Microsoft just released four original Xbox games on PC as part of its efforts to bring backwards compatibility to the platform. For years, Xbox consoles have enjoyed a similar luxury, with the latest Series X|S systems being able to play two-decade-old OG Xbox titles. However, to achieve this on PC, Microsoft used a native x86 version of its in-house Xbox 360 emulator. As you might expect, modders were quick to pounce on the opportunity to run 360 games on PC, with "varying degrees of success" so far.

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The discovery was initially made when data miners looked at the package contents of these backwards-compatible titles. Neo Te Aika found out that they were packaged as standard Games on Demand, or GOD files, which is the official file format used by Xbox 360 hardware. A GOD package contains the actual game, its headers, and DRM. By using a GOD extractor, modders were able to open them and convert them into a base ISO that can be played with an emulator, or on a jailbroken Xbox 360. All this would be a huge development on its own.

What followed, though, has the potential to change the original Xbox and Xbox 360 emulation scene forever. Nathan on X scoured through those same files to find something called Xe03. Also called Fission, Xe03 is Microsoft's official Xbox 360 emulator that comes baked into the Xbox One and Xbox Series consoles for backwards compatibility.

Within the Xbox 360 environment, Microsoft already had another emulator called XeFu, or Fusion, that emulates the original Xbox. So, it's basically an emulator within an emulator. That's how modern Xbox consoles have been able to play OG Xbox titles. To Xe03, it's just opening a standard Xbox 360 package, but the binary inside is coded to launch XeFu, which then takes over to run the original Xbox game

When Microsoft released backwards compatible Xbox games on PC, people expected the company to have built an x86-native OG Xbox emulator from scratch. An emulator that didn't rely on an outer layer or any external components. Instead, what Microsoft did was simply recompile Xe03 to run natively on x86 PCs instead, indirectly handing over the ultimate 360 emulator to the community.

By modifying the app container and swapping out game packages, projects like XWine1 and independent reverse-engineers bypassed the inner OG Xbox layer (Fusion) and managed to load raw Xbox 360 executables (.xex files) directly into Xe03. The results have been mixed but incredibly promising, nonetheless. The XWine1 team was able to get Plants vs. Zombies, Steins: Gate, Fuzion Frenzy, and Midnight Club: Los Angeles to boot and run with varying degrees of stability.

Fuzion Frenzy is actually one of four OG Xbox titles that Microsoft officially released so that one is particularly well-optimized. Since the hard part of reverse engineering first-party code has already been done by Microsoft, optimization remains the only challenge. As time goes on, and the specific emulator files are fine-tuned for general usage, we should expect more and more titles to run flawlessly.

Microsoft has also promised to release more official backwards compatible titles on PC, but it hasn't said anything about Xbox 360 games. Therefore, the discovery of Xe03 holds immense potential for the future of Xbox 360 emulation on PC — the community just has to focus on optimization now. This development can be particularly fruitful for handhelds that are power-constrained; Xe03 has very light minimum requirements for devices like the ROG (Xbox) Ally and Lenovo's Legion Go lineup.

Moreover, Microsoft's PC version of Xe03 also upscales the original 480p output of OG Xbox games to 4K. It also adds built-in V-Sync, anisotropic filtering, enhanced anti-aliasing, and borderless windowed modes. Since the games were distributed though the Xbox PC app, they're part of the Xbox Anywhere program so if you own the digital license of said game on console, you get it for free on PC (and other places). Microsoft will also bring Xbox Achievements support to backwards compatible titles soon.

The last two elements will likely be ignored by the modding community since the OG Xbox virtualization is the important part, enabled by the Xe03 engine that has now become the main takeaway from all this. To be clear, open-source emulators such as Xenia have existed for years and provide a highly-satisfactory Xbox emulation experience, but Microsoft's official, in-house solution should be more efficient.

What OG Xbox or 360 games would you like play on PC?

Several delisted Xbox 360 games briefly reappeared on the Xbox Store this week before being pulled again, according to the Better xCloud datamining account, which monitors Microsoft's cloud gaming backend for changes. This follows Xbox Vice President Jason Ronald's commitment at GDC 2026 in March to revive the company's backward compatibility program as part of Xbox's 25th anniversary later this year.

The titles spotted include Aegis Wing, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and Mars: War Logs, all of which had been removed from the store previously. The Prince of Persia title resurfaced with its original release date, along with an apparent placeholder price of $100, and the 2003 shooter Armed and Dangerous also reappeared and vanished shortly before the latest batch. Mars: War Logs was delisted around the same time.

One or two accidental relists might mean nothing, but the pattern across four titles in quick succession has understandably caught attention. The Better xCloud account, run by the developer behind the browser plugin of the same name, first flagged Armed and Dangerous as a possible mistake before noting that subsequent appearances looked intentional.

At GDC 2026 in San Francisco, Ronald told attendees that the game preservation team would be "rolling out new ways to play some of the most iconic games from our past" as part of Xbox's 25th anniversary celebrations. Microsoft discontinued its backward compatibility program in 2021, citing licensing issues and technical limitations that prevented further titles from being added to the catalog.

The program originally launched in 2015 and brought hundreds of original Xbox and Xbox 360 titles to Xbox One and later Xbox Series X|S. At its peak, the catalog included over 600 titles spanning two console generations. Since the hiatus, fan demand for its return has remained high, with the community-run Xbox Game Preservation website tracking which Original Xbox titles players most want to see come back. Top-requested games on the site include Jet Set Radio Future, Sonic Heroes, and The Simpsons: Hit & Run.

All this raises questions about how backward compatibility will work on Project Helix, Microsoft's next-generation console powered by a custom AMD SoC. Microsoft has confirmed that Helix will play both Xbox console and PC games, and Ronald described the machine as delivering an "order of magnitude" leap in ray tracing performance at the same GDC presentation.

Speculation has centered on the possibility that Microsoft's preservation team is working to bring Xbox 360 emulation to Windows PCs, which would keep older titles accessible on both Helix and standard Windows 11 machines, but Microsoft hasn’t confirmed that.

U.S. gaming retailer GameStop has “officially” declared that the Sony PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii U are, “for all practical purposes, now officially retro consoles.” This new classification, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, references the consoles’ age, lack of Fortnite, and their use of component cables as justification.

This isn’t just a joke, however. The change in policy means that gamers are now free to trade in these old timers, even if they’re defective or “aesthetically unfortunate,” as long as they power on. These consoles will likely go on sale in larger stores that cater to displaying old school consoles and games, as well as via its website, with GameStop also referencing other “beloved legacy hardware” like the Sega Saturn and Nintendo DS on its list.

The company shared its message in a letter shared on its social media channels. In the message, GameStop also confirmed that from now until March 21, anyone who trades in a Wii U, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, or any other retro console, game, or accessory will gain an extra 10% in trade credit on the transaction.

While confirming that these consoles are “still very cool” and that anyone who owned one at launch is “absolutely not old,” which is a relief to this writer, who happens to be among them, it’s not a huge surprise to see GameStop do this. Both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 launched in 2005 and 2006, respectively, and while the Wii U launched in 2012, that console has also been long superseded by the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. All three consoles are products of a different era, and modern gaming has simply moved on.

Of course, a retro console isn’t the only way to play games from this era. PlayStation 3 emulation has long been possible, although tricky to optimize, while emulators for the Xbox 360 and Wii U have also grown in strength and quality over the years. However, the best option remains, in many cases, to run these games on their native consoles —as long as they still work, that is.

Old or not, there’s likely to be a significant number of still-working PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii U consoles out there ready for a second life, and it looks like GameStop is preparing to support the transition. You can view GameStop's full list of retro consoles, games, and accessories over at GameStop’s Retro website.

As the Xbox 360 turns 20, the first images showing an exclusive edition of the console, which some claim kicked off the HD gaming era, have been shared on social media. Larry Hryb, Xbox GamerTag Major Nelson, and long-time Xbox community figurehead at Microsoft, posted a quartet of photos showing his prized ‘Launch Team 05’ console. However, perhaps sacrilegiously, Hryb admits this custom personalized machine has never ever been powered on. We hope it doesn’t have the Red Ring of Death (RRoD)…

Larry Hryb moved to Unity Technologies in 2023 and currently works as the firm’s Director of Community.

Expect official festivities to mark the 20^th anniversary of the Xbox 360 launch on November 22. If we’re lucky, Microsoft will have some classic 360 titles, game bundles, and more in promotions. If we’re very lucky, the firm might even have some ‘anniversary’ hardware prepared for launch to appeal to fans of the 2005 classic design.

HD(MI) era claims on shaky ground

The Xbox 360 was indeed an important console gaming milestone, beyond the HD-era claims of Major Nelson. However, even on this precise point, one could argue that the Sony PlayStation 3 was the HD-era pioneer as its 2006 release was the first major console to come packing HDMI at launch. It wouldn’t be until 2007 that Microsoft added HDMI to the new Xbox 360 Elite edition, and it subsequently trickled down to later revisions. The PS3 also famously included Blu-Ray, a huge advantage it held over Xbox.

While HD-era claims might ring a little hollow, it is hard to deny the importance of other Xbox 360-led movements. It could be credited with pioneering online console gaming as we know it, with the popularisation of Xbox Live and its achievement systems. In a similar always-connected vein, the 360 popularized digital downloads, DLC, and the era of consoles being entertainment hubs (supporting services like Netflix and YouTube).

An architectural escapade

Though it might have been of little interest to gamers at the time, one of the most fascinating things about the Xbox 360 from a technological standpoint was its architecture. The designers went on quite a side quest if you consider the console’s generational timeline.

The original Xbox (2001) was somewhat PC-like, with its Intel Pentium III CPU and an Nvidia GPU as its key performance components. Similarly, the Xbox One (2015) used PC-like components as the thrusters behind its gaming performance. However, the Xbox 360 (2005) was based on a triple-core IBM PowerPC CPU, with ATI GPU graphics acceleration.

Nevertheless, Microsoft ensured it supported some level of original Xbox backwards compatibility, via built-in emulation. The 360’s muscle was a significant step above the original, moving from a single CPU core to triple, with an advanced GPU featuring unified shaders and embedded DRAM. There was a huge jump in system RAM (from 64GB DDR to 512GB GDDR3), too. Its complex, lesser-known architecture would make it a little trickier for devs to cross-develop games and learn how to optimize for the 360. But the same was true of Sony’s PlayStation 3 and its notorious asymmetric Cell processor, a collaborative work between Sony, IBM, and Toshiba.

Kinect-ic energy

Kinect, which debuted in the Xbox 360’s reign (2009), could also have been a killer innovation for Microsoft. At launch, gamers were mesmerized by its possibilities, and a record-breaking eight million units were sold in its first two months.

Sadly, this controller-free gaming experience didn’t live up to its potential. That was partly due to its innovative motion tracking hardware being a little too laggy and inaccurate for gaming in some genres. Compounding Microsoft’s misstep on the hardware side was the limited supporting game library, centered around party games and fitness apps.

By the time of the Xbox One (2013), Microsoft’s efforts to make motion controllers a standard, with the Kinect 2.0 forcibly bundled at launch, weren’t greeted happily by console gamers. The accessory was eventually unbundled to make the Xbox One more competitive with the PS4, and even the dedicated port was removed in later models. By then, the significant damage to Xbox fandom and sales seems to have been done.

A Microsoft Xbox 360 console that refuses to play games due to ‘bad debt’ has raised a few eyebrows on social media. Cody, a co-owner of a retro and import video games retail business, remarked upon his surprise at booting up this particular Xbox 360 and finding “an error I’ve never seen before.” However, a Microsoft MVP has piped up to explain that the system’s 17559 update removes any such restrictions.

The tide of collective wisdom following Cody’s post suggests that the restricted Xbox 360 was purchased through an affordable offer from Microsoft. Under the program, you would maintain monthly payments for a minimum term to eventually own your console, without further restrictions.

According to an Xbox 360 era report published by GamesRadar, Microsoft launched the new easy payment schemes for wannabe console owners in Q4 2012. Under the agreement, purchasers would put down a modest initial sum, starting from $150. Then they would commit to “a contractual obligation for two years of Xbox Live membership, adding up to $360 by the end of the agreement.”

The article doesn’t say what would happen if the contract were broken. Now, 13 years later, we are seeing what would happen. Perhaps people generally stuck to their obligations, as this ‘bad debt’ message has stirred a lot of interest.

Why not just hack it?

Many commenters suggested that Cody ‘hack’ the Xbox 360 to bypass any restrictions. Just two weeks ago, Modern Vintage Gamer (MVG) published a video on the Badupdate Exploit. The hack has now reached version 1.2, and is enhanced so that “Any Xbox 360 can now be hacked in less than one minute,” he explained.

However, there’s a little problem with that plan. The exploit requires the user to run the Rock Band Blitz trial from a USB flash drive. This particular Xbox 360 appears to be so locked down that even running a trial wouldn’t be possible.

Microsoft MVP proposes an elegant official solution

Almost a full sixteen years following its initial November 2008 release, Sonic Unleashed finally has a fully-blown native PC port, dubbed Unleashed Recompiled. This is a Recompiled PC port, specifically, thanks to fan efforts pioneering the XenonRecomp and XenosRecomp tools used to do it, allowing for PowerPC code and Xenos shaders to be converted into x86 PC-compatible C++ and HLSL code, respectively.

This also means that, in theory, any Xbox 360 game should now be fully Recompilable for native PC port goodness, including those unsupported by modern Xbox Backward Compatibility, effectively freeing several games from the graveyard — and opening the doors of modding wider than ever. If this sounds familiar to you, it might be because a similar endeavor gave us Zelda 64: Recompiled and N64: Recompiled, which we've covered previously.

Locking in on Sonic Unleashed specifically, one may be left wondering what exactly pushed fans so far as to make a native PC port before Sega did. In truth, Sonic Unleashed has long been something of a white whale for the Sonic modding community on PC — the Unleashed Project and several related mods have long existed to port most of the game's highlight content (Daytime stages, which inspired all future Boost formula gameplay) into the original PC port of Sonic Generations. Until Xbox Series S/X Backwards Compatibility and FPS Boost capabilities were added, modding Generations PC was the only way to play these levels at a silky-smooth 60 FPS, since the original PS360 hardware could often dip below 30 FPS trying to run Unleashed's massive levels flush with graphical flourishes like full Global Illumination (though pre-baked rather than today's modern RTGI).

In more recent years, progress on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 emulation through Xenia and RPCS3 has also progressed significantly, providing a venue through which players could play the full game on PC, albeit with a performance loss compared to Generations modding thanks to emulation overhead.

But finally, fans of Sonic Unleashed can enjoy the game in a form truly unleashed for modern platforms thanks to Unleashed Recompiled, which uses recompilation tools built on top of Xenia's emulation progress, now refined fully into a much easier-to-run PC port. The PC port adds all the staple features one would expect, including uncapped resolution support and proper graphics settings. There are even some nifty extras, like a "Music Attenuation" feature that automatically mutes in-game music whenever you're playing audio off a music player. You can also raise the FPS cap above 60 FPS, but due to the physics issues introduced by doing this, I highly recommend employing the use of Lossless Scaling or your GPU's own universal Frame Generation solution to play above 60 FPS, instead.

Of course, those hoping to play with Unleashed Recompiled or wanting to make their own Xbox 360 recompilations will need to legally secure their own copies of the Xbox 360 titles, DLC, etc, as with any emulation-adjacent project. But compared to having to play these games on consoles — particularly considering the fact that Unleashed Recompiled even supports fully-blown graphics and gameplay mods like Foreign Input System and Improved Progression via the HedgeModManager — the best choice for playing Xbox 360 games is now more obvious than ever.

Welcome to PC, Sonic Unleashed — we've been waiting for you.

X (formerly Twitter) user Andrei David just installed and ran an AI model based on Andrej Karpathy’s llama2.c on a nearly 20-year-old Xbox 360 console. Despite its age, David used a bootloader to load the model onto the old console and run a ‘Sleep Joe said’ prompt. According to the post, EXO Lab’s successful attempt to run Llama on a Windows 98 PC inspired David to experiment.

Although the AI LLM that the Xbox 360 used is based on the same one in EXO Lab’s Windows 98 Pentium II PC, David said that he had to optimize the code for the console's PowerPC architecture and unique (at the time) memory management features. The most significant difference is that PowerPC is a big-endian company that first stores the most significant value.

At the same time, the Intel Pentium II processor used for EXO Lab’s implantation is little-endian, which prioritizes storing the smallest value first. So, to ensure that the model would work properly, he had to implement a byte-swapping system and ensure that any data created and stored had proper 128-byte memory alignment, as required by the Xbox 360’s memory subsystem.

Another challenge that David faced was the console’s use of unified memory. While this is common today for modern consoles and APUs, this was a new frontier when the Xbox 360 launched, forcing game developers to ensure that their titles would best use the console’s hardware. So, even though it had 512MB of RAM, Andrei had to ensure that the 60MB model would fit in the amount of space that the system would allocate to the CPU or GPU since they shared the same RAM pool.

However, with careful memory management and adjustment to how the PowerPC works, he made the ancient Xbox 360 console run the LLM. This is another step towards EXO Lab’s goal of giving the average person access to AI, not limiting it to mega corporations that spend billions of dollars on top-of-the-line equipment and consume megawatts of power.

Running a Llama 2-based AI model on a decades-old device is already a fantastic feat, but one user commented that 512MB of unified RAM should be more than enough to run Hugging Face’s SmolLM or the 4-bit 0.5B Qwen2.5 model. Andrei David replied, ‘Challenge accepted! :)’, so we’re looking forward to seeing more powerful AI models run on an Xbox 360 in the future.

Microsoft is retiring the Xbox 360 Store and Xbox 360 Marketplace starting July 29, 2024. That means you can no longer buy games, DLCs, or other content straight from your Xbox 360 console or through the Xbox Marketplace page. Microsoft initially announced this change in August 2023, and it's pushing through with the service closure this year.

Nevertheless, shuttering these services doesn't mean you can't play your games anymore. Dave McCarthy, the Corporate VP for Xbox Player Services and now COO for Microsoft Gaming, said, "This change will not affect your ability to play Xbox 360 games or DLC you have already purchased. Xbox 360 game content previously purchased will still be available to play not only [on] the Xbox 360 console but also Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S devices via backward compatibility."

Furthermore, you will still retain access to all the games you bought on the Xbox 360 Store or via the Marketplace. Even if you deleted a previously purchased game, you can still redownload it on your Xbox 360 via the Download History menu in your account's settings. And if you've upgraded to the Xbox One or Xbox Series X|S, you can still access your games from the Xbox 360 Store via backward compatibility.

In addition, Xbox 360 retains its online and multiplayer services. So, you can still enjoy your old console and don't need to upgrade to a new Xbox just to play your favorite titles. Better yet, Microsoft will still offer game updates even after the Xbox 360 Store and the 360 Marketplace shut down.

