further in time, as you can see, the ratio increases. This is partly because of the ‘would you like to review this?’ Steam prompt that turned up at the end of October 2019. But that same button has meant older games people still play regularly have been reviewed a lot more, which can also skew things.
Anyhow, here’s the 2020 sales/review ratio for all respondents so you can see it’s nicely spread out:
I still feel good that – within a larger range (for example, 20x to 60x for 2020 reviews), this survey is fairly accurate. I’ve heard of larger studios starting to use it in planning, and SteamDB integrated a version of it onto each game’s detail page (However, SteamDB ended up using just the 2020 estimate for all game pages.)
So I would give this survey an A- for accuracy, as long as you use a range and the correct years when expressing the possible outcomes!
The responses were extremely varied and produced the following across all ages/wishlist sizes. (So in the below graph results, 1 could be ‘1000 wishlists at launch, 1000 sales in first week’ and 0.1 could be ‘1000 wishlists at launch, 100 sales in first week’):
As I explained at the time: “For all of these games (of varying ages, some Early Access, some full release), you get an average of 0.36 sales per wishlist, and a median of 0.2 sales per wishlist for your first week on Steam. But with some wiiiide ranges, as you can see from the graph.”
And if you split by number of wishlists, you see similar volatility in eventual results. This is the reason why Steam are recently saying there’s no particular number you should ‘predict’. For example, here are the wishlist/sales ratios for all games that launched with more than 10,000 wishlists:
So really, that could be anywhere between 0.75 down to… 0.05, if you take the majority of the data points? That’s so much of a wider range than the Steam ‘sales to reviews’ data, which only varied by a factor of three-fold.
In addition, I noted at that time: “One thing that did decline somewhat is wishlist conversion rate for the two years we have the most significant survey responses, though: 10% in 2019, 7.3% in 2020.”
I’m hearing more and more about devs having disappointing launches compared to the number of Steam wishlists they built up, particularly when they added them via demos and pre-release Steam features. So I think a re-assessment is in order here – although this data gives you a clear ceiling and floor.
Therefore, I would rate this data more like B- in relevance/accuracy to today’s dev launching a Steam game. And I’m planning to conduct an extra follow-up survey before the end of the year to anyone who launched a game in 2020, asking for more detail.
[This newsletter is handcrafted by GameDiscoverCo, a new agency based around one simple issue: how do players find, buy and enjoy your premium PC or console game? We’ll be launching a ‘Plus’ paid newsletter tier with lots of extra info/data – watch out for it soon.]
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Intel's 11th-Generation Rocket Lake CPUs Are Following In AMD's Footsteps
AMD is just over a week away from launching its highly anticipated Ryzen 5000 series of CPUs, but its closest competitor Intel still has a few months to go before it releases its own new generation of CPUs, dubbed Rocket Lake-S.
Announced earlier this year, Rocket Lake is presumably another generation of processors built on Intel's 14nm process, which it has clung to for multiple years. That means core counts on Rocket Lake aren't changing drastically, with a maximum of 8 cores and 16 threads. But like AMD, Intel is hoping that optimizations to instructions-per-cycle (IPC) is how it will achieve more performance with the same high clock speeds the company has touted over its competitor.
Intel is still the best choice for pure gaming performance thanks to its slight lead in single-core performance, and with Rocket Lake, an improvement to IPC might widen the gap. While Intel isn't ready to get specific with numbers, it does say that it expects double-digit percentage improvements when it comes to IPC, allowing for higher framerates in CPU-limited scenarios and less latency in.
Win a copy of Action-RPG Torchlight III on Nintendo Switch!
We love Switch games, which is why we were so excited to start writing about them on the site last month. But this week marks something even more exciting: our first Switch giveaway! We’ve partnered with the lovely folks at Perfect World to give away some Switch copies of the recent installment in the popular RPG series, Torchlight 3.
One hundred years after the events of Torchlight 2, Novastraia is once again threatened by invasion, this time from the Netherim and its allies. You must choose your own hero, and become the land’s defender, fighting off fearsome foes, adventuring, and just generally exploring the wilderness with your friends, or by your lonesome. Torchlight 3 also features collectible animal companions, and even lets you build and upgrade your very own fort.
So if you’re hankering for a fun, fleshed-out RPG experience, Torchlight 3 might just be for you. So what do you need to do to get a copy? Well, just enter below and you’ll be in with a chance of winning when our giveaway ends on Thursday, October 5.
In order to enter, simply follow the instructions in the box below. Though, please do take a glance at our terms and conditions first!
If you can’t wait to play Torchlight 3, you can find the game on the Switch store and Steam. For more similar recommendations, see our list of the best Switch RPGs!
