We may still have a few months left to wait, but finally we've gotten details of what the next real generation will bring. Microsoft and Sony have both stuck with the PC-like design of their predecessors, and are again using AMD as their CPU and GPU supplier, but the Xbox Series X and PS5 will be very different from the current generation.
It's hard to believe that a new Half-Life game is actually here. Half-Life: Alyx is everything I've ever wanted from a flagship VR game. It takes full advantage of the immersiveness of virtual reality, and while it might not be the sequel many gamers have been waiting for, it's still an important move for Valve. It's not treating VR like a special mode bolted on top of another game, like Resident Evil 7 or Fallout 4. After years of investing in the medium, Valve has proven it's possible to make a lengthy, big-budget title that will actually get gamers excited and maybe even convince them to buy pricey headsets en masse.
The remake of Resident Evil 3 will be out in just a few weeks, but Capcom wanted to give eager gamers the chance to play Resident Evil Resistance -- a multiplayer game that comes with Resident Evil 3 -- a bit early. The publisher had planned on opening a public beta today on Steam, PS4 and Xbox One, but only the latter has launched on time, as the company announced that technical issues have caused delays for the Steam and PS4 versions. Capcom didn't mention what exactly those problems are, or how long it expects the delay to last. Only 14 days remain until the retail launch of both titles, so hopefully the beta will be available shortly -- otherwise the sneak peek would be rather pointless.
Today Sony revealed a ton of information and specs about the upcoming PlayStation 5. Everything from its speedy SSD, details on the clock speed of its CPU and GPU and plans for 3D audio are now revealed. If you tuned in for the hour-long livestream then you've probably heard everything, but if you'd prefer to cut out any filler or just get a quick replay then we have the solution.
It's been almost a year since Sony started talking about the PlayStation 5 in an uncharacteristically revealing Wired interview. We learned the next-generation console will be powered by AMD's third-generation Ryzen CPU and a custom Radeon Navi GPU. Additionally, it'll support hardware-accelerated ray-tracing and feature speedy SSD storage. But beyond confirming the name "PlayStation 5" and announcing a familiar-looking logo, Sony hasn't given us many specific details about the console -- certainly not as many as Microsoft has around the Xbox Series X, which on paper has similar hardware.
If you had any lingering questions about the Xbox Series X hardware, they've probably been answered. Microsoft has published a deep dive into the console's specs, including just what the company hopes to achieve with all that tech. To begin with, the semi-custom AMD Zen 2 processor runs its eight cores at 3.8GHz (3.66GHz with SMT in use), with one core set aside for basic system functions. The Xbox will also have 16GB of GDDR6 RAM, although just 10GB of that will have the full 560GB/s bandwidth games will want for GPU-friendly tasks. The remaining 6GB runs at a 'standard' 336GB/s for less demanding tasks and the operating system.
The Xbox Series X is going to be a beast. On paper, its sheer power blows away most gaming rigs today -- but what does that mean for PC enthusiasts? To be honest, there's still plenty we don't know about the Series X or what the state of PC hardware will be later this year. But based on Microsoft's spec dump last week, we can start making some educated guesses.
You have until March 6th to try and nab a working Nintendo PlayStation prototype -- one of the rarest relics of lost gaming history -- and it'll only cost you a few hundred thousand dollars. The current high bid for this retro prototype at auction is $300,000 (plus a buyer's premium of $60,000), which, yeah, doesn't exactly sound like a steal. At one point, though, the Nintendo PlayStation commanded even bigger offers -- think a $350,000 top bid, which worked out to well over $400,000 with the buyer premium factored in. And even before this thing went to auction, an unknown party from Europe offered to pay owner Terry Diebold as much as $1.2 million for the prototype, though the money never actually changed hands.
Andrey Doronichev is in charge of gamer experience at Stadia, Google's fledgling cloud-gaming service. In a conversation with him about the company's confidence in Stadia three months post-launch, Doronichev was unflappable. Though players have been complaining about a lack of updates, technical issues, missing features and a dearth of new games, Doronichev argued the service was still new and Google had actually grown it significantly since launch. Besides, he said, it's not about the daily experience in the early days. It's about the end goal -- the 8K, lag-free, game-streaming utopia that Google promised when it debuted Stadia.