However, if you want to try new games or titles on your Xbox 360, you can purchase backward-compatible content directly from Xbox.com or via newer Xbox consoles. The only thing you will lose with the closure of the Xbox 360 Store is the Microsoft Movies and TV app, so you cannot use your Xbox 360 to watch movies and TV shows anymore. Nevertheless, you will still enjoy your purchases on the Movies and TV app on other Microsoft platforms like Windows and newer Xbox consoles.

Microsoft's closure of the Xbox 360 Store and 360 Marketplace starkly contrasts the shutdown of the Nintendo Wii U and 3DS eShops. Online play for these consoles ended in April 2024, so you can no longer enjoy online features and multiplayer functions on these Nintendo consoles.

On the other hand, the most significant change you will see after the Xbox Store closures is that you can no longer purchase in-game content on the console; instead, you have to do it via the Microsoft Store or on xbox.com. However, aside from this, your Xbox 360 retains its full functionality, and you can still enjoy most of its functions and features even after nearly 20 years since it launched.

The internet has often blamed AMD for bad graphics drivers, but according to @carygolomb on Twitter, that supposed reputation might be returning to haunt the company. The Twitter user reported that updating to Adrenalin driver 23.7.2 caused GPU performance to tank on his handheld gaming device and re-branded his Radeon 780M integrated GPU to the much slower 760M. On top of this, the user also reported issues with some internal and external devices no longer functioning with the new driver active, including his fingerprint reader, sound card, and Xbox 360 game controller.

To back up the user's claims, Digital Foundry replied to his Tweet confirming the bad performance problems with the new driver. According to the review outlet, one of its Aya Neo handheld gaming consoles sporting a Ryzen 7 7840U lost 33% of its gaming performance while running the new driver, going from 33 FPS to an unplayable 22 FPS in Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition.

These issues are among the worst AMD-related graphics driver issues we've come across in a long time. Usually, AMD's GPU drivers are very reliable and don't have significant problems. But, with the dozens and dozens of driver updates that AMD pumps out year after year, a dud was bound to pop out at some point.

On top of these issues, the official list of known problems with 23.7.2 is also somewhat high for a fully-released WHQL Adrenalin driver. Some of these additional problems include high idle power consumption on RX 7000 series GPUs — which was supposed to be fixed by now, performance metrics overlay not fully working in some games, and the widely known Rachet and Clank: Rift Apart ray-tracing crashes that we talked about two days ago.

With how new the driver is, it is impossible to tell how widespread the performance issues are. But for now, it seems to be heavily affecting AMD's mobile Ryzen 7000 series processors, with nobody talking about these bugs with desktop Radeon graphics cards. Modern RX 7000 series GPUs seem unaffected, with Ancient Gameplays reporting slightly better gaming performance in some titles compared to the last driver.

We’ve been excited for the Asus ROG Ally handheld for a while and, now that it’s here, we’re eager to see what all it can do. In our review of the Asus Ally, we noted that it offers good performance and a bright screen, but mediocre battery life. And when you compare the Asus Ally vs the Steam Deck, it's a tie because each has its strengths when playing PC games.

But what about emulation? How well does Asus's new handheld play games made for consoles. YouTuber ETA Prime was determined to find out and shows us in the video below. The results are very promising as the Ally is able to handle games from PS3 (usually an emulation challenge), the Nintendo Switch and Xbox 360.

On the lighter end of the emulation spectrum, ETA Prime demonstrated it’s ability to play PSP games with ease using PPSSPP. It can also handle 3DS emulation using Citra, a Nintendo 3DS emulation platform. These systems are less demanding hardware-wise than consoles so it goes without surprise that the Asus ROG Ally handled them so well.

As far as consoles are concerned, ETA Prime also demonstrated its ability to run GameCube ROMs using Dolphin. PlayStation 2 games were also on the table thanks to PCSX2, a Windows-compatible PS2 emulation platform. From the same era, we also got a look at Xbox emulation with CXBX. It handled the WiiU fairly well using CEMU and brought us to the modern era of consoles by emulating the Nintendo Switch. In addition, it could handle Xbox 360 and PS3 emulation with reliable playability.

The Asus ROG Ally runs Windows so Steam access is a given. However, if you’re looking for an emulation platform there’s definitely great potential to be had. If you want to get a closer look at the Asus ROG Ally in action, check out the demonstration video shared to YouTube by ETA Prime.

AMD's Markham, Ontario-based office is looking for a system-on-chip verification engineer to work on a next-generation complex SoC. Developers from Canada typically work on numerous projects involving graphics processors, including GPUs and console SoCs, which may mean that AMD is already gathering engineers for next-generation consoles from Microsoft and Sony. Or is it? We have some doubts. 

"The team behind the chip powering Xbox, PlayStation, and the latest RDNA-family graphics chip is hiring for its Markham location in Canada for the next-generation chip development project," AMD's job posting over at LinkedIn reads.  

In AMD's classification, all of its APUs, CPUs, GPUs, and custom SoCs are designated as system-on-chips, which is correct from an engineering point of view since modern processors carry a lot more than just application-specific circuits. Therefore, given the historical specialization of the Markham, Ontario-based office (former headquarters of ATI Technologies, a developer of GPUs and console SoCs), we are indeed talking about the development of two types of SoCs — GPU SoCs and console SoCs.  

Meanwhile, since the job posting mentions Xbox and PlayStation SoCs ahead of GPUs, this clearly leads to speculation that AMD is already working on system-on-chips for Microsoft's Xbox Next (5th Generation Xbox) and Sony's PlayStation 6. However, this assumption may be incorrect. 

SoC verification procedures involve verification of design compliance with planned specifications (which includes performance, thermal, electrical, and other characteristics) before the design is finalized and sent out for manufacturing. SoC verification process is a relatively late phase of chip development, so if AMD is looking for a verification engineer for a console SoC now, it means that this SoC has been in development for two or three years and is due to be mass-produced in 2024.  

It usually takes about four to five years to build an all-new CPU or GPU from scratch. So we seriously doubt that Microsoft and/or Sony ordered development of its next-generation console SoCs in 2019 or even 2020 without hearing feedback about their next generation hardware (PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S) from game developers. Even if AMD is looking for an engineer to work on a console SoC now, that console SoC will hardly power a next-generation console but rather a mid-cycle update machine. Perhaps, Microsoft and/or Sony want to offer improved version(s) of their XBX and PS5 system(s) in circa 2024 ~ 2025 or just radically cut down their costs, which is why they need a new SoC. 

Meanwhile, keeping in mind that in AMD's classification a GPU is also an SoC, the Markham, Ontario-based office may just be looking for a verification engineer who is going to work on a chip due in 2024 (RDNA 4, anyone?). 

"We are currently looking for a System-on-Chip Verification Engineer who will be part of a team working on next generation of a complex SOC design," the job posting continues. "The successful candidate will play a key role in SOC verification performing the following duties for functional, power, and performance aspects with simulation and hardware emulation environment."

First announced back in November, Microsoft's documentary covering the development, launch, and multiple generations of its popular gaming console is now streaming online for free. Microsoft commissioned "Power On: The Story of Xbox" to commemorate the 20th birthday of the Xbox, which in 2001 entered the console market to battle the PlayStation 2 head-to-head.

The best thing about the documentary is that it's free for everyone to watch and is available across many streaming platforms. Although most people will probably watch it via YouTube, it's also available to watch directly from Microsoft on The Roku Channel, Redbox and IMDbTV. There are a total of six chapters, which are each around 41 minutes in length (YouTube links below): 

• Chapter 1: The Renegades
• Chapter 2: The Valentine's Day Massacre
• Chapter 3: And It Didn't Turn On
• Chapter 4: Cool…Now What?
• Chapter 5: The Red Ring of Death
• Chapter 6: TV…Or Not TV

"Xbox almost didn't happen. Find out why in this behind-the-scenes, six-part series that takes you back to the scrappy beginnings of Microsoft's video game console," writes Microsoft. "It's the untold story of the people behind the box, glitches and all."

As you might expect from a wide-ranging look at the Xbox's history, the highs and lows are included for all to see. There is plenty of embarrassing coverage in the documentary in the latter case, including Microsoft's failed attempts to acquire Nintendo and the Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death (RRoD) fiasco that cost the company roughly $1.5 billion. If you owned an Xbox 360 and experienced the RRoD, we feel your pain.

And speaking of the RRoD, you can get in on the fun (or make that misery) with a tongue-in-cheek premium print poster that Microsoft is offering in the Xbox Gear Shop. The $24.99 poster measures 18 inches by 24 inches and features an ominous RRoD staring back at you, almost as a sinister homage to the murderous HAL 9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey." 

If you're a gamer at heart, we suggest you clear some time out from your busy schedule to give Microsoft's Xbox documentary a look. I'm halfway through the first episode, and I'm already hooked.

After more than a year, PlayStation 5 owners can finally look forward to dressing their systems with official faceplates in colors that aren't white. In a blog post today, Sony showed off faceplates to match its midnight black and cosmic red DualSense controllers, as well as a new "nova pink," "starlight blue" and "galactic purple."

The black and red covers will ship in January 2022 in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Korea, and the Philippines. The pink, blue and purple versions are slated for the first half of the year.

The covers will be available in versions for both the disc and digital versions of the console.

Sony will also introduce new DualSense controllers in the same purple, blue and pink colors. 

Both the new covers and the new controllers will show up on Jan. 21 on direct.playstation.com in the US, UK, France and Germany, and then on Feb. 18 at other retailers. Pre-orders for the black and red covers are showing up at $54.99 as of this writing.

The white design was polarizing when Sony first launched the PS5. The bright color, along with the significant size of the console, made it really stand out in any entertainment center. (And, as many may remember from old Xbox 360 controllers, white game pads can get pretty nasty!)

The faceplates can be changed by simply pulling them from the sides, similar to how you would do it when you remove them to add an m.2 SSD.

At least one company, Dbrand, released blackout-themed "Darkplates" soon after the PS5's launch and taunted Sony over it. The PS5 maker took legal action against Dbrand, which took down the plates, but also released a successor product.

But for those who want to match Sony's black or red controllers, or further customize their consoles, hopefully the faceplates will be easier to get than the PS5 itself.

The new controllers, in purple, pink and blue, will be on sale from Sony on Jan. 14 and on other stores on Feb. 11. The new colors are showing at $74.99 on Sony's site (as does the existing red color, but black and white each cost $69.99).

The Xbox Design Lab, which allows gamers to design their own controllers, is back online. While it had previously been using the Xbox One controller, the new Design Lab is based on the Xbox Series X and Series S controllers.

Currently, you can place orders in the United States, Canada and "most" western European countries. Controllers are $69.99 (a $10 add-on to MSRP for store-bought controllers), and an additional $9.99 if you choose to get optional engraving. Controllers are delivered with two weeks of orders being placed.

There are eighteen colors, some of which are seen in existing controllers. Pulse Red, Electric Volt and Shock Blue are new to the Design Lab but are also available on the market without the customizations.

Microsoft is also adding a black-on-color ABXY button option, which harkens a bit back to the original Xbox and Xbox 360 controllers, and black-on-white view, menu and share buttons.

Xbox controllers work not only with Microsoft's consoles, but are also widely considered the best option for PC gaming, as most publishers use Xbox buttons in games by default.

Microsoft had paused the Design Lab back in October as it transitioned to the new consoles. This announcement was made during a post-E3 extended briefing.

Gabe Newell, the head of Valve Software, hinted to students in New Zealand that the company might expand its Steam platform, or at least some games, to the console space later this year. The comment is vague at best, but at least it shows that the owner of one of the largest game distribution platforms has not given up its living room gaming plans. 

Earlier this week, Gabe Newell spoke to students at Sancta Maria College in Auckland, New Zealand, and was asked whether Steam would be "porting any games on consoles, or [would] it just stay on PC?" The response was imprecise, but we cannot really expect anyone to disclose business plans at an event like this. 

"You will get a better idea of that by the end of this year... and it won't be the answer you expect," Newell said. "You'll say, 'Ah-ha! Now I get what he was talking about.'" 

The whole conversation had been recorded by a student who later uploaded it to Reddit, Ars Technica first reported.  

Valve's track record with game consoles in particular and living room gaming in general has been bumpy at best. On the one hand, the company successfully ported its games to consoles from Microsoft and Sony in the past, including the very successful The Orange Box on Xbox 360 and PS3. On the other hand, Valve's Steam Machines initiatives has failed, just like its console oriented SteamOS. Valve's Steam Link, which allowed to stream games from a local PC to a TV, has also failed to get popular enough for the company to keep selling the product. 

For gamers, getting their Steam libraries on consoles would be a thing of dreams. It's unclear how Steam would work on those systems, though, as Nintendo, Xbox and Sony all run their own exclusive stores on their platforms. Furthermore, far from all Steam games have versions for consoles, and developing a Windows or Linux emulator for Xbox or PlayStation is one heck of a task. Streaming games to consoles might be a way into the living room for Valve, but controller options may be an obstacle there.

Newell has been living in New Zealand since March 2020, when he was stuck as the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Since he doesn't often do big appearances in the games industry, it makes some sense that a bunch of New Zealand students were the first to hear his thoughts on upcoming announcements.

Playing games on your Raspberry Pi is far easier with a good game controller. Many different game controllers can be connected to your Raspberry Pi using USB. Furthermore, some well-known console controllers can also be linked up using Bluetooth.

In theory, all controllers should work with any Raspberry Pi projects. This covers everything from generic USB joypads to the latest Bluetooth devices. So, you can expect to be able to connect an Xbox One controller and a PS4 controller to your Raspberry Pi. Controllers designed for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 will also work, as will Nintendo gamepads. 

Own a PlayStation 5? The new Sony console features a major revision of the much-loved game controller. But despite being fresh out of the box in 2020, the PS5 controller will easily connect to a Raspberry Pi over Bluetooth, just like its predecessor. Meanwhile, Xbox Series S and X controllers are backward compatible, and can be used on an Xbox One console. The new controller design should also work with the Raspberry Pi.

In this tutorial, we’ll look at what you need to do to connect the most widely used game controllers to a Raspberry Pi: those intended for the Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles.

Connecting the Xbox One Controller Via USB to Raspberry Pi

The Xbox One boasts one of the most popular game controllers available. Also compatible with PC games, this is a well-designed, multi-purpose controller that can be easily connected to a Raspberry Pi, either using USB or Bluetooth.

1. Update and upgrade the software on your Raspberry Pi.

sudo apt updatesudo apt upgrade

2. Connect the controller and launch a game such as Minecraft Pi Edition, which comes preloaded when you install Raspberry Pi OS with all the recommended software. If you can move your character with the controller then everything is ready to go. If not, go to the next step.

3. Install the Xbox One driver and then reboot your Raspberry Pi.

sudo apt install xboxdrv

4. Open your game and test that you can move around.

Connecting the Xbox One / Playstation 4 and 5 Controller Via Bluetooth

Using a wireless Xbox One controller with the Raspberry Pi is a little more complicated. Two types of wireless Xbox One controller have been released. One uses wireless, while the second requires Bluetooth. How can you tell which is which?

If you have the 1697 wireless model, you’ll need to connect the official Microsoft Xbox Wireless Adapter to your Raspberry Pi. This is a standard USB dongle that should work out of the box. Simply hold the pairing buttons on the adapter and the Xbox One controller to sync, then start playing.

To Connect the Xbox One Bluetooth Controller

1. Update and upgrade the software on your Raspberry Pi.

sudo apt updatesudo apt upgrade

2. Install the Xbox One driver.

sudo apt install xboxdrv

3. Disable ERTM (Enhanced Re-Transmission Mode). While enabled, this Bluetooth feature blocks syncing between the Xbox One controller and your Raspberry Pi.

echo ‘options bluetooth disable_ertm=Y’ | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/bluetooth.conf

4. Reboot your Raspberry Pi.

5. Open a terminal and start the bluetooth control tool.

sudo bluetoothctl

6. At the [Bluetooth]# prompt, enable the agent and set it as default.

agent ondefault-agent

7. Power up the Xbox One controller and hold the sync button. At the [Bluetooth]# prompt, scan for devices.

scan on

The MAC address should appear, comprising six pairs of letters and numbers followed by “Xbox Wireless Controller.”

8. Use the MAC address to connect the Xbox controller.

connect [YOUR MAC ADDRESS]

9. To save time for future connections, use the trust command to automatically connect.

trust [YOUR MAC ADDRESS]

Connecting an Xbox 360 Controller to Raspberry Pi 

If you don’t have more recent controllers (or the budget to buy them), it might be easier for you to grab a controller from an older generation of consoles, such as the Xbox 360, or PS3. 

1. Update and upgrade the software on your Raspberry Pi. 

sudo apt updatesudo apt upgrade

2. Install the Xbox One driver. 

sudo apt install xboxdrv

3. Connect your controller via USB and it should just work. Wireless controllers will require a dedicated wireless receiver (the type that is developed for PC use). 

Connecting a Playstation 3 Controller to Raspberry Pi 

Connecting a Playstation 3 controller via USB is straightforward, but Bluetooth access requires some compiling.

1. Update and upgrade the software on your Raspberry Pi. 

sudo apt updatesudo apt upgrade

2. Install the libusb-dev software. This ensures the PS3 can communicate with the Raspberry Pi over Bluetooth. 

sudo apt install libusb-dev

3. Create a folder for the sixpair software, switch to that folder, and download the sixpair.c software. 

mkdir ~/sixpaircd ~/sixpairwget http://www.pabr.org/sixlinux/sixpair.c

4. Compile the code with gcc.

gcc -o sixpair sixpair.c -lusb

5. Connect the controller to the Pi using its USB cable and run sixpair to configure the Bluetooth connection.

sudo ~/sixpair/sixpair

6. Take note of the MAC code, then disconnect the PS3 controller.

7. Open a terminal and start the bluetooth control tool.

sudo bluetoothctl

8. At the [Bluetooth]# prompt, enable the agent and set it as default.

agent ondefault-agent

9. Power up the Playstation 3 controller and hold the sync button. In the [Bluetooth]# prompt scan for devices.

scan on

10. The MAC address should appear, comprising six pairs of letters and numbers. Look for your Playstation 3 controller’s MAC address. Use the MAC address to connect the controller.

connect [YOUR MAC ADDRESS]

11. To save time for future connections, use the trust command to automatically connect.

trust [YOUR MAC ADDRESS]

For other Bluetooth controllers, meanwhile, generic connections should work. This means that anything – smartphone game controllers, for example – can conceivably be connected using bluetoothctl , but some calibration may be required.

Whatever device you’re using, you may need to test it. To do this, simply use the testing tool in the Linux joystick utility.

sudo apt install joystick

To test your gamepad, ensure that it is connected and run the jstest command to check that each button is registered.

sudo jstest /dev/input/js0

This article originally appeared in an issue of Linux Format magazine.

The Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S launched two days ago, and Microsoft’s closing out the week by sharing some celebratory news - the Xbox Series X/S launch was apparently the company’s “most successful [console] debut in history.”

If the dozens of sold out online listings weren’t a clue, the Xbox Series X and S sold very well when they became available to the public this Tuesday. Granted, we can attribute some of that to scalpers, but according to Microsoft, writing this off completely as aftermarket shenanigans wouldn’t be telling the full story. We don’t have actual sales numbers yet, but the company did pull back the curtain on what play looked like in the first 24 hours of launch.

“More games played, 3,594 total, spanning four generations, setting a record for the most games ever played during an Xbox console launch,” Microsoft said of its Xbox Series X/S player ecosystem on launch day. That means some actual players must have gotten their hands on the thing.

However, what’s more impressive is that the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S together sold “more new consoles than any prior generation” did at launch. Microsoft didn’t post official numbers, but we can infer how impressive this achievement is from past sales. The Xbox One, for instance, sold “more than one million consoles” at launch, and while we don’t have official numbers on Xbox 360 launch sales, that console is famous for beating the PS3 to market by almost a year, which made it the only HD console option for a significant amount of time.

The Xbox Series S may be what made the difference here, as Microsoft says that its budget next-gen console added “the highest percentage of new players for any Xbox console at launch.” That wording’s a little confusing, but we’re guessing this means that, of players who didn’t own an Xbox One and bought a next-gen Xbox, most of them bought the Series S.

Sony has yet to post any insight into how the PS5 launch went, so we won’t be able to compare statements anytime soon. But that console is also universally sold out now as well, and as we can tell from the Xbox One’s eventual fate, lots of launch sales don’t necessarily transfer to long-term success.

Still, the Series X is taking a different tack than the Xbox One intended to take at launch, focusing less on being an all-in-one set-top box and more on being a sort of mini-gaming PC. It’s also got Game Pass, which Sony has yet to compete with seriously. Both consoles earned equal marks in our reviews, so whichever one ends up being on top this generation is still up in the air.

We're less than one month away from the launch of Microsoft's next generation of gaming consoles; the Xbox Series X and the Xbox Series S. While one will empower gamers to game at 4K, and the other at 1440p, there's one thing that both consoles will be able to do: Providing owners of either console with a vast catalog of Xbox games that spans generations, all of which will be accessible as soon as both consoles are available.

Microsoft has been keen on providing backward compatibility for quite some time now and doubled down on this initiative for the past few months. It started with both the Xbox One backward compatibility program, which ended not too long ago since that console was discontinued. It didn't mean the work stopped, though; instead, the focus switched over to the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.

Trust me when I say that what Xbox has accomplished will ensure that you'll want to revisit those old games that you haven't played in a while.

How's this all going to work?

Thanks to the power that's packed into the Xbox Series X and Series S, backward compatible games will see a visual jump. This means that games that may not have run quite so well on the Xbox 360 or the Xbox One will run at their fullest on the new platforms as the developers originally envisioned them, and without the need of a boost mode. Backward compatible games that either ran at 30 frames per second or struggled to hit that magic 60 frames per second will be a thing of the past, as both consoles will push them further and faster.

For example, Xbox showcased a game that was notorious for running poorly on the Xbox One and even the Xbox One X – Fallout 4. Both consoles struggled to keep the game running at a solid 30 frames per second, while the Xbox Series X and Series S can run the game as it was meant to be.

Take a look at the video of Fallout 4 being played on the Xbox Series S below:

We're not just talking better frame rates either, as games will also feature improved texture filtering and enhanced anisotropic filtering. Most backward-compatible games will see an improvement to 16x anisotropic filtering.

We can't forget to mention HDR (High Dynamic Range), which has become synonymous with existing and upcoming next-generation games. Here, both consoles will apply what Xbox has coined "Auto HDR." This will add HDR enhancements to games - even if they were developed and shipped without HDR support. This feature will complement the original artistic intent of games and will not require any support from developers. It will be applied on the fly, all by the hardware on the Xbox Series X and Series S, and won't impact your gaming experience.

What does this all mean for you?

For those of you who are either upgrading to the Xbox Series X or Series S, or making their first Xbox console purchase, either console will benefit from backward compatibility enhancements.

All backward compatible games will feature higher frame rates, enhanced visual definition, and unlike a remaster, which typically includes these features at a cost, it won't cost anything extra. If you already own the game, you'll just insert the disc into the Xbox Series X or download it from Xbox Live to your Xbox Series S. 

All those games that you loved but don't play anymore for one reason or another are about to get a new lease on life. I already know a few older games that I loved but didn't perform the best that I'll be revisiting again.

The Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S will be released on November 10th, 2020.

After months of waiting, Microsoft finally revealed the price for the Xbox Series X today via Twitter and blog post. Let’s not beat around the bush -- the Xbox Series X is $499. That’s $200 more expensive than the Xbox Series S, which Microsoft revealed yesterday. It’s also the same as the Xbox One’s price at launch, and only $100 more expensive than the original Xbox 360’s launch price.
 

For that $500, you’ll get a 12 Teraflop RDNA 2 GPU, a custom Zen 2 APU,  a 1TB NVMe SSD, and 16GB of GDDR6 memory. Microsoft’s aiming to push those specs towards 4K @ 60 fps gaming, 8K @ 60 fps gaming, 120 fps gaming and ray-tracing. It’s also developing the “Microsoft velocity architecture,” which will use the console’s SSD to allow users to suspend multiple games at once, on top of achieving faster load times.

Microsoft and Sony have been in what has seemed like a game of chicken for the past few months, with neither company wanting to be the first to drop a price. But Microsoft taking the initiative over its competitors isn’t necessarily new -- the Xbox 360 came out nearly a year before the PS3. Still, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a PS5 price drop soon.

$500 is certainly a hefty chunk of change, but seeing how much the Series X improves on the Xbox One, it’s impressive that you’ll be able to snag one for the same price. There will also be an installment plan available starting at $34.99 a month for 24 months, though be aware that this will eventually add up to $839.76.

As for the launch date, Xbox also announced in the price reveal that you can get your hands on an Xbox Series X (or Series S) starting on November 10th, giving us a solid date over the previous "November" promise. If that's not soon enough for you, pre-orders for the Xbox Series X/S begin on September 22nd.

The Windows 10 May 2020 update has started rolling out this week, and although it isn't a game, both AMD and Nvidia's new graphics card drivers add support for the updated operating system. Additionally, AMD's Adrenalin 2020 version 20.5.1 brings support for AMD Link Xinput Emulation and fixes a ton of issues.

AMD Link lets you stream games from your gaming PC onto your mobile device, even allowing you to even play outside of the home on an Android phone. The new Xinput Emulation driver will make an Xbox 360 controller appear in your device manager (even if you don't have one), which should make it super easy to configure games to run on non-keyboard & mouse-based control setups you stream to, such as your smartphone. 

When it comes to the fixed issues, you can find the full list of details here for the full list of details. But to start, it looks like AMD's driver team has been working hard to polish out issues with various games on AMD graphics cards, including Destiny 2, Sniper Elite 4, Red Dead Redemption 2, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Control. 

To download the new driver, simply click this linkto immediately download the Windows 10 64-bit version of the driver.

Microsoft has been making lofty claims about the Xbox Series X’s backwards compatibility, including that it will work with not only the entire Xbox One library, but also a bunch of titles from the Xbox 360 and original Xbox. Backwards compatibility on Xbox Series X was further clarified this morning by Jason Ronald, partner director of program management, who discussed how backwards compatibility was engineered for the new machine’s specs.

Ronald says that “[n]ot only should gamers be able to play all of these games from the past, but they should play better than ever.” The games, he said, will be able to run natively on the Xbox Series X with the “full power” of the CPU, GPU and SSD, without boost mode or down clocking.

According to Ronald, this meant working on the custom AMD processor as well as the Xbox OS and hypervisor to work with games that were optimized for older systems with different hardware.

It doesn’t stop there: backwards-compatible games from Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One should see reductions in load times thanks to the Xbox Velocity Architecture (a combination of Microsoft’s custom NVMe SSD, DirectStorage API, Sampler Feedback Streaming and dedicated hardware decompression).

The Xbox Series X’s quick resume feature also works on older titles to start wherever they left off. Because that’s a system-level feature, it won’t take any extra work from game developers.

Microsoft’s Xbox team is also working to “double the frame rate of a select set of titles,” Ronald said. That means moving some games from 30 frames per second to 60 fps and others from 60 fps to 120 fps.

It isn’t clear which games will work yet with which specific features. "The double frame rate technique will be for a select set of titles, and implementation of it will vary by title," a Microsoft spokesperson told Tom's Hardware. "We look forward to sharing more, but have nothing further at this time.”  

The spokesperson also declined to mention which games will see double frame rates, but that all titles will see "general benefits" from Velocity Architecture and more powerful components.

“Resurrecting titles from history often presents a complex mix of technical and licensing challenges, but the team is committed to doing everything we can to continue to preserve our collective gaming legacy,” Ronald wrote. 

The number of games that will work is in the thousands, so we’ll see how well backwards compatibility plays out when the Xbox Series X launches this holiday season. We’ll see how it compares with Sony’s PlayStation 5, which is also launching with a unique SSD solution. 

The Xbox Series X announced its hardware specs earlier today, which included an upgrade from the Xbox One’s internal HDD to a new internal SSD, along with the option to add external SSDs on top of that for extra storage, portability, and even performance. However, to do that, you'll need to buy a special proprietary 1TB SSD. Otherwise, the only other external storage available will be USB hard drives for games from previous generations, and even then, you might lose performance.

One of the major selling points Microsoft focused on in its specs reveal was increased performance for not just new games, but also Xbox One, Xbox 360, and even original Xbox games running on the Xbox Series X.  To that end, the console is introducing SSDs to replace the slower hard drives that the Xbox line has been using up until now. 

At launch, the Xbox Series X will have a 1TB internal NVMe SSD, which Microsoft promises will allow gamers to suspend multiple games at once, as well as experience faster loading times in both new releases and older games like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Final Fantasy XV. This will supposedly be due to the Xbox Velocity Architecture, a new proprietary system for developers that Microsoft says will allow “100GB of game assets to be instantly accessible by the developer.”

This is where the external SSD comes into play. Built exclusively by Seagate and offering the same specs as the internal drive, this expansion card looks roughly like an update on old-school PS2 or original Xbox memory cards, and uses a proprietary connector.

The uses for this proprietary Seagate SSD are three-fold. The first, obviously, is to expand storage space on your console should your game library ever outgrow 1TB, which is more likely as increased complexity makes games larger. Second, it allows users to easily bring games across consoles, since cards will be swappable between systems. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is that it allows any externally stored Xbox Series X optimized games, even older generation ones like Gears of War 5, to take advantage of the Xbox Velocity architecture- something they won't be able to do with an external USB drive.

“Previous generation Xbox titles can still be played directly from external USB 3.2 hard drives,” Microsoft promises in its announcement. “However, to receive all the benefits of the Xbox Velocity Architecture and optimal performance, Xbox Series X optimized games should be played from the internal SSD or Xbox Series X Storage Expansion Card.”

All of this comes at a price, though. While older generation games can be played off USB hard drives (if you're willing to lose performance on the Xbox Series X optimized ones), newer games will expect to be run off an SSD. And as of now, Seagate's proprietary drive is the only external SSD available and is likely to cost more because of it. 

This means that owners won’t be able to expand their console’s storage for new games as easily as a Switch owner might, by simply swapping out microSD cards. Instead, they’ll have to buy Seagate's custom NVMe SSD, even if they don’t need a full terabyte of external storage. And with Seagate already selling 1TB PC NVMe SSDs for $199.99 and Xbox One USB SSDs for $214.99, that will likely be quite an investment. 

With the Nintendo Switch running its games off of cartridges and now Xbox following suit with external SSDs, video games are making a clear shift towards storage mediums with faster loading times. An external SSD is a logical next step, but the cost associated with locking players down to one option as opposed to letting them use any external SSDs they already own might not justify the convenience of the plug-and-play slot.

We're curious if the internal SSD could be modded out, and if this move might encourage tech-savvy owners to opt for that instead.

It took Rockstar Games over a year to bring Red Dead Redemption 2 to PC. The game's predecessor has fared even worse--it's never made its way beyond consoles. A fan project called "Red Dead Redemption: Damned Enhancement Project" was supposed to change that, but Polygon reported Sunday that publisher Take-Two Interactive filed a lawsuit against its developer to prevent further work on it.

Red Dead Redemption was released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in May 2010. Aside from the PlayStation Now game streaming platform, which brings certain titles released for Sony platforms to the PlayStation 4 and PC, the game has never been available for anything but those consoles. "Red Dead Redemption: Damned Enhancement Project" was the first noteworthy attempt to bring the title to PC.

The project was undertaken by a developer named Jonathan Wyckoff. Torrent Freak reported that Take-Two Interactive filed suit against Wyckoff the day after Christmas. Polygon said that Wyckoff tweeted about the project's cancellation on December 27:

 "Take Two fine you win. RDR1 project cancelled. Stop the law suit i have a damn life. You guys should had waited i was gonna contact you this week. Geez you don’t need to sue. Despite what you think you guys really killed modding.”

But he later followed up with this tweet:

"We in talks with Take Two. No further tweets on anything on this. I deleted last tweet as i want to be as open to show i want to sort this. Thank you guys for support and hope you understand."

It's not clear if those talks are simply meant to end the lawsuit or if there's potential for Wyckoff to assist with official efforts to bring Red Dead Redemption to PC. We suspect it's the former, because even though companies hiring modders and hackers isn't without precedent, it's also not the norm. But hopefully this outlaw developer makes Take-Two and Rockstar Games realize there's demand here. Or, to put it a way that's in keeping with the spirit of the games: There's gold in them hills.

Microsoft finally revealed its next-generation console at the 2019 Game Awards on December 12. The device was revealed as the Xbox Series X, but yesterday, Business Insider reported that Microsoft actually plans to call its next-gen console "Xbox."

So does that mean there won't be a device called the Xbox Series X? No. It turns out that there will be a specific version of the upcoming Xbox called "Xbox Series X." 

"The name we're carrying forward to the next generation is simply Xbox," a Microsoft rep told Business Insider. "And at The Game Awards you saw that name come to life through the Xbox Series X. ... Similar to what fans have seen with previous generations, the name 'Xbox Series X' allows room for additional consoles in the future."

Microsoft wasn't ready to reveal any of those additional consoles, so it simply led with the Xbox Series X. But now we know there could be an Xbox Series Y, Z or "... of Unfortunate Events."

The point is that this current generation's mix-up, whereby the Xbox One was followed by the very different Xbox One S and Xbox One X, won't be repeated.

Get ready to sharpen your gun-mounted chainsaws. Starting July 19, Windows 10 and Xbox One players can test multiplayer game modes from Gears 5, which is set to debut on September 10. Developer The Coalition is rolling out the demos via "two focused test periods."

Gears of War rose to prominence in the early 2000s for its focus on cover-based shooting, brutal executions and ridiculous weapons made possible by the magic of science fiction. It was mostly popular on the Xbox 360. A PC version of the first game came out in 2007, but subsequent entries in the franchise wouldn't jump from console to PC until Gears of War 4 debuted nearly a decade later.

The Gears of War Tech Test will be open to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and Xbox Game Pass for PC subscribers on Xbox One and Windows 10, respectively, as well as those who digitally pre-order Gears 5 from the Microsoft Store.

The tests will offer access to three game modes--Arcade, Escalation and King of the Hill--on two different maps. Players will also be able to experiment with two new features: a training mode appropriately called Bootcamp and "a mini Tour of Duty, where you’ll complete Medals to unlock exclusive Tester Weapon Skins to take into Gears 5." Completing all three Medals will unlock a Tester Banner.

The first test period will run from July 19-22. The second period will run from July 26-29. Testers can download the preview starting July 17 as well as in-between test periods, but they won't be able to play the game, of course. The developer warned that these tests are mostly supposed to see if its servers can handle an influx of players, so don't be surprised if something crashes.

Recommended Specs

Here are the recommended specs for the Gears of War Tech Test:

Microsoft isn't content to let other companies bring gaming into the streaming era alone. The company introduced a successful "Netflix for games" with Xbox Game Pass, then revealed the upcoming Project xCloud service that promises to stream Xbox games to all kinds of devices. This week, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that expanding Xbox Game Pass to Windows 10 will be a "big element" of Microsoft's plans for gaming.

Here's what Nadella said in an earnings call:

"Xbox has the key gaming community and the monetization capabilities. Whether it's first-party games or third-party games, we are best-in-class in that monetization and that's what's reflected in the results. ... So given that structural position, we are going to make sure that we keep increasing the strength of the community. You see that already with Minecraft going to all platforms and that increasing the intensity of the community, and you'll see us do more of that. Obviously, bringing Game Pass to even the PC is going to be a big element of that."

Xbox Game Pass debuted on June 1 as a way for Xbox One owners to play select current-gen titles, as well as backwards compatible Xbox 360 games, for $10 per month. The service doesn't offer access to every Xbox game from the last two generations of consoles, but it does boast more than 100 titles and regularly adds more. Compared to spending $60 on a new game--or having to dust off an Xbox 360--it's not a bad deal.

Bringing the service to Windows 10 would allow PC users to experience these games without having to make too great a financial commitment. Games made for consoles are often buggy on PC, and even though Microsoft has worked to prevent that from being the case for its platforms, there's no guarantee a game made for the Xbox 360 is going to run well on a modern system. Better to test it as a subscription than buy it outright.

Yet, it's not hard to imagine Xbox Game Pass stumbling as it comes to PC as well. Many of these games are available far cheaper via Steam, GOG and lesser-known marketplaces than they are on Xbox (PC gamers spend more on hardware but get to recoup some of the costs with cheaper games). Unless someone's curious about the entire Xbox Game Pass catalog, it's easier to pick up games on the cheap on PC than it is on Xbox.

But that will depend on what games are available, how Xbox Game Pass functions on PC, etc. In the meantime, as Microsoft works on Xbox Game Pass and Project xCloud, it's clear that Xbox has gone far beyond its console origins to become a core part of Microsoft's future.

The hardest part about switching between gaming platforms is getting used to new input methods. Console players often struggle with a mouse and keyboard and PC gamers regularly wonder how anyone plays with a controller, leaving both in a state of befuddlement. Or so we thought. According to new stats from Valve, many people who play on PC have actually used some kind of controller to play Steam games.

That doesn't actually come as too much of a surprise. Certain titles lend themselves more to one input method over another. Anything that requires precise aim, navigating a bunch of menus, or complex interfaces benefits from using a mouse and keyboard. Others, like platformers and fighting games, often play better on a controller. Action games ported from consoles--looking at you, Dark Souls--practically require a gamepad.

Yet the sheer number of PC gamers using controllers is still interesting to consider. Valve said in a blog post:

"The first thing that jumps out in the data is that a lot of Steam players have a controller. Since 2015, over 30 million players have registered at least one controller and over 15 million of those players have registered more than one. Between accounts with multiple controllers and controllers that have been registered to multiple accounts, we find that a total of 60 million device-account pairs have been connected to Steam."

That's a lot of controllers. Valve said most are console gamepads that people have connected to their PCs; 45 percent are Xbox 360 controllers, 20 percent are PlayStation 4 controllers, 19 percent are Xbox One controllers, 7 percent are PlayStation 3 controllers and the remaining 8 percent  fall under the "Other" category. That list is dominated by the Steam Controller, gamepads made specifically for PC, the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller, and more.

Valve attributes the popularity of Xbox controllers largely to Microsoft's efforts to standardize XInput in Windows games. Many game developers have added support for XInput, which means setting up an Xbox controller is a lot easier than using one from PlayStation or Nintendo. That hasn't stopped a lot of people (the Pro Controller is surprisingly popular given that it's only a year old) but Xbox leads for a reason.

The company's other findings are harder to attribute to anything in particular. People who connected Xbox and Nintendo controllers are far more likely to use them, for example, than people who set up a PlayStation controller. Steam Controller users also play far more games than people using other types of controllers, with Valve's own gamepad being used in more than 1,000 titles. Xbox controllers sit in second with just over 600.

Those findings could be attribute to various things. Maybe people got frustrated with setting up their PlayStation controller and switched to Xbox, or maybe they just got so enraptured by the new Spider-Man game on PS4 that PC games fell to the wayside. There's a chance that Steam Controller owners use the device in more games simply because, as their ownership of that controller suggests, they like giving Valve money.

Valve has a different explanation: The Steam Controller's "unique combination of trackpad and gyro inputs make for better precision pointing and aiming controls than a typical thumb stick and help bridge the gap between controller and non-controller titles." This could explain why it's used so often even in games with partial (or no) controller support. Either way, it's still less popular than Xbox or PlayStation controllers.

But that reinforces Valve's point that a lot of Steam users rely on controllers. It would make sense for game developers to stop assuming that everyone on PC wants to use a keyboard and mouse, or even an Xbox gamepad, because in reality many other people use a large variety of input devices. It doesn't matter if one input method is objectively better; it doesn't make sense to ignore gamers with different preferences.

Comparing GeForce GTX 1060 6GB And Radeon RX 480

Powerful graphics hardware gets all of the love from gamers and enthusiasts, so long as games run the way they’re supposed to. When they don’t, drivers take the blame. That’s why driver teams are the unsung heroes of the graphics card world. They swoop in and fix whatever needs fixing. Over the long run, that can lead to significantly improved performance in games that you may be playing for months or years to come.

We wanted to get a sense of how much updated drivers improve performance, so we zeroed in on a pair of popular mainstream cards: AMD’s Radeon RX 480 and Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1060 6GB. We benchmarked each card in 11 different games, using three different driver builds that were released in a two-year time span. Nvidia's card improved the most, an average of 4.3 percent per game versus 2.3 percent for AMD. 

However, driver performance improvement varies greatly by title. In certain cases, new drivers do deliver big speed-ups. AMD registers double-digit percentage gains in Rise of the Tomb Raider, while Nvidia registers massive speed-ups in Hitman and Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation. In other games, fresh drivers don’t make much of a difference at all. Then there are the games that actually slow down a bit in favor of a more fluid experience. It sounds counterintuitive, but our frame rate and frame time charts below will illustrate those changes.

Why’d we choose the cards we did for this experiment? As it happens, the Radeon RX 480 and GeForce GTX 1060 6GB were both introduced about two years ago (just 20 days apart, in fact). They both targeted the same gamers playing at 1920x1080, and they’re about as mature as graphics cards get while still being actively manufactured and sold.

We aren’t stopping with this performance comparison, either. AMD recently commissioned a study that showed its drivers are more stable than Nvidia’s. We’re working on a methodology for replicating those results, and plan to publish our own findings as a follow-up. If you have any ideas or suggestions of your own, feel free to share in the comments section!

How We Tested AMD and Nvidia Drivers

The hardware used to compare driver versions is consistent with our last several graphics card reviews--like the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 3GB. We start with an MSI Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard hosting a Core i7-7700K CPU. The platform is complemented by G.Skill’s F4-3200C14Q-32GTZ memory kit. Crucial’s MX200 SSD remains, as does a Corsair H110i cooler and be quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 850W power supply.

Upon this foundation we installed Windows 10 Pro version 1803, with all available patches applied. The operating system’s ability to download and update device drivers is explicitly disabled by opening up System Properties, tabbing over to Hardware, clicking the Device Installation Settings button, and choosing “No (your device might not work as expected).”

Next, we downloaded three driver versions for each of the cards we planned to test: the launch build, a driver from roughly one year ago, and the most recent update available from each vendor’s website. Nowadays, AMD and Nvidia do a good job of ensuring remnants from their drivers are completely removed when an uninstall routine is run. However, we followed each driver swap with a round of Wagnardsoft’s Display Driver Uninstaller to be sure.

Because the differences between driver builds can be tiny, we took care to maintain an ambient temperature close to 26°C and collect our benchmark results on warmed-up cards. Most of the games we tested were supported by the latest version of the open-source OCAT overlay tool. For those that weren’t, we gathered data with a custom front-end for PresentMon.

Here's the list of the games we'll be testing on the following pages, along with the relevant settings:

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Battlefield 3 (2011, DX11)

Introduced five years before either AMD’s Radeon RX 480 or Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, Battlefield 3 was an afterthought by the time we wrote our reviews of both cards in 2016. Back then, even Battlefield 4 was hardly relevant. As such, we don’t expect either AMD or Nvidia put much effort into optimizing for this game, and it’s even less likely that the company revisited it since.

AMD’s Radeon 16.6.2 driver handled Battlefield 3 well right out of the gate, serving up low frame time variance and high frame rates at 1920x1080 using the Ultra graphics preset.

Interestingly, the Crimson ReLive Edition 17.7.2 driver package, published a year later, tightened frame time variance overall, but introduced some spikes that hurt the last percentile of our measurements.

Fast-forward another year and Adrenalin Edition 18.7.1 smoothed everything back out again, nudging average performance up just a bit. That’s a 1.8% improvement over two years in a game that everyone forgot about.

Microsoft’s DirectX 11 API afforded Nvidia plenty of opportunity to optimize its drivers for better performance, and it was no surprise when GeForce cards turned in higher frame rates than comparable Radeons in DX11-based games.

In Battlefield 3, the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB started faster than Radeon RX 480 and sped up an additional 2.7% over the next two years (even though we suspect Nvidia didn’t spend much time, if any, tuning for this title specifically).

Today, Nvidia’s card is about 12% faster than AMD’s in Battlefield 3 at 1920x1080 using Ultra settings. Of course, that only matters if you want to play the campaign: EA’s multiplayer servers are now offline. Still, a trip back to 2011 gives us a historical baseline to compare newer games against.

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Battlefield 4 (2013, DX11)

The newer Battlefield 4 was one of the games we used in our Radeon RX 480 and GeForce GTX 1060 6GB reviews. Even though it was three years old by the time both cards launched, the DX11-based title still featured prominently in our test suite, making it a probable target for optimization.

The Radeon RX 480’s initial 73.7 FPS average rose to 76.4 FPS with Crimson ReLive Edition 17.7.2, before settling at 75.5 FPS in the latest Adrenalin Edition 18.7.1 build. From introduction to two years later, that’s a 2.4% speed-up.

Frame time variance in Battlefield 4 is a little higher than its predecessor. But AMD’s Radeon RX 480 achieves similar 99^th percentile frame rates across the board, improving slightly in the latest driver builds.

Nvidia was already getting the Pascal architecture’s maximum performance in Battlefield 4 when GeForce GTX 1060 6GB launched. The card’s average frame rate increased by one-tenth of a percent over two years.

The GeForce’s frame times are much lower than the Radeon’s, which is, mathematically, where the higher frame rates come from. However, Nvidia’s variance is also lower, evident in the thinner line across our frame time over benchmark chart. This corresponds to an overall smoother experience.

Although Nvidia wasn’t able to improve the 1060 6GB’s performance in Battlefield 4 from launch, a 95.6 FPS average with its newest 398.36 driver represents a 26.6% advantage over the Radeon RX 480 at 1920x1080 using the Ultra preset.

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Metro: Last Light Redux (2014, DX11)

Technically, Metro: Last Light was introduced in 2013. But the Redux version we’re testing today came out a year later. Its built-in and highly configurable benchmarking tool makes Metro popular for generating repeatable data. Case in point: tests run two years apart on entirely different platforms fall within 1 FPS of each other thanks to a heavy dependence on graphics performance.

Based on our average frame rate results, the Radeon RX 480’s profile did change over time in Metro, improving 1% from 16.6.2 to 18.7.1.

Those 99^th percentile numbers are far more interesting, though. Breaking frame rate down by percentile also shows that the slowest five percent of frames are quite different from one driver build to another. AMD’s newest package isn’t even the best. As we saw in the Battlefield games, last year’s 17.7.2 version offered the best performance. But 17.7.2 and 18.7.1 are both dramatic improvements over 16.6.2.

Need proof? Check out the frame times across our test sequence. All of those red spikes correspond to frames that take tens of milliseconds longer to display than the thicker trendline down below. The resulting animation appears less smooth. Fortunately, AMD addressed the issue through its drivers. The 17.7.2 line, in black, suffers the least amount of variance, while 18.7.1 isn’t quite as tight.

Flip right over to Nvidia’s frame time chart and observe the difference. Three thick trend lines convey fluid animation. A handful of spikes from the 385.28 build stand out, but only because the other two versions demonstrate ideal behavior.

Back to GeForce GTX 1060’s average frame rate, there's a mere 0.7% improvement from 368.95 to 398.36, and no real drama to speak of in the slowest 1% of frames.

Despite minimal improvement over time, Nvidia’s card still ends up 14% faster than the Radeon in Metro: Last Light Redux at 1920x1080 using the Very High preset.

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Grand Theft Auto V (2015, DX11)

Originally released to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2013, Grand Theft Auto V didn’t make its way to PC until early 2015. We promptly added it to our graphics testing suite, giving us one more DirectX 11-based comparison point.

AMD clearly improved the performance of its Radeon RX 480 in Grand Theft Auto V after launch. The Crimson ReLive Edition 17.7.2 and Adrenalin Edition 18.7.1 builds yield quantifiably higher average frame rates compared to 16.6.2. In the end, two years of driver work translate to a ~4% speed-up.

In comparison, Nvidia only coaxed 1.4% more performance from GeForce GTX 1060 6GB’s Pascal architecture between 2016 and 2018. That’s alright, though. Its aggressively-optimized driver helps the 1060 6GB outperform Radeon RX 480 8GB by more than 30% at the same resolution and quality settings in our benchmark sequence.

Beyond average frame rates, a comparison of frame time charts shows all three Nvidia software packages facilitating less frame time variance than what the Radeon demonstrates. Again, the implication is a qualitatively smoother experience.

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The Witcher 3 (2015, DX11)

When our team picks games to test, we naturally gravitate toward popular titles relevant to our readers. However, we also try to mix in dissimilar genres, diverse API support, games that promote repeatability, and a variety of underlying game engines.

The Witcher 3 utilizes CD Projekt Red’s REDengine 3. Although its renderer supports DirectX 11 and is loaded with Nvidia GameWorks effects, AMD and Nvidia hardware are more evenly matched in this game.

Small, steady gains give AMD’s Radeon RX 480 a 3% speed-up in today’s The Witcher 3 frame rates compared to June 2016.

The oldest and newest driver builds exhibit the greatest number of frame time spikes, though. This is evident in our frames per second by percentile chart, which shows the slowest 1% of frames falling off more slowly with Crimson ReLive Edition 17.7.2. A 99^th percentile frame rate of 52.3 is almost 3% better than 16.6.2’s 50.8 FPS result.

Next to no improvement over two years in The Witcher 3 suggests that Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1060 6GB was already well-optimized for this game when it launched.

Although average frame rates suggest a lack of variation from driver to driver, the latest 398.36 build suffers a worse 99^th percentile frame rate than its predecessors. A peek at the FPS by percentile chart even shows how the slowest 5% of frames drop off faster.

In our launch coverage, GeForce GTX 1060 6GB led Radeon RX 480 8GB by about 5%. Today, the competing mid-range cards appear evenly matched, with AMD serving up a superior 99^th percentile frame rate using the latest drivers from both companies.

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Rise of the Tomb Raider (2016, DX12)

The Windows-based version of Rise of the Tomb Raider launched two months after the build for Xbox. A patch with DirectX 12 support followed not long after, although the API’s benefit wasn’t immediately apparent. As a result, we first tested AMD’s Radeon RX 480 and Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1060 using DirectX 11. Now there’s even a version with Vulkan support, giving macOS and Linux gamers a taste of the action.

The Radeon RX 480 suffered notoriously bad performance in Rise of the Tomb Raider when it launched. This changed with the 16.7.3 build, which included the following line in its patch notes: “Rise of the Tomb Raider performance increase up to 10% versus Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.7.2 on Radeon RX 480 graphics.”

Comparing 16.6.2 to 18.7.1 shows us that Radeon RX 480 is more than 13% faster today than it was back in 2016.

Meanwhile, GeForce GTX 1060 6GB’s average frame rate increased by almost 4%, while its 99^th percentile frame rate dropped by ~9%. Notice also that Nvidia’s frame time results look a lot less smooth than AMD’s.

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Hitman (2016, DX12)

After our look at Rise of the Tomb Raider’s Foundation engine and Hitman’s Glacier engine, we’re up to six distinct renderers.

As with RotTR, we added Hitman to our benchmark suite as a DirectX 11-based test. But after two years of patches (and the addition of features like HDR), the game is plenty stable in DirectX 12 mode.

Hitman was part of AMD’s Gaming Evolved initiative. The company worked with IO Interactive to build in support for Eyefinity multi-display configurations, widescreen resolutions, super-sampling anti-aliasing, and asynchronous compute. Perhaps that’s why the Radeon RX 480 started strong in 2016 and gained very little over the years—one quarter of a percentage point, by our calculations.

All three of the driver builds we tested track very closely in an accounting of frames per second by percentile.

A look at frame time over the benchmark run shows why the slowest 1% of frames are so slow: frame time spikes throughout our 100-second sequence imply severe stuttering issues. However, experience and qualitative observation tell us that many of those peaks are attributable to scene changes in Hitman’s integrated benchmark.

The GeForce GTX 1060 6GB’s frame time results are similar to AMD’s, corroborating our hypothesis that those ugly spikes are inherent to the test sequence and not a two-year-old bug suffered by both GPU vendors.

Nvidia overcomes initially poor performance, speeding up more than 15% across two years of driver updates. That’s not enough to usurp the Radeon’s advantage, though. AMD maintains a 4% lead at 1920x1080 using Hitman’s highest detail settings under DirectX 12.

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Tom Clancy’s The Division (2016, DX12)

When the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB and Radeon RX 480 launched mid-2016, Tom Clancy’s The Division was only a couple of months old. The game initially surfaced with support for DirectX 11 through its Snowdrop engine, and that’s what we tested it under at the time.

Later in the year, a patch enabled preliminary DirectX 12 support. AMD’s cards gained a bit of performance, while Nvidia’s didn’t fare as well.

Today, the Radeon RX 480 is about six percent faster than it was in The Division under DirectX 11. But strangely, the 18.7.1 driver is a couple of percent slower with DirectX 12 than build 16.6.2, which was available before this game even acquired a DX12 renderer.

Measured frame times during the benchmark run are messy-looking. But they’re not as bad as the results from Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1060 6GB.

The GeForce inched past AMD’s Radeon RX 480 in our launch coverage two years ago under DirectX 11. And it’s even faster under DirectX 12 using Nvidia’s 398.36 driver.

However, while the 1060 6GB sped up by more than 6% from 368.95 to 398.36, and the Radeon RX 480 lost performance between AMD’s 16.6.2 and 18.7.1 drivers, the GeForce still lands behind the Radeon at 1920x1080 under DirectX 12.

The 1060 6GB’s struggles appear related to big frame time spikes that affect smoothness. Our FPS by percentile chart shows Nvidia’s performance dropping off much faster beyond the 90^th percentile compared to AMD’s.

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Battlefield 1 (2016, DX12)

Battlefield 1’s October 2016 introduction takes us to the point where we’re testing games that weren’t around when GeForce GTX 1060 6GB and Radeon RX 480 launched. The game reminds us of this by detecting Nvidia’s 368.95 driver and asking for an update to 384.94 or newer. Strangely, AMD’s similarly-old 16.6.2 build didn’t trigger the same error.

Regardless, this third Battlefield entry in today’s experiment is still based on the mature Frostbite game engine, so it’s no surprise to see both GPU vendors serving up smooth performance across two years of driver updates.

Although it’s disappointing to see the Radeon RX 480’s average frame rate decline year after year, there’s a positive story hiding deep within the data.

First, tab over to frame time chart. The two oldest driver versions—16.6.2 and 17.7.2—demonstrate big frame time spikes at similar points through our test sequence. AMD cards are especially notorious for stuttering when we start recording performance. This behavior largely ceases in 18.7.1. In fact, a lot of the frame time spikes shared between prior drivers disappear entirely with the latest one. The outcome is clear in our FPS by percentile breakdown: Adrenalin Edition 18.7.1 yields a smoother experience in the slowest 1% of frames, despite registering a lower average frame rate.

Again, Battlefield 1 wouldn’t start with 368.95 installed, so we only have two data points to share. Performance definitely improves from 385.28 to 398.36, though. As with the Radeon, a lot of frame time spikes that plagued GeForce GTX 1060 6GB one year ago disappear using Nvidia’s newest driver. Consequently, the slowest 1% of frames in our test sequence are much smoother than they were previously.

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Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation (2016, DX12)

Technically, Ashes of the Singularity was released early in 2016, allowing us to benchmark it in DirectX 12 mode for our Radeon RX 480 and GeForce GTX 1060 6GB reviews. The Escalation update followed in November of 2016, and that’s the version we test today.

AMD’s Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture is better-utilized in DirectX 12-based games than it was under DirectX 11. As a result, GCN is widely considered superior to Pascal in the newest games.

But whereas our benchmark results using AMD's 16.6.2 driver are consistent from 2016 to 2018, the Radeon’s average frame rate under Adrenalin Edition 18.7.1 is surprisingly lower.

As we saw in Battlefield 1, the 18.7.1 driver appears to sacrifice some peak performance in favor of less frame time variance. The result is a better 99^th percentile frame rate and minimal drop-off in the slowest 1% of frames.

GeForce GTX 1060 6GB began its life trailing the Radeon in Ashes of the Singularity. Subsequent game patches and driver updates improved the mainstream card’s position though, and now it’s faster than the RX 480. Even more impressive, Nvidia bettered the 1060 6GB’s 99^th percentile frame rate without compromising peak performance.

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Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands (2017, DX11)

Given its March 2017 release date, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands was still a twinkle in Ubisoft’s eye--or at least was still in development--when GeForce GTX 1060 6GB and Radeon RX 480 were introduced.

The game ran fine under AMD’s 16.6.2 driver, published more than eight months prior to Ghost Recon’s launch. However, it’s clear that AMD made some improvements once its software team had the game in hand. Over two years, the Radeon RX 480’s average frame rate sped up 9.6%.

Moreover, the card’s 99^th percentile frame rate jumped almost 20%. Big spikes from the 16.6.2 driver in our frame time chart give way to the black and blue lines, which reflect tight frame time variance and an utter lack of micro-stutter.

The GeForce GTX 1060 6GB’s performance doesn’t really change in Ghost Recon, even though Nvidia’s 368.95 driver preceded the game by eight months. Maybe the company’s cooperation with Ubisoft to get GameWorks effects into this title allowed it to optimize ahead of launch.

Regardless of its static performance, GeForce GTX 1060 6GB maintains a small advantage over the Radeon RX 480, despite that card’s substantial speed-up.

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Conclusion

By now, AMD’s Radeon RX 480 and Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1060 6GB are both very mature. The pair of cards gives us a rare opportunity to compare products designed to compete against each other and introduced mere weeks apart.

Although we benchmarked three driver builds from each company, allowing us to capture performance snapshots at launch, after a year of improvements, and under today’s newest builds, we’re most interested in pitting each card’s original behavior against their profiles now. We don’t want to reach too far in our attempt to derive meaning from the data, but certain trends are fairly obvious.

In older DirectX 11-based games, Nvidia’s advantage over AMD is huge. Even today, the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB is 12% faster than the Radeon RX 480 in Battlefield 3, 26% faster in Battlefield 4, 14% faster in Metro: Last Light Redux, and 30% faster in Grand Theft Auto V. The margins of victory shrink in newer DirectX 11-based games, and go the other direction in a couple of DirectX 12 titles, favoring AMD’s architecture.

Of the 11 titles we tested, seven see the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB and Radeon RX 480 separated by single-digit percentages in our average frame rate results. It’s no wonder that AMD saw fit to re-release an overclocked RX 480 as Radeon RX 580 just 10 months after the 480’s debut. As cryptocurrency prices stagnate, AMD fans can even find the newer RX 580 for about $20 less than GeForce GTX 1060 6GB.

As for speed-ups specifically attributable to drivers, they’re not as common (or as pronounced) as some enthusiasts might hope. AMD can boast of its gains in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Initially, the Radeon RX 480 didn’t do particularly well in this game. But driver version 16.7.3 included some big fixes that AMD called out in its patch notes. Today, Adrenalin Edition 18.7.1 arms the card with 13%-higher frame rates than the RX 480 at launch.

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands is a win for AMD too, but mostly because the Radeon’s launch driver preceded Ghost Recon by eight months. Once AMD’s driver team started optimizing for the game, it boosted average frame rates by almost 10%. But in Tom Clancy’s The Division, Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation, and Battlefield 1, the Radeon RX 480’s performance is actually lower today than it was at launch by a few percentage points. But to be fair, AMD’s newest drivers do even out a lot of frame time spikes we measured from earlier builds in those titles.

Nvidia’s most pronounced optimizations happened in Hitman and Ashes of the Singularity. In the former, GeForce GTX 1060 6GB got a 15% boost last year that carries over to the newest 398.36 driver. In Ashes, GeForce GTX 1060 6GB enjoys 13%-higher performance today compared to two years ago. Otherwise, gains range from one-tenth of a percent to about six percent. In Tom Clancy’s The Division, the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB even loses one-tenth of a percent compared to Nvidia’s launch driver.

Bottom Line

As expected, new video drivers increase frame rates in most titles, but the differences are often subtle. AMD averages a 2.3% speed-up across our benchmark suite, while Nvidia averages 4.3%. In some games, you will see noticeable improvements, with frame rate boosts as high as 15%. But in others, the change is so modest that you might not notice it. It's unlikely that a driver update will make a game that was formerly sluggish or unplayable suddenly run well on the same hardware.

Which graphics card comes out ahead in this experiment? Whether you count the overall improvement from 2016 to 2018 or tally the total number of average frame rate wins, Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1060 6GB bags the greatest number of victories. That's why AMD followed up its Radeon RX 480 with the RX 580 less than a year later.

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The Graphics Engine & How We Tested World of Tanks enCore

In 2009, the publisher Wargaming.net, based in Belarus, unveiled World of Tanks, a massively multiplayer simulation game showcasing early 20^th-century combat tanks. It's a multi-platform game, available on the PC, Xbox 360, PS4, Xbox One, and also iOS and Android devices. Though World of Tanks has enjoyed many years of success and continues to run well on entry-level hardware, its aging 3D engine just doesn't look modern anymore.

Enter World of Tanks enCore, described as a demo app for Core—a new, unreleased graphics engine for World of Tanks that will eventually improve the game's visuals to bring them up to date. It is this benchmark that we're interested in today. Does World of Tanks enCore force our test platform to its knees, or does it maintain a mainstream allure to avoid excluding gamers with low-end hardware?

Benchmark Sequence

For once, we didn't have a hard time deciding on a game sequence to use as a benchmark: the demo only follows one path, limiting our options.

Minimum & Recommended System Requirements

Wargaming.net's FAQ claims that World of Tanks enCore's minimum requirements are the same as the original game's. In other words, the new engine should run well on very lightweight machines using its Minimum preset. The demo also includes Medium and Ultra presets, which of course differ from World of Tanks' Minimum, Low, Medium, High, and Maximum options.

Operating system support reaches all the way back to Windows XP SP3, and includes Windows Vista, 7, 8, and 10. Clearly, Wargaming.net wants the game to run just as well in DirectX 9 or DirectX 11 mode (a capability that was indeed implemented in World of Tanks version 9.15).

Test Configuration

We recently updated our test configuration to better reflect mid-range gaming in 2017. This time around, we picked an AMD Ryzen-based platform, honing in specifically on the 1600X as a great option for enthusiasts looking to save some money.

Steam's survey of hardware and software configurations, offers us a view of the most prevalent components and settings (the data comes from January 2018):

• 8GB of RAM is the most popular capacity point; that's what 43% of surveyed gamers have installed. (Our system has 16GB, similar to nearly 39% of surveyed games, which we wanted to measure peak RAM utilization.)
• Full HD resolution is used by 71% of gamers (a noticeable drop from the previous month). But 10% are still at 1366x768. QHD is used by only 3.5% of gamers, and 4K still remains anecdotal.
• Quad-core CPUs are installed in more than two-thirds of surveyed systems (70%, to be exact). In anticipation of the coming months, we're using a mid-range six-core processor.

Graphics Card Selection

We chose 10 graphics cards for this test, representing mainly entry-level and mainstream options. Here are the competing cards:

Test Procedure

All performance data is collected using the PresentMon tool and our own custom front-end.

To accurately represent performance, each graphics card is warmed up to a stable temperature before measurements are collected. Most newer GPUs employ mechanisms to optimize clock rates based on variables like power and temperature. So, tests run during the warm-up period would convey better performance than you'd see in the real world. We therefore execute the benchmark sequence once to warm up the card prior to gathering official data. As usual, we test at 1920x1080 and 2560x1440 with the graphics options maxed out (Ultra and TSSAA HQ).

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Graphics & Rendering Settings

Graphics & Rendering Settings

While the game engine seems to take into account a number of graphics settings, such as texture quality, lighting, terrain, water, vegetation, and even shadows, it is not possible to set these individually within the benchmark. You'll have to make do with three presets for now: Minimum, Medium, or Ultra. It is still possible to specify a resolution and anti-aliasing mode (deactivated, TSSAA LQ, or TSSAA HQ).

Medium/Ultra

The main differences between Medium and Ultra include shadow, lighting, and texture detail; the complexity and number of decorative elements (particularly the vegetation); lighting effects; and anti-aliasing quality. Medium looks significantly better than the existing game's equivalent, and we definitely expect it to satisfy gamers with mainstream DirectX 11-compatible platforms.

Minimum/Ultra

At its lowest-quality preset, World of Tanks enCore looks a lot like the game's current implementation. Skip this setting unless you're playing with 10-year-old hardware.

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Benchmarks: FPS, Frame Time & Smoothness (1080p)

Let's start with benchmarks at 1920x1080 and the graphics settings pushed as high as they go.

Ultra Settings

Almost all of the cards in our field are capable of running this test sequence smoothly. Only the Radeon RX 460 2GB's performance is really problematic. The GeForce GTX 1050 2GB and 1050 Ti 4GB, as well as AMD's Radeon RX 560, land towards the bottom, but they're arguably playable.

Up top, three GeForce cards take first, second, and third place. MSI's Radeon RX 580 lands behind the 3GB GeForce GTX 1060 for a fourth-place finish.

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Benchmarks: FPS, Frame Time & Smoothness (1440p)

Because the most powerful cards we're testing handle 1920x1080 easily, we also want to measure performance at 2560x1440 (again, with the graphics and anti-aliasing settings up as high as they'll go).

Ultra Settings

The finishing order is identical to what we saw at 1920x1080. Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1060 6GB is fastest, followed by the 970, 1060 3GB, and Radeon RX 580. At the bottom of our charts, we find the GeForce GTX 1050/1050 Ti and Radeon RX 560/460. The last-place Radeons struggle especially, failing to render the benchmark smoothly, though the slowest GeForce cards sputter a bit, too.

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CPU, RAM & VRAM Resources

Processor Utilization

Wargaming.net's World of Tanks enCore FAQ assures us that a simple dual-core host processor is adequate for the benchmark, at least using its lowest settings.

1080p

Between two and three cores appear to be active, with an affinity shown to physical cores (rather than logical ones). The Core engine seems content with relatively low core counts, even with its quality settings set to maximum. This should be welcome news for gamers with lower-end configurations.

1440p

The same can be said at 2560x1440, where only two or three cores show activity. Again, World of Tanks uses the physical cores, rather than those enabled by AMD's SMT technology.

System and Video Memory Utilization

Our memory utilization measurements are for exhibition, since World of Tanks enCore is a sneak peak at upcoming engine technology, rather than the revamped version of the game. Still, we note a very slight increase in memory use transitioning from 1080p to 1440p. Radeon-based configurations use a little less memory than platforms with a GeForce card installed.

It's also no surprise that higher resolutions tie up more graphics memory.

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Multi-Core Performance

We now know that the Core engine does not use many CPU cores. Now let's see what happens when we start manually disabling execution resources.

For these tests, we used the fastest card in our field, Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, and tested multiple combinations of cores/threads with our Ryzen 5 1600X.

Wargaming says it optimized its Core graphics engine for weaker configurations, and it only requires a dual-core CPU. Our results confirm the developer's assertions. Even with two physical cores enabled, the benchmark's frame rate remains excellent. Activating SMT helps improve our observed minimum frame rate, and there are no additional gains available beyond four physical cores.

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Conclusion

Although World of Tanks has been updated many times since its introduction, most notably gaining DirectX 11 support, the game's 3D engine is due for an overhaul. Of course, Wargaming.net also has an obligation to not abandon players with lower-end systems, since they're a huge market targeted by the company's games.

With the new Core engine, Wargaming.net appears to have realized its goal. The company says the game's minimum required settings remain unchanged, and graphics quality at the lowest preset appears comparable to today's version of World of Tanks (that is to say it's mediocre by modern standards).

But if you own a newer graphics card, Core should effectively utilize its functionality to serve up better-looking visuals than anything the game offered before. When can you expect the switch to happen? Wargaming.net says, "We will announce the exact date later. However, the release of World of Tanks enCore shows the switch is going to happen soon."

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If you want to catch up on the Devil May Cry series, you might want to consider picking up the recently announced Devil May Cry HD Collection when it comes out in March 2018.

The bundle contains the first three installments in the series: Devil May Cry, Devil May Cry 2, and Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition. This will be the first time that the original game and the sequel will come to PC. The special variant of Devil May Cry 3, which is already available on Steam, included Vergil as a playable character as well as extra game modes. The other two games in the franchise, Devil May Cry 4 and DMC: Devil May Cry are not included in the collection, but they are also available on Steam as well.

Diehard fans might notice that a similar HD collection of the same three games was available for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2012. However, PC players will get to experience the game with improved visuals for the first time.

The announcement marks Capcom’s second major entry into the news cycle this week. On Monday, the company announced Mega Man 11. In addition, previous titles in the franchise are coming to current platforms, including the Nintendo Switch, in the form of multiple collection bundles.

The new Devil May Cry HD Collection arrives on March 13, 2018 for $30.

Capcom celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Mega Man franchise with a livestream that featured a plethora of news regarding the longtime series. In addition to Mega Man 11 coming next year, the company announced a collection of the Mega Man X games, which is also coming to current platforms in 2018.

The latest entry in the series comes seven years after the release of Mega Man 10, which was available for the Wii, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. Mega Man 11 will be available on current consoles as well as the PC. Yuji Ishihara, the game’s art director, will provide a new look for the latest title. Rather than sticking to the usual flat and pixelated 2D look, Mega Man 11 will add 3D visual elements to the side-scrolling game.

If you want to catch up on the Mega Man X series, you’re in luck. A new collection featuring all eight titles is coming next summer. The games introduced new gameplay mechanics to the series such as armor upgrades and wall-jumping.

Nintendo Switch owners will also get to play the previous numbered Mega Man titles in the spring. The company announced that the Mega Man Legacy Collection and Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 will be available on Nintendo’s latest platform along with support for new Amiibo figures. Capcom said that the first collection will also get an update that allows players to rewind gameplay if they make a mistake.

Capcom will have more news on its upcoming projects, including Mega Man 11, throughout 2018. With current and existing collections coming to modern platforms, fans will have more than enough franchise content to keep them busy until the new game comes out at the end of 2018.

Microsoft’s Kinect peripheral, once a shining beacon in a sea of fledgling motion-control devices, is now being permanently discontinued.

Fast Co., speaking with Kinect creator Alex Kipman and Xbox GM Matthew Lapsen, confirmed the accessory has officially reached its end-of-life stage, with production having ceased. Following a booming debut back in 2010 that ended up moving tens of million of units, Kinect has slowly but surely failed to attract the buyers it once did, likely owing much to the fact that most gamers tend to prefer more traditional controller-based methods for Xbox 360 and Xbox One titles.

Kinect had myriad uses beyond its applications as a video game accessory, however. The 3D camera was a cheap and accessible tool for the DIY community, allowing for some impressive hacks with 3D scanning, movie production, and even medical appliances. For those who saw beyond its potential to let you interact with virtual animals or explore Disneyland, it was an invaluable resource for creative individuals.

Unfortunately, despite shipping the camera with Xbox One units as part of a bundled set and introducing new waves of motion-controlled games, Kinect sales couldn’t be bolstered enough to make the peripheral one that Microsoft could continue pushing. So although the Kinect was a pioneering device, offering user-friendly 3D camera tech on a consumer product that went well beyond PlayStation’s Move camera (1-1 controller tracking versus Kinect’s full-body tracking), it’s time to put an end to the death knell that’s being sounding for some time now.

Even so, despite the fact that Kinect will no longer be actively manufactured, Microsoft is still using the technology it brought to the table (depth sensing, for example) in products such as Windows 10 and the Xbox One. Kinect’s legacy is being preserved in the products it has influenced and will continue to do so long after the last copy of Kinect Sports has been removed from shelves. And by that time, we’ll all be ready to welcome Microsoft’s HoloLens into our homes.

Worst PC Ports

Today, it’s common to see a so-called “Day One” patch that either squashes a final group of bugs or adds more polish to a game. However, there are some cases where the finished product doesn’t meet the standards of PC players. Poor optimization, lack of visual features, and continuous crashes are a death sentence to a game’s PC port. Developers have only so much time to make amends through additional patches and troubleshooting articles before fans get angry and drop their support for a long-running franchise or a cult classic.

The following games are a veritable Hall of Shame, and a cautionary tale for developers who want to bring their titles to the PC.

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15: 'Mortal Kombat X'

The latest entry in the popular fighting series didn’t have the best launch on PC. Players had issues with downloading the full game, low framerates, corrupted save files, and playing online. Over the next few months, the developers at High Voltage Software released multiple patches that addressed problems. However, it wasn’t enough. Players were frustrated because additional content, specifically the Kombat Pack 2, wasn’t coming to PC, which they took as a sign that the studio abandoned the ongoing repairs to the game. Eventually, the pack made its way to PC via Steam, and the developers released a massive patch last year that improved the base game’s visuals, online gameplay, and overall performance.

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14: 'Forza Horizon 3'

Forza Horizon 3 was one of the first titles to participate in the Xbox Play Anywhere program, which attracted players to try out the PC version — which was available exclusively for the Windows 10 OS. Even though we enjoyed our time with the game, others had issues, which ranged from multiple app crashes to framerate problems that made it difficult to participate in any race. Playground Games then released monthly patches to fix specific issues. One of the most notable updates was in May when it added more stability patches, improved optimization for graphics settings, a fix for a crucial framerate drop at the start of street races, and a lower overall minimum spec for the game so that even more players could experience racing in the Australian Outback.

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13: 'Deadly Premonition'

The release of the Director’s Cut variant on PC was highly anticipated because it contained improved controls, additional content, and enhanced graphics. However, players quickly noticed that the game’s resolution was locked at 720p. The studio didn’t remedy the issue, but a modder named “Durante” delivered a fix. Not only did the mod unlock the option to change the resolution, but it also allowed for an increase in overall framerate. Other issues for Deadly Premonition included crashes and OS compatibility, but the developers eventually published a support guide on the game’s Steam forums in order to help players troubleshoot these problems.

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12: 'Grand Theft Auto IV'

One look at Rockstar’s troubleshooting page shows the many issues that plagued Grand Theft Auto IV. Those who wanted to play it with a controller noticed that the game didn’t acknowledge the new input device, and there was also an issue where the software believed that any GPU used with over 2GB of memory was deemed below the hardware requirements. Other issues included sign-in errors for the Rockstar Social Club service, missing textures, and firewall problems. It also didn’t help that the game was tied to Microsoft’s now-defunct Games For Windows Live service, which had its own set of issues.

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11: 'Dishonored 2'

The sequel to Arkane’s 2012 game wasn’t received well by fans because of the plethora of bugs that disrupted gameplay. A glance at the collection of patch notes showed that a majority of updates focused on bug fixes. Some of these errors affected animations and graphics, but there were also some inconsistencies for gameplay mechanics, such as a specific guard disappearing and reappearing out of thin air or enemies not behaving correctly after they were affected by Corvo or Emily’s powers. In the time since its release, Arkane has released four major updates, which should solve many complaints from the fanbase. One can only hope that its latest entry in the franchise, Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, doesn’t suffer from similar problems.

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10: 'Mafia 3'

During the launch of Mafia III, the developers at Hangar 13 mentioned that framerate would be an issue. The game was capped at 30 frames per second to ensure that “Mafia III’s performance is consistent across all platforms.” Those who already had their copy noted that they also experienced some game crashes. The studio released a patch on the next day that added cap options for 30, 60, and unlimited frames-per-second cap, and that same patch also made some improvements to keyboard mapping. However, players needed to reconfigure the controls again in order for the update to work. Another patch was issued one week later that improved the game’s overall stability and “blurry rendering” problems.

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9: 'Dead Space 3'

]When a game is ported to PC, you expect an overhaul of sorts in terms of visuals and performance so that the new variant can reap the benefits of better hardware. That wasn’t the case with Dead Space 3. Instead of hiring an outside studio or asking its developers to optimize the experience for PC players, Visceral Studios opted to make the game a direct port from console to PC without any improvements. This meant that fans couldn’t take advantage of improved textures or higher resolutions, but more importantly, it wouldn’t use the DirectX 11 API, which came out in 2011. The lack of work put into the PC version did little to calm fans’ anger towards the studio and EA.

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8: 'Battlefield 1'

Battlefield 1 is one of the most popular competitive multiplayer titles to date, but it also suffered from its share of problems. Even when you closed the game, it suffered from multiple crashes. Those who played with an Xbox One controller also received a slight advantage for some time because there wasn’t an option to disable aim assist. Other issues included stuttering in cutscenes in the single-player campaign, a GPU hang for DirectX 11 users, and the borderless window option not functioning as intended. Fortunately, these were eventually patched out in subsequent updates, but the early gameplay experience left an unfavorable mark on the studio’s reputation.

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7: 'Assassin’s Creed Unity'

When people make fun of Ubisoft, they use this game and its many flaws as their foil. A few days after launch, fans complained about multiple gameplay problems such as low framerates, crashes, and animation issues. Ubisoft even mentioned that there were additional obstacles for those with specific AMD CPU and GPU configurations. Patch notes from later updates showed the full extent of the damage<: Bugs were scattered not just in the gameplay and stability categories, but also in matchmaking, AI behavior, and the menu. In the end, then-Ubisoft CEO Yanni Mallat apologized in a statement for the many issues. The game’s post-launch DLC would be free to everyone, and those who bought the season pass could get a free game from the company’s lineup of titles.

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6: 'Need for Speed: Most Wanted'

Criterion Games’ second attempt at a Need for Speed title wasn’t up to the standard of longtime fans of the series. The list of known and common issues is still available on EA’s Answers page, and it features a few problems with the PC version. For example, some players experienced a dip in performance when super sampling was increased to x4. Others couldn’t even reach the settings menu, as they were stuck on a white or loading screen. Fortunately, some of these issues had solutions--which required a workaround or a clean reboot of the game.

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5: 'Dark Souls'

The PC port of FromSoftware’s hit title arrived 10 months after its initial launch on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but fans were disappointed. Just like Deadly Premonition, the game was locked at the 720p resolution, and once again, the modder Durante released a mod, titled “DSfix,” to fix the issue. In addition to allowing users to change the game’s resolution, the mod also improved other visual features such as SSAO, anti-aliasing, and unlocked framerates. In the wake of Durante’s work, other modders created their own solutions to other problems within Dark Souls such as support for keyboard and mouse and a faster connection to multiplayer gameplay. Before you play, be sure to take a look at the many guides available on the Steam Community page so that you can explore the terrifying world without encountering any game-breaking issues.

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4: 'Enslaved: Odyssey to the West'

Like other games on this list, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West suffered from the lack of visual options. In fact, the Display Options menu showed selections only for the overall resolution and gamma. If you wanted to make more graphical changes to the game, you had to find its .ini file. In there, you could adjust multiple aspects of the game’s visuals, such as motion blur, detail, anisotropic filtering, and multisampling. The fact that these weren’t available within the in-game settings is a shame. Some players don’t even know where to find the specific .ini file, but at least members of the Steam community created a helpful guide for newcomers.

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3: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

The game was hit hard with criticism due to, you guessed it, resolution issues as well as audio problems and a control scheme that didn’t translate well to the keyboard and mouse. However, the most glaring problem was that the game was locked at 30 fps. You could download a mod that allowed you set the framerate limit, but a higher cap increased the chances of a crash during gameplay. All of these issues are signs of a sub-optimal port, and it seems that development was rushed in an attempt to keep the game’s popularity at an all time high, at any cost.

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2: 'Watch Dogs'

On the of launch day of Watch Dogs, Ubisoft mentioned that it had some issues with its authentication services. This meant that players had to wait a bit longer before they could play the open-world hacking title. However, others couldn’t even log in to Uplay, the game’s distribution platform on PC, or they encountered issues during the download process. We reported that the gameplay revealed some missing textures throughout the world. Most notably, Aiden’s face was completely black, as if he was wearing a mask. The game also had other issues such as corrupt save files, bugs that made specific missions unplayable, and video glitches on Low and Medium settings. It would be months before a patch would arrive and remedy the problems, but by the time of its release, most fans had moved on to other games.

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1: 'Batman: Arkham Knight'

In collaboration with the Iron Galaxy development team, Rocksteady Games’ Batman: Arkham Knight is at the top of this list because of the fiasco surrounding the PC port at launch and the subsequent patches that did little to alleviate the many performance and graphical shortcomings. On launch day, Rocksteady changed the minimum hardware specs and noted that some AMD cards would have some performance issues. Players then found out that the game had a default framerate cap of 30 fps, but the limit was increased by tinkering with the .ini file. Others also noted that the game suffered from stuttering and overall mediocre performance on high-end GPUs.

The studios released interim patches in an effort to quickly fix these problems, but our own testing showed that these did little to solve performance issues at higher resolutions. Due to the ongoing backlash from fans, WB Games eventually allowed players to ask for refunds, and it also admitted that there were some issues that it couldn’t resolve.

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Cast Your Vote!

We have new categories available in our ongoing Tom's Hardware Definitive List of PC Games threads in our forums. Be sure to head over to our PC Gaming forum page and contribute to the conversation.

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Competitive multiplayer games remain exceedingly popular. Playing against a computer-controlled opponent is one thing, but taking down another human player in a video game is a completely different experience. It’s no surprise that in the wake of some of these multiplayer games, such as the Call of Duty titles, Overwatch, and even Rocket League, there is a rise in the number of professional eSports players. As such, some companies continue to make multiple peripherals to give these players the edge on the competitive circuit where money is at stake. One of these companies is Evil Controllers, and we were able to meet its founder, Adam Coe, to talk about his company’s latest controller--the Evil Shift, which is coming later this summer.

New Paddles

Evil Controllers’ focus is on the console market. In the competitive circuit, the basic layout of both the Xbox One controller and the DualShock 4 isn’t enough for professional teams because of the location of specific buttons and the lengthy reach required by the finger to activate it. The popular method for solving this problem is the inclusion of paddles, which work as an alternative button for a similar command on the controller. The paddles are usually located at the rear of the controller, with long protruding arms so that they’re easier to reach. Companies such as Scuf Gaming and even Microsoft, with its Xbox Elite Wireless Controller, use paddles in their controllers. 

However, Coe believes that the traditional paddle solution isn’t perfect due to its hinge-like attachment on the controller. In addition, some controllers utilize four paddles on the controller, but a player might use only two, because the inner two paddles are harder to reach. The company's solution in the past was to incorporate small buttons, which it calls Pro Buttons, in lieu of paddles.

With the Shift, though, it's ditching the Pro Buttons in favor of its own take on the paddle design. Instead of a long stick, the Evil Shift will include paddles that look more like large buttons, and they'll be placed on top of a special switch (instead of the hinge design) so that it will activate whether you tap it from the side or directly on its top. We asked for more specifics on the switch and how it works, but Coe told us that it’s still in the prototype phase.

There will be a total of four paddles on the Shift, and they’re still located on the back of the controller and near the hand grips for easier reach. As we found out when we held the Shift, the placement is both a blessing and a curse, because even though it’s easily reachable by the fingers that wrapped around the grip, the paddles themselves were also too easily activated. A slight nudge or press could set off an ability or bring up a menu that you don't want.

More Hardware Changes

Other controllers employ a physical trigger lock, which stops the trigger buttons from moving all the way down, in order to simulate a hair trigger mechanism. This feature is prominent in shooter-based games where you want to quickly fire your weapon without the long travel time of the trigger. In the Shift, the trigger buttons will include a modified spring so that you can implement lighter presses to simulate the same hair-trigger action without the trigger lock--which means you get the same sensitive controls without losing the full range of motion.

The letter buttons, or the shape buttons on the DualShock 4, are also modified with an attached elongated stick underneath. The result is a shallower travel distance of 0.3mm. On the original Xbox and Dualshock 4 controllers, pressing a button pushes down on a rubber pad that makes contact with the circuit underneath to activate a command. According to Coe, the use of the stick method means a faster response while also providing a tactile feel with each press.

The finished product will also come with three pairs of thumbsticks of different sizes (small, medium, and large), which you can change at any time without any additional tools. We also noticed that these custom thumbsticks don’t employ a magnetic feature, which was included in the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller. The magnets on Microsoft's top-tier controller weren't too strong, which meant that they could easily fall off if you drop the controller (or hurl it across the room in a fit of rage).

For the Shift, the thumbsticks fit directly on top of the directional mechanism on the circuit board. At launch, these thumbsticks will have a convex surface, but Coe is open to the idea of adding concave thumbsticks if enough members of the community want it.

Profiles And Button Remapping

In addition to the hardware modifications, the Shift also has some extra software features. For instance, you have full button remapping support on the entire controller. All you have to do is press and hold the Back button (or the Share button on the DualShock 4) and press the button designated for assignment. After the company logo on the controller blinks, you can then press the command you wish to input on the specified button. The Shift can store up to 15 different profiles of these custom button maps, and you can switch between them by simultaneously pressing the right button on the directional pad and the A button (X on the DualShock 4).

However, we noticed that there isn’t any visual indication on the controller as to which profile you’re using or if you've successfully selected a different profile at all. In addition, pressing any of these buttons during gameplay could activate another unintentional command. Coe wanted the remapping feature to work without the use of tools or a software app, and for the most part it does. However, there needs to be a way to show which profile you’re using.

A Potentially Expensive Advantage

By no means is the Shift a perfect controller, but it manages to pile on a plethora of features and lets you tinker with them without the need for additional tools. Extra parts, specifically the thumbsticks, are secure when you place them on the controller, and the new paddle design is a welcome change.

With this many features, you can expect it to be an expensive piece of hardware, although Coe said that the cost was “in line with other products in our lineup,” which ranges from $70 to $350 for modified controllers. You might want an extra edge in the heat of digital combat or race, and the Shift can easily provide that much-needed advantage and then some.

Earlier this year, Rockstar Games formally announced Red Dead Redemption 2, much to everyone’s excitement. The trailer mentioned that the game was coming out this fall, but fans will have to wait a bit longer to play it, actually; the studio announced that Red Dead Redemption 2 is delayed to spring 2018.

Rockstar didn’t give any specific details for the delay, saying only that “some extra time is necessary to ensure that we can deliver the best experience possible for our fans.” Rockstar’s last major release was Grand Theft Auto V, but it was created initially for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 when it launched on September 17, 2013. It was then brought to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One more than a year later, on November 18, 2014.

Red Dead Redemption 2, then, will be the first game in Rockstar’s lineup that will be made “from the ground up” on the current generation of consoles. There’s still no word on whether or not the game will make its way to the PC. Grand Theft Auto V eventually made its way to PC on April 14, 2015, which was five months after it came to the PS4 and Xbox One, so there’s some hope for the PC gaming crowd.

Even though the game will come out later than expected, Rockstar said it’s still on track to release more information about Red Dead Redemption 2 in the near future. The studio told fans that it will bring more details about it this summer, which could mean that it might have an appearance at this year’s E3.

Platinum Games’ Bayonetta initially arrived on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2010. In 2014, it made its way to Nintendo’s Wii U system. Now, seven years after release, the game is finally available on PC via Steam.

With a PC port comes a massive graphics overhaul to the game. This new version will be playable at 60 frames per second and supports up to 4K resolution. In addition, you can manipulate numerous graphics settings including ambient occlusion, texture and shadow quality, and anti-aliasing.

You can also play the game with a keyboard and mouse, although the developers recommend a controller. You can also choose to play with the English voice-over actors or you can switch to the original Japanese cast for a more authentic experience. Before you buy the game, make sure to take a look at the PC hardware requirements below to see if it your current system can run it. For some reason, the specs don't include an AMD alternative for CPUs, but you can always find the correct AMD processor to use in our CPU hierarchy page.

Currently, only the Digital Deluxe Edition is available for purchase at $20, and it includes a sample of the game’s soundtrack, a digital copy of the art book, wallpapers, and avatars. Platinum Games said that the content is available for free for a limited time, which probably means a standard edition is coming soon with the extra content available as a separate purchase.

Update, March 24, 2017, 10:30am PT: Dan Walsh, Director of Communications at Harmonix reached out to inform us that the developer made progress with Xbox 360 guitar compatibility and expects to have a patch sooner than previously thought. “Support for Xbox 360 wired and wireless controllers is going to be coming in the first patch for Rock Band VR, likely hitting next week,” said Walsh.

Months ago, Harmonix told us that existing Rock Band guitars would work with Rock Band VR. We expected that meant you would be able to dust off your old gear and give at a new lease on life, but it turns out that if your guitar is for the Xbox 360, you're out of luck.

Recently, we’ve seen a lot of hype about virtual reality peripherals. HTC announced the Vive tracker at CES 2017 along with a variety of specialty peripherals such as rifles, pistols, and even a firehose—and those trackers pave the way for ideas such as full-body awareness systems and trackable pet harnesses. Sony will soon enter the specialty VR peripheral market with the PSVR Aim controller, which is set to launch alongside Impulse Gear’s upcoming shooter Farpoint. But Oculus is getting into this market first.

With all the recent news about VR accessories, it may be easy to forget that Oculus revealed the first VR game with which you would require a specialized controller in 2015 when it partnered with Harmonix to bring the Rock Band franchise to virtual reality—specifically, to the Rift platform.

Xbox 360 Controllers Didn't Make The Cut

Oculus worked with Harmonix to create a special bracket that lets you attach a Touch controller to the neck of a Rock Band guitar, which Oculus included in the Touch controller bundle. When we found out about the included bracket, we reached out to Harmonix for more details and Dan Walsh, the company’s PR manager, confirmed that the bracket comes with Touch controllers so that you wouldn’t have to buy a new guitar to play Rock Band VR if you already have one. We took that response to mean that any Rock Band guitar would work with Rock Band VR. However, we’ve come to find out that all Rock Band guitars are not equal.

Rock Band VR has ample support for PlayStation guitars. You can use the PS4 Fender Jaguar or PS4 Fender Stratocaster on Windows 7, 8.1, and 10. The game also supports the older PS3 Fender Stratocaster as long as you have the matching dongle. (Harmonix said the controller won’t pair to a standard Bluetooth dongle.)

Support for Xbox controllers is a little dicey. The game doesn’t support the Xbox 360 guitars at all. Josh Harrison, Social & Community Lead for Harmonix, said in a Reddit post that the developer “would love to support [Xbox 360 controllers] as well.” The company isn’t looking for a cash grab to make customers buy new hardware. “Compatibility on 360 is just trickier for various reasons,” he said, while noting that PS3 controllers are supported.

Xbox One controller support isn’t perfect either. Rock Band VR supports both the Fender Stratocaster and Fender Jaguar (with mandatory firmware update) guitars for Xbox One, but you must be running Windows 10 to use them. Microsoft previously limited the Xbox One wireless controllers to Windows 10, but it later backed down and allowed the controllers to work with Windows 7 and 8.1. It’s unclear why Rock Band guitars are limited to Windows 10.

Available Now

Rock Band VR features 60 songs for you to rock out to, including hits from Pearl Jam, Aerosmith, Blink-182, Fleetwood Mac, and Paramore, among others. Harmonix said the DLC tracks from previous games aren’t compatible with Rock Band VR, so the library is limited to those 60 titles for now. The developer has DLC tracks in the works, though, including six songs from Aerosmith that will be available soon for $3 each.

Rock Band VR is available now. You will need an Oculus Rift, Oculus Touch controllers, and a guitar peripheral, as well asthe latest graphics driver from Nvidia, to play the game. Oculus sells the game through the Oculus Store for $50. If you need a guitar, bundles with Xbox One or PS4 guitars sell for $70.

Oculus paid for the development of Rock Band VR, which mean the game will remain an Oculus exclusive. Harmonix said it currently has no plans to bring the game to other VR platforms.

As usual, Xbox head Phil Spencer took to Twitter to answer some questions from the console’s massive fanbase. It wasn’t limited to the Xbox platform, however, as one particular question was asked about the possibility of bringing the Xbox One's backwards compatibility feature to Windows 10 PCs.

Twitter user Glenn Edwards asked Spencer if fans would eventually see backwards compatibility on Windows. The feature, which was announced at E3 in 2015, allows fans to play some of their favorite Xbox 360 games on the Xbox One. Spencer's response made it seem as if Microsoft's open to the idea:

“Running BC [Backwards Compatibility] reliably on all the different PC HW [hardware] configs would be a lot more work than XB1, but never say never,” he wrote.

There are currently 325 titles in the backwards compatibility program. More are on the way, and if they make it to the PC, fans will have an even larger catalog of games available on both Windows 10 and Xbox One. Microsoft's already doing something similar with the Xbox Play Anywhere feature, which lets people enjoy games such as Gears of War 4, Forza Horizon 3, and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (so long as you buy it digitally), on both platforms.

The project's biggest obstacle would be that the program needed to run Xbox 360 games would have to work across many different PC configurations. (Though it's worth mentioning that some games on the backwards compatibility list have PC counterparts, some of which are still available via Steam.)

It’s unlikely we’ll see this feature come to the PC, but at least the question was brought directly to Spencer, who didn’t refute the idea.  At least Microsoft is working to improve the gaming experience for both Xbox One and PC with the upcoming Creators Update, which includes a new livestream service, custom tournaments, and Game Mode, among other things.

There’s a new update available for those playing XCOM 2 on the PC. According to the team at Firaxis Games, some fans on the PC heavily requested controller support, and nine months after the game's release, it’s finally available.

At launch, XCOM 2 supported keyboard and mouse as well as the Steam Controller. The latter input was the result of a collaboration between Firaxis and Valve. With this new update, you can also play the game with an Xbox One and Xbox 360 controller.

The addition of controller support was a long time coming. When Firaxis first announced the game, it mentioned that it would be available only for the PC. Creative director Jake Solomon mentioned that this platform exclusivity meant that the studio could meet “very, very ambitious goals” for the game. In addition, the game utilized a heavily modified version of the Unreal Engine 3.5, which meant that transferring all of the data and assets to Unreal Engine 4 would be a monumental task. However, the game eventually made its way to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One at the end of September.

New controller support also means that you can explore the Avenger, the home of your soldiers, in a new first-person camera mode. However, you can also use the same camera angle to walk the battlefield with your team, which means that you can snap some beautiful screenshots. You can learn how to activate the feature with the help of the studio’s instructions.

In addition to controller support, the developers also made some changes to the game. You can check out the changelog on the game’s news page.

The Xbox 360 has been around for quite some time. Last November, Microsoft celebrated the console’s 10-year anniversary. But all good things must come to an end, and the company announced today that it’s ceasing production of the venerable console.

Obviously, this doesn’t mean that you’ll stop seeing Xbox 360 on physical (or digital) shelves anytime soon. The company will continue to sell its remaining inventory of Xbox 360 consoles. In addition, Microsoft will continue to support Xbox 360 players in various ways. Xbox Live services are still available to players for online multiplayer, parties and apps. In addition, subscribers will still receive free games through the Games With Gold program and discounts through Deals With Gold. For any troubleshooting issues, Microsoft will also continue to add support for the hardware on its Support page.

However, the company is still pushing customers to get the Xbox One with backwards compatibility, which was announced at E3 last year. Many popular titles are already available through the program, and more games are added every month.

In the end, the legacy of the Xbox 360 will endure for quite some time. The successor to the original Xbox, it launched on November 22, 2005. It continued the Halo franchise with multiple installments, most notably the ever-popular Halo 2, and the series continued to the Xbox One with Halo 5: Guardians. Forza Motorsport also made its debut on the Xbox, but over the years it became Microsoft’s answer to Sony’s Gran Turismo series.

Until recently, the Call of Duty franchise had a longtime partnership with Microsoft, which increased the popularity of the game on the Xbox 360. The Gears of War franchise was introduced in the Xbox 360, too; four titles came out under the franchise name, and just like the Halo series, Gears of War will continue on the Xbox One when Gears of War 4 arrives in October.

The Kinect peripheral also made its debut on the Xbox 360 (Project Natal, anyone?). The device allowed users to play games with body gestures and speech. Six years after its 2010 release, it’s still available as an add-on for the current Xbox One console.

Microsoft entered the console gaming business with the first Xbox, but it was the Xbox 360 that cemented the company’s place in the industry. Now, Microsoft’s plans continue as it attempts to link its PC and console gaming divisions together for what it hopes will be an improved experience.

Follow Rexly Peñaflorida II @Heirdeux. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.

The Dream Of Virtual Reality

As the number of companies working to develop the next generation of VR continues to grow, gamers and tech enthusiasts are primarily being split into two groups. One group eagerly and enthusiastically looks forward to the quickly approaching VR devices, while the other, more skeptical users merely shrug their shoulders.

This latter group may seem a tad pessimistic, but their outlook on VR typically stems from memories of the first generation of VR devices developed during the latter half of the 20th century. As the release of two major VR devices—the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive—draws near, lets look back at the state of virtual reality over the years.

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1955 - The Sensorama

It is hard to say when humanity first conceived the concept of being plugged into a virtual world, but one of the first practical attempts at simulating a virtual reality came from Morton Heilig. Heilig first explained his vision of an apparatus capable of stimulating multiple senses in 1955. After years of work, Heilig presented his prototype, the Sensorama, in 1962.

The Sensorama consisted of several mechanical parts. Users sat in a chair that moved along with the simulation, while a large stereoscopic screen and stereo speakers provided visual and audio stimuli. The system also took advantage of a wind tunnel to create air effects and a perfume diffuser. The Sensorama proved to be too far ahead of its time, however, and it failed to attract investors. It never moved past the prototype stage.

1960 - Heilig HMD Patent

The Sensorama wasn't the only VR device Heilig was working on in the 1950s, he also was designing a portable VR HMD. According to the specs, this device, which looks remarkably similar to modern day HMDs, would use lenses with 140 degree horizontal and vertical view angles. It also included stereo earphones, and an air discharge nozzle to emulate the feeling of wind against your face. Similar to the Sensorama, it also would be able to use a number of perfumes to simulate different environments. Heilig never built one of these HMDs, but he did receive a patent for it in 1960.

Information and image sourced from "The VR Book" by Jason Jerald.

1961 - Philco Headsight

Perhaps inspired by Heilig and the Sensorama, two engineers working for the American company Philco invented what is considered to be both the first stereoscopic headset and the first Head Mounted Display (HMD), the Headsight. Designed for video surveillance, the Headsight displayed a live security feed from a camera installed nearby. It used a single light source and a magnetic tracking system to detect movement and send commands to turn the camera based on how the operator moved his head.

Technically, it was not a virtual reality device, as the images displayed were real, but it was a fundamental piece of technology on the road toward the development of VR devices.

1965 - The Sword Of Damocles

The first true virtual reality headset was invented by Ivan Sutherland between 1965 and 1968 at the University of Utah. The researcher described the underlining concepts in 1965 and completed the device in 1968.

The unit used two cathode ray tubes (one for each eye) and optical elements to project computer generated images into the operator's eyes. The selected optical elements allowed users to see 3D images superimposed over real life objects, making this more of an augmented reality headset, in truth. The initial prototype device was so overwhelmingly bulky and heavy that the researchers needed to mount it on an arm from the ceiling to use it. This version was nicknamed "The Sword Of Damocles."

The second model produced was a considerably lighter mobile device that used ultrasonic transmitters for motion tracking.

1982 - The Atari Research Lab

In 1982, Atari was at its peak, and the company founded a laboratory devoted to researching VR technologies. The laboratory would springboard the careers of several early VR pioneers including Jaron Lanier and Thomas Zimmerman. In 1982, Zimmerman invented the DataGlove, which used optical fibers to convert hand movements into electrical signals.

Not long after the lab was founded, the video game market crashed and Atari was forced to close it down. In order to continue their work, Lanier and Zimmerman founded a new company, VPL Research, in 1984. The company's first product was the DataGlove, followed by the EyePhone.

1982 - The Super Cockpit

The video game industry wasn't the only one interested in VR. In the 1970s, Thomas Furness was experimenting with the idea of creating a computer simulated cockpit for the U.S. Air Force to train fighter pilots. The work came to fruition in 1982 with the development of the Super Cockpit or VCASS (Visually Coupled Airborne Systems Simulator). It was also referred to as "Darth Vader" because of how similar the mask used in the device was to the one worn by the famous Sith Lord.

1985 - NASA VIEW

NASA was interested in virtual reality, too. In 1985, NASA created its VIEW (Virtual Interface Environment Workstation). The VIEW system used a stereoscopic virtual reality helmet. The optics used in the system were provided by LEEP Optics, which later marketed its own VR headset, which was known as Cyberface. Using two 2.7-inch diagonally mounted displays, these devices had a viewing angle of 120 degrees. The user interface was supplemented by a voice recognition system and the use of DataGloves provided by VPL Research.

1987 - Star Trek Holodeck

As research labs continued to turn out new VR related devices, the idea of virtual reality made its way to a wider audience. In 1987, two events contributed to the popularization of VR: Jaron Lanier created the term "virtual reality," and Star Trek The Next Generation gave birth to the holodeck. The holodeck in Star Trek gave the world a visual idea of just what VR could be.

1989 - Nintendo Power Glove

1989 marks the debut of VR devices to the general public. Nintendo launched its Power Glove, an electronic glove developed with help from Tom Zimmerman and Jaron Lanier, the inventors of the DataGlove. The technology used in the Power Glove is similar to the DataGlove, but where the latter could recognize 256 positions for each finger, the former could only do four. It could detect yaw and roll hand motions, but not the pitch. Few games on the NES took advantage of the Power Glove, and it often had performance issues, ultimately resulting in failure.

1991 - Virtuality 1000CS

In 1991, the Virtuality 1000CS, likely the most influential VR device of the 1990s, hit the arcades. This was a considerable leap in consumer level VR content. It used an HMD to display video and play audio, while users moved and used a 3D joystick to interact with the VR world. The system used an Amiga 3000 computer to handle most of the game processing. The 1000CS ultimately fizzled because of the extreme cost of the machine: $60,000.

1993 - SEGA VR

With Nintendo trying its hand in the world of VR, it wasn't long before Sega entered the fray as well. At CES 1993, Sega introduced a revolutionary product, the Sega VR. The virtual reality helmet was attractive. It used integrated LCD displays and inertial sensors to measure head movement, and Sega planned to release it later that same year for just $200. Four games that took advantage of the headset were supposed to be released as well, but all of the games were cancelled during development and never released. The VR headset was also subsequently cancelled.

1995 - Virtual IO i-glasses

The Virtual IO i-glasses attempted to be more than just a VR device. Instead, the i-glasses primarily functioned as a single-user display. Someone wearing the device sees what looks like an 80-inch image from roughly five feet away. It used composite A/V connections and was compatible with a wide array of devices. Because it used two 920,000-pixel LCD displays, it was also capable of displaying true stereoscopic 3D content, and therefore it could run some specialized VR content as well.

An updated version of this device is actually still available for purchase brand new online for $299 (although it's currently out of stock), more than 20 years after the initial appearance of the i-glasses.

1995 - Forte VFX1

The Forte VFX1 worked as both a VR headset and an interface for controlling games. Using two LCD displays, it gave users a 3D stereoscopic image. It connected to a PC running either DOS or Windows 95, but it received limited support, and only a handful of games worked with it. The headset was also capable of detecting head movements to control the PC. The headset also had a feature called VR Mouse that used head movements to control a mouse, for using Windows with the VFX1 outside of games.

1995 - Nintendo Virtual Boy

Although the Power Glove didn't go over well, Nintendo was determined to give VR another chance. This lead to the development of what is perhaps the biggest failure in the short history of virtual reality, and one of the greatest disasters in video game history. In 1995, Nintendo launched the Nintendo Virtual Boy, a console in the form of a virtual reality helmet.

It instantly had huge problems. The display showed everything in either red or black on a relatively low resolution display that caused users headaches and nausea after short-term use. The system was designed to be portable and even included a strap to attach it to your head, but it was too heavy to actually be portable. Nintendo manged to sell only about 770,000 Virtual Boy devices and made just a small handful of games for it.

1996 - Sony Glasstron

The Sony Glasstron essentially followed the work of the i-glasses by creating a large virtual display for a single user. Similar to the i-glasses, it worked with essentially anything using composite A/V connections. The display wasn't as large, however, as it appeared to be roughly 52 inches in size from approximately six feet away.

1997 - Philips Scuba VR

Philips' attempt at VR followed the Forte VFX1 in that it was designed to work with Microsoft Windows. It used two LCD panels to create a 3D perspective, and it even used head tracking to control the mouse, just like the VFX1. Although games still needed to be optimized for the device to get a true 3D perspective, the Scuba VR featured compatibility with a wider array of games, using the virtual mouse to control first-person shooters. It was originally designed for use with the Atari Jaguar, but after that console failed to gain a significant market share, Philips later released it for Windows.

1998 - IIS VFX3D

The VFX3D headset tried to gain a leg up over its competitors by featuring improved head tracking. Now, instead of simply being able to move a mouse or interact with games on a 2D X and Y axis, users could move in three dimensions using the head tracking interface. Of course on the Windows desktop this didn't really change much, but in-game it enabled users to not just look around, but also to move.

2005 - eMagin Z800

As the 1990s died out, so did interest in VR. Most of the VR devices released in the 1990s were ultimately disasters, and few companies would attempt to create a VR device over the next several years. Although there wouldn't be another strong attempt at VR for more than a decade following the VFX3D, other devices were created that became important stepping stones towards modern VR.

The eMagin Z800 3DVisor is one such device. Although it didn't aim to be a true VR headset, it borrowed many of the concepts used in older VR devices to create a single-user display. The Z800 could display both 2D and 3D video content, and it used head tracking to interface with the computer. Instead of giving users total freedom to move around while wearing the headset, it was powered by a USB cable and required the user to stay in one location.

2006 - Nintendo Wii Remote

The Nintendo Wii is not, of course, a VR device, but it did make an important indirect advancement in the field with its Wii Remote.

In order to have a truly immersive VR experience, the controls with which you interact with the virtual world are just as important as how the world looks. The Wii Remote pushed users to move around and wave the remote in the air, all to interact with the world. Although clinging to a controller isn't a realistically immersive experience, the Wii Remote inspired the development of other motion control technologies that are key for VR.

2009 - PlayStation Move

The Nintendo Wii became eminently popular thanks to its motion controller. In order to compete with the Wii, Sony created the PlayStation Move, which looked and functioned similarly.

PlayStation Move technology would continue to be developed over the years, and ultimately it would be incorporated into the Sony PlayStation VR.

2010 - Xbox Kinect

Microsoft might have been late to the motion controller game, but it also stands out the most. Unlike the Wii Remote and PlayStation Move, the Xbox Kinect used with the Xbox 360 console does not require you to hold a controller to interact with the system or games. Instead, the Kinect uses a camera to detect how you move various parts of your body. This not only frees you up from holding a controller, it also lets the system see your entire body as a control. Games that take advantage of this feature can detect individual hand, arm, head and leg movements to interact with the in-game world. It also incorporated speech-based controls, so you can use your console simply by speaking commands.

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MORE: Virtual Reality in the News
MORE: All Virtual Reality Content

2011 - Vuzix Wrap VR1200

Vuzix, a company that has made several headsets with AR features as well as simple non-VR or -AR HMDs, opted to try its hand at a VR device. Its HMD, the Vuzix Wrap VR1200, could easily be mistaken for a pair of sunglasses. It's extremely light at just 3 ounces, and it incorporates head tracking technology and a stereoscopic 3D display. Although it isn't particularly revolutionary outside of its compact size, it marked an early return of VR in 2011.

2011 - Tobii Eye Tracking

In 2011, Tobii introduced two products with eye-tracking technology. This enabled users to control their systems using just eye movements. It first surfaced on a prototype laptop by Lenovo, as well as a separate device that could be connected to other PCs. It has since gained momentum and has been incorporated into more systems, with video games adding new custom controls for the interface. Now VR HMDs are also starting to incorporate this kind of eye tracking technology.

2012 - Oculus Rift, The Revolution

The disappointment caused by VR headsets in the 1990s was so strong that no one made a significant attempt at VR for more than a decade. The technology was left to researchers and tinkerers. One such tinkerer was Palmer Luckey, a teenager with a passion for VR and free reign of his parents' garage.

Luckey created a working VR HMD prototype and shared it with members of the Meant To Be Seen (MTSB) community, including John Carmack, legendary game designer and Founder of id Software. Carmack was so impressed with what Luckey had created that he brought it to E3 in 2012 and gave a demonstration of the headset.

Soon after, Luckey formed Oculus. In August 2012, Oculus launched the Rift Kickstarter campaign, which went on to bring in over $2 million. The following spring, Oculus delivered on its promise and shipped Rift DK1 (developer kit 1) headsets to Kickstarter backers, marking the beginning of the consumer VR revolution.

2012 - Valve's Room-Scale VR Experiments

At around the same time that Palmer Luckey started the Oculus Rift Kickstarter, famed PC game developer Valve began experimenting with VR. Its initial work was focused on getting positional tracking right with a view to being able to walk around in a virtual space, and it created a VR room covered with AprilTag fiducial markers for head-mounted cameras to track.

Initially, Valve used modified versions of existing industrial-grade VR headsets such as the nVisor ST50, but it soon began working on its own headset hardware, leading to a prototype HMD that used low-persistence OLED displays in 2013.

From the very beginning, Valve planned to make its own VR hardware, and up until 2014 it intended to work with Oculus to commercialize its technology. When Facebook's purchase of Oculus scuttled those plans, Valve turned to HTC, and the Vive was born.

2013 - Virtuix Omni

People had mixed reactions to the Oculus Rift. Some were enthusiastic about VR returning, but others criticized the device and were doubtful it would fare any better than the devices of the 1990s. One criticism about the Rift was that although it was capable of displaying a virtual world, users couldn't naturally interact with it.

The Virtuix Omni sought to correct this issue, as well. This omnidirectional treadmill allows the user to walk freely and naturally in the virtual world without the risk of unexpectedly walking into a wall. When its Kickstarter page went live in 2013, it was an instant success, raising over $1 million. Virtuix is now shipping the Omni to its faithful backers and accepting pre-orders for units that will ship later this year.

2014 - Sony Morpheus

Without warning, Sony threw itself into the race for VR in March 2014 by unveiling its Project Morpheus headset during GDC. Unlike the PC-dependent Rift, the Morpheus headset would interface with the company's Playstation 4 console. Sony didn't reveal much about the headset in 2014 other than noting that it would have a 1080p display, full 360-degree tracking, and a focus on ergonomic design. The Morpheus system was also designed with the Move motion controllers in mind, bringing your hands into the virtual space.

Sony announced in September 2015 that Project Morpheus had been officially named Playstation VR (PSVR) and that it would be shipping in the first half of 2016. On March 15, 2016 the company officially announced the shipping date would be slipping past the original plan to October 2016.

The headset will be sold alone (with accessories) and in bundle form. The latter includes the Playstation camera (required) and two Move controllers for hand tracking. PSVR features a single 1080p low persistence OLED display. Sony has a leg up with its display in that it features three sub-pixels per pixel (true RGB), which gives it strong clarity for the resolution. Sony also used the same optics team that designs its camera lenses to create the optics for the PSVR.

2014 - Facebook Acquires Oculus VR

Just days after Sony unveiled Project Morpheus, Facebook stole the show by announcing the acquisition of Oculus VR Inc. for a tidy sum of $2 billion ($400 million cash, and 23.1 million Facebook shares valued at $1.6 billion at the time of closing.) Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, said that he believed VR would be the next computing platform and bet big on the medium.

Some were angered and dismayed by the sale of the company, fearing that it would mean Facebook-like advertisements forced upon us in virtual reality. In truth, the sale of the company gave Oculus the resources needed to build the product better and faster, and to create a stronger developer ecosystem.

2014 - Oculus Rift Prototypes

In January 2014, Oculus revealed the Crystal Cove Rift prototype. This version had a low persistance OLED display and introduced a new camera-based tracking system that allowed for head tracking in 3D space. The camera significantly reduced the motion sickness many experienced with the original DK1.

In July 2014, Oculus began shipping the DK2, which included an improved version of the Crystal Cove tracking system. The DK2 featured the same 1080p display found on the Galaxy Note 3 from Samsung, which gave each eye an effective resolution of 960x1080.

In September 2014, Oculus began showing the Crescent Bay prototype to media and developers. Crescent Bay featured built-in audio for the first time in a Rift headset, a lighter overall weight compared to the DK2 kits, and 360-degree tracking thanks to LEDs located on all sides of the HMD. Crescent Bay is also the first Rift design that included separate displays for each eye.

2014 - Google Cardboard

Although the revolutionary wave of VR headsets contained numerous features, they were all quite expensive. Google opted to create a more affordable solution, the surprisingly simple Google Cardboard. Google Cardboard is essentially just, well, a piece of cardboard that holds your smartphone. It does contain a piece of glass and an optical system, but the smartphone used in the Cardboard headset does most of the work. This headset gives users an extremely basic (and extremely inexpensive) VR experience.

2014 - Samsung Gear VR

By 2014, Samsung had formed a partnership with Oculus to create low-persistence OLED panels for the Rift. With Oculus' expertise in HMD design, the two companies created the Gear VR, a VR HMD that interfaces with Samsung's high-end smartphones.

The Gear VR lands somewhere between Google's Cardboard and the Oculus Rift in terms of quality. Like the Rift, it uses a wide array of sensors to monitor head movements, and it possesses an OLED display with a high refresh rate. Like Google's Cardboard, however, it also uses a smartphone placed inside of the headset for the display and to handle a great deal of the processing requirements.

The first version of the Gear VR Innovator Edition was released as a developer kit and it required a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 to operate. In 2015, Oculus and Samsung released the Innovator Edition for the Galaxy S6 (which was short-lived). In November 2015, Oculus and Samsung released the Gear VR consumer edition, which interfaces with the Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge+, Note 5, S7 and S7 Edge.

2015 - FOVE

FOVE's VR headset attempted to get a jump on its competition by introducing eye tracking technology inside of an HMD. Fove claims its HMD can track eye movements up to 1/5th of a degree. The system has a resolution of 2560x1440 and viewing angles of 100+ degrees. The headset is targeted at a wide range of uses, including games, healthcare and education.

2015 - Razer OSVR

At CES 2015, Razer announced its OSVR headset, an open source VR HMD. The headset, like the Oculus Rift and Samsung's Gear VR, uses an OLED display. In the OSVR, the display measures 5.5 inches and has a max display resolution of 2160x1200, or 1080x1200 for each eye. The headset also has gyroscopes and accelerometers, plus an infrared camera. Leap Motion has contributed to the project by working on motion controls.

2015 - Sensics dSight

The dSight HMD uses dual 1080p displays to create its stereoscopic 3D effects. It's somewhat limited in terms of its viewing angles, as users can see up to 120 degrees horizontally but only 63 degrees vertically. Like most 2015 HMDs, it takes advantage of the OSVR platform to gain a wider array of software support.

2015 - Vrvana Totem

The Vrvana Totem is one of the first HMDs to use the OSVR open source platform. It features viewing angles up to 120 degrees and has a 1440p OLED display. One of the key design goals for the Totem is to create a blended VR and AR device. The idea is to be able to create a virtual world, and then use augmented reality to shape it to the user's environment and pull real world objects into the game.

2015 - VRUnion Claire

VRUnion's Claire
aims to push VR hardware above and beyond competing VR headsets. Its latest model, the Claire 22M, features a high resolution of 3840x1080. The headset has exceptionally wide viewing angles of 170 degrees, and it is compatible with several other VR technologies, including Leap Motion and the OSVR platform.

2015 - Project StarVR

Game developer Starbreeze, in partnership with several other developers, is working to create its own platform using the Steam OpenVR framework. The Star VR headset uses dual 5.5-inch 2560x1440 LCD displays. This helps to make the world look more detailed, and it pushes the viewing angles up to 210 degrees horizontally and 130 degrees vertically. It also uses advanced interface options, including head movement sensors and optical tracking devices.

2015 - HTC Vive DK1

In February 2015 at Mobile World Congress, HTC came out of nowhere and introduced the Vive VR HMD. The company partnered with Valve Corporation, which had been working internally on roomscale VR tracking for several years already, to create the Vive.

The system includes a fully tracked headset and two wand controllers. The Vive contains two displays running at 1080x1200 with a 90 Hz refresh rate. It is also equipped with a multitude of sensors to monitor head movements. HTC also integrated a unique feature into the headset: a camera attached to the outside of the HMD. The camera can scan real-world items into the virtual world. 

It also boasts the ability to let you walk around in virtual space by tracking up to a 15x15 foot area of the real world thanks to the Lighthouse tracking system. The headset and controllers use an array of sensors that detect invisible lasers emitted across the tracked space from two Lighthouse base stations that are placed on opposing corners of the room. 

The Vive is scheduled for release in April 2016.

2015 - Oculus CV1

Oculus revealed the consumer release version of the Rift HMD in June 2015 at an event the week before E3. The consumer version features dual low-persistence OLED displays, each with a resolution of 1080x1200, and a 90Hz refresh rate. The new Rift model has a brand new tracking system the company calls "Constellation," which tracks LEDs hidden behind a fabric cover on the headset.

Oculus also revealed that every Rift would include an Xbox One controller, which will be the primary control method for launch titles. At the June 2015 event, Oculus promised to release the Rift in the Q1 2016, and on March 28 it will deliver on that promise, just barely, to the first wave of pre-orders.

2015 - Oculus Touch Controllers

Oculus debuted its Touch VR motion controllers when it announced the final consumer version of the rift. Earlier in the year, HTC and Valve had demonstrated with the HTC Vive’s SteamVR controllers that natural interactions in VR (that is, in contrast to abstracted interaction using a game controller) are far more compelling. It only made sense then that Oculus would follow suit.

The Touch controllers are tracked by the same camera-based Constellation system as the Rift headset, but a second camera allows for full 180-degree tracking. Like the SteamVR controllers (and Wiimote and Move controllers), the Oculus Touch controllers are handheld and use the tracking to position your hands in the VR space but still use buttons to interact with most in-VR objects.

However, their most unique feature is enabled by the ring that encircles your finger. The ring contains sensors that allow the controllers to track finger gestures, which enhances social interactions when in multi-person VR -- something Facebook is surely interested in enabling.

The Touch controllers do not come included with the Rift itself, and Oculus has not committed to a release date, saying only that they’ll be out in the second half of 2016. There is also the unanswered question of whether the Rift plus Touch will be capable of full room-scale VR, like the HTC Vive.

2016 - HTC Vive Pre And Vive

Valve and HTC had maintained for most of 2015 that the Vive would ship that year. In December, HTC announced it would be delaying the Vive release until 2016 due to a "breakthrough" that had just been made with the hardware. At CES 2016, HTC revealed the Vive Pre with much more refined construction and a whole new "Chaperone" system that activates the front facing camera on the headset.

HTC also introduced "Mura correction," which helps correct the image warping on the outer edges of the screen. The Vive Pre is a pre-production developer kit that is very close to the final hardware. The consumer edition, which starts shipping on April 5, 2016, features a slightly improved head strap and stickier grips on the bottoms of the wand controllers. The HTC Vive will also interface with your cell phone via Bluetooth, so you will be able to accept calls and texts without taking the headset off.

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Microsoft continues to please Xbox One fans with another wave of backwards compatibility titles from the Xbox 360. The company noted that since its launch last month, alongside The New Xbox One Experience, players logged more than nine million hours playing Xbox 360 titles on Xbox One.

In November, 104 Xbox 360 titles were available to play on Xbox One. This month, the list contains only 16 games. However, it does include some favorites such as Braid, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Halo: Reach and Portal.

BraidDEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTIONDoritos Crash CourseFable IIIHalo: ReachHydro ThunderIron BrigadeKane & Lynch 2Motocross MadnessMS.PAC-MANPegglePortal: Still AliveSpelunkySplosion ManTicket to RideZuma’s Revenge!

It’s likely that Microsoft will have another round of Xbox 360 games with backwards compatibility next month, but the company is offering you a chance to have a say in what titles should be picked for consideration by voting on the Xbox Feedback page. The top three contenders are Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Bethesda Game Studios’ The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption.

______________________________________________________________________

Rexly Peñaflorida II is a Contributor at Tom’s Hardware. He writes news on tech and hardware, but mostly focuses on gaming news. As a Chicagoan, he believes that deep dish pizza is real pizza and ketchup should never be on hot dogs. Ever. Also, Portillo’s is amazing.

Follow Rexly Peñaflorida II @Heirdeux. Follow us on Facebook, Google+, RSS, Twitter and YouTube.

With the Xbox One entering its second year of existence, the basic Xbox One gamepad, as well as the new Xbox Elite Wireless Controller, can be used on the PC as an alternative way to play games as opposed to the traditional combination of keyboard and mouse. Developers have recognized the trend for some time and so created their games to suit both methods of control. But unlike the wireless connectivity of these controllers to the Xbox One console, they both required a wired connection on the PC.

This isn't a problem for the PC gamer as they're seated fairly close to the system. However, there is a crowd that doesn't want to deal with another set of wires on their builds. Just in time for the holidays, the company has something for them in the form of the Xbox Wireless Adapter for Windows, a wireless USB dongle that performs as intended, save for a few hiccups during setup and the fact that it works only on Windows 10.

Box Contents And Setup

The device comes in a small box with the dongle and a USB extender cable. Microsoft said to use the extender if the USB port housing the dongle doesn't face the controller or if the port is blocked by metallic objects. This way, the controller won't have to deal with any wireless interference.

The dongle has only one button, which activates the pairing process with a controller. A small light blinks to indicate that it's looking. Once the button is pressed on the dongle, users will need to press the bind button at the top to begin the connection. Overall, the entire setup shouldn't take more than a few minutes.

Or so I thought.

When I first inserted the Xbox Wireless Adapter for Windows (it's quite a long name isn't it?) into the USB port and pressed its button, I didn't see the small light blinking. I thought I had a dead USB port, or perhaps the dongle itself wasn't working properly. A quick look on the settings page revealed the answer: The system recognized the dongle but said that the driver for it was unavailable, meaning I couldn't use it.

This is strange, as the product has been out for quite some time now, and so I did some troubleshooting, including plugging it into different USB ports, telling the computer to forget the device, and even restarting the whole system.

A quick Google search revealed that I wasn't the only one who had this problem. There is a fix available through the Microsoft Catalog Update, but it works only on one browser -- Internet Explorer. I downloaded the driver, unzipped it, and then manually installed it through the Device Manager.

The entire process was a bit unorthodox, especially considering that something so simple didn't immediately work out of the box. There could be a variety of reasons for the issue, but the fact remains that the extra amount of effort required to get it going could turn some people away.

Performance

When you're done setting up the pairings, it's smooth sailing from there on out. I didn't notice any latency issues when the dongle was connected via the USB extender or directly to the port. Also, it detects when you don't use the controller for an extended period of time and automatically shuts down to save battery life, and you can turn it on again via the Xbox button on the controller (no need to keep pairing it over and over again).

The ability to connect eight controllers on one dongle is also impressive. Unfortunately, I don't have that many Xbox One controllers, so I just used the two in my possession. Both easily paired with the device, and I was able to easily switch controllers in the middle of any single player game.

Various add-ons to the controller are also recognized by the dongle, so you can hook up the company's headset adapter or even a third-party headset like the Astro A40 headset with the M80 Mixamp if you want to stream audio through the controller.

The Push To Windows 10

At $24.99, the Xbox Wireless Adapter for Windows is something to consider for those who prefer a wireless connection for gameplay, but otherwise a wired connection gets the job done (and you save $24.99). If you do get it, there is one caveat -- you need to upgrade to Windows 10.

Ever since its reveal, Microsoft has pushed hard on the Windows 10 marketing, even offering the new OS for free. Even the Xbox division emphasized the marriage of Xbox and Windows 10 with a PC app, streaming and cross-platform gameplay.

Many users have switched to Windows 10, but there are still people who held their ground and stayed with Windows 7, 8, and 8.1. For them, this new dongle is out of the question, but they can still enjoy playing on a gamepad. The old Xbox 360 works with the three older systems, if you still want a wireless controller experience.

As for the Xbox One controller, you can still use it on Windows 7 and later systems with a wired connection. Whatever your choice may be, you're not going to miss out on playing games on the PC with a controller.

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Rexly Peñaflorida II is a Contributor at Tom’s Hardware. He writes news on tech and hardware, but mostly focuses on gaming news. As a Chicagoan, he believes that deep dish pizza is real pizza and ketchup should never be on hot dogs. Ever. Also, Portillo’s is amazing.

Follow Rexly Peñaflorida II @Heirdeux. Follow us on Facebook, Google+, RSS, Twitter and YouTube .

A few days before its October 12 release, Microsoft released the initial list of Xbox 360 games that will be playable on the Xbox One with the help of backwards compatibility. The feature was initially announced in June at E3, and works by either the original Xbox 360 game disc or through a digital download of the game.

The list features 104 games, including past popular titles such as the Gears of War series, the original Mass Effect, and Fallout 3 (although it's highly unlikely you're playing Fallout 3 anytime soon). However, there are a few notable omissions from the list, such as Mass Effect 2 and 3, Red Dead Redemption, or any of the old Need for Speed titles.

A Kingdom for KeflingsA World of KeflingsAlien Hominid HDAssassin's Creed IIAsteroids & DeluxeBanjo Kazooie: Nuts & BoltsBanjo-KazooieBanjo-TooieBattleBlock TheaterBejweled 2Bellator: MMA OnslaughtBeyond Good & Evil HDBlood of the WerewolfBloodRayne: BetrayalBorderlandsCall of Juarez GunslingerCastle CrashersCastleStormCentipede & MillipedeCondemned: Criminal OriginsCrazy TaxiDeadliest Warrior: LegendsDefense Grid: The AwakeningDirt 3Dirt ShowdownDiscs of TronDoomDoom IIDungeon Siege IIIEarthworm Jim HDFable IIFallout 3Feeding FrenzyFeeding Frenzy 2: Shipwreck ShowdownGears of WarGears of War 2Gears of War 3Gears of War: JudgmentGolden AxeHalo: Spartan AssaultHardwood BackgammonHardwood HeartsHardwood SpadesHeavy WeaponHexic HDIkarugaJetpac RefueledJoy Ride TurboJust Cause 2Kameo: Elements of PowerLego Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video GameLego Star Wars: The Complete SagaLode RunnerLumines Live!Mass EffectMetal Slug 3Metal Slug XXMight & Magic: Clash of HeroesMirror's EdgeMissile CommandMonday Night CombatMonkey Island: Special EditionMonkey Island 2: Special EditionMs. Splosion ManMutant Blobs Attack!!!N+NBA Jam: On Fire EditionNights Into Dreams…Operation Flashpoint: Dragon RisingPac-Man: Championship EditionPac-Man: Championship Edition DX+Perfect DarkPerfect Dark ZeroPhantom Breaker: Battle GroundsPinball FXPlants vs. ZombiesPrince of PersiaPutty SquadRayman 3 HDR-Type DimensionsSacred CitadelSega Vintage Collection: Alex Kidd & CoSega Vintage Collection:Golden AxeSega Vintage Collection: Monster WorldSega Vintage Collection: Streets of RageShadow ComplexSonic CDSonic The HedgehogSonic The Hedgehog 2Sonic The Hedgehog 3Super Meat BoySupreme Commander 2Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six VegasTom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2South Park: The Stick of TruthTorchlightToy SoldiersToy Soldiers: Cold WarTron: EvolutionUgly Americans: ApocalypsegeddonViva PiñataViva Piñata: Trouble in ParadiseWolfenstein 3DZuma

The lack of certain games could change at some point in the future, as games will be added on a "regular basis." In addition to this list, any Xbox 360 game certified as Games with Gold, which is a free game offered to Xbox Live subscribers, is also available with backwards compatibility. Starting in December, more Xbox 360 titles will join the group, including Halo Reach: Skate 3; and Bioshock1, 2, and 3. As for the actual release dates for future backwards compatibility titles, Xbox didn't announce specific dates.

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Rexly Peñaflorida II is a Contributor at Tom’s Hardware. He writes news on tech and hardware, but mostly focuses on gaming news. As a Chicagoan, he believes that deep dish pizza is real pizza and ketchup should never be on hot dogs. Ever. Also, Portillo’s is amazing.

Follow Rexly Peñaflorida II @Heirdeux. Follow us on Facebook, Google+, RSS, Twitter and YouTube.

If you're buying the new Call of Duty: Black Ops III on release day, chances are you're playing on one of the current generations of consoles. However, there are still fans who have yet to upgrade to an Xbox One or PlayStation 4, though maybe they will some time around the holiday season when both companies are sure to have deals on games and the system itself. But at launch, those fans will buy the game for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Unfortunately, some of the content that comes standard in a Call of Duty game these days won't appear in what are now considered the previous generation of consoles.

The biggest change is the lack of a single-player campaign. With the main developer, Treyarch, focused on development on current consoles and PC, the task of creating the game for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 was left to other development teams, specifically Beenox and Mercenary Technology. Diehards usually forsake the single-player game at the beginning and dive straight to the multiplayer, but there are those who want to spend some time with the game's story and characters before taking on other human opponents. Treyarch said that the reason for omitting the campaign was that it "could not be faithfully recreated on old generation hardware."

Instead, all of the resources from the other two development teams was put towards the multiplayer experience, so those on older consoles can still enjoy the same online gameplay as their newer counterparts. Even the new 1940s-based Zombies mode called "Shadow of Evil" is still on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions. However, the weapon customization feature called the "Weapon Paint Shop" and the various eSports tools introduced a few months ago won't be included on the older consoles.

With the clock winding on development time, it seems that Treyarch is dictating where to put most of the effort for content on past consoles. Spending time on the single-player would detract from the popular multiplayer gameplay, and so the other companies are putting all their eggs in one basket to make the game's competitive modes up to par with fans' expectations.

However, this is also a sign of the times. Both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are nearing their two-year milestone on the market, which is more than enough time for gamers to get their hands on the latest console. Development on other games, not just Call of Duty: Black Ops III, will still make an appearance on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but in the coming months and years, those games will dwindle, and eventually games won't come out for those outdated consoles at all anymore.

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The game-breaking bug plaguing two specific missions in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is finally fixed, thanks to a patch from Konami.

It should be noted that the patch is only currently available for PlayStation 4 and PC players. The fixes for Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 will have to wait, as their versions are under "final testing" before they come out.

Previously, there was only one way to avoid the issue: choose another buddy for Missions 29 and 42. A few days before the patch surfaced, there was another workaround available. You could still use the sniper Quiet, but there were two caveats. Snake's bond level with Quiet couldn't reach its "MAX" level, and the Butterfly emblem was placed on your custom logo for Mother Base.

Unfortunately, that isn't the only hurdle facing the development team. Online issues continue to persist in the game, specifically on PS4 and Xbox One. The problem makes it way to the main game, most notably through Snake's iDroid device, which is used to manage Mother Base, deploy soldiers, access the map and most importantly, select Snake's missions. Konami performed emergency maintenance on both platforms' servers on September 13, but those on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 seem to have smooth server operations so far.

Despite the issues, it's a relief that Konami is quickly nipping the problem in the bud. Right now, the only form of online gameplay available are the one-on-one FOB, or Forward Operating Base, missions. The full multiplayer experience, Metal Gear Online, is coming in less than a month for consoles. It's not a guarantee that the same server issues won't pop up again in October, but the fact that the company was quick to recognize and attempt to resolve problems should keep players happy.

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If you're using your Xbox One at the moment, you may find a few hiccups in the system. Xbox just put out an announcement of "limited" status for online capabilities as well as TV, Music and Video services.

For gamers, the problem is only concentrated on online gaming. You won't be able to play with your friends or join in any competitive multiplayer matches. However, you can still play any single-player or offline titles.

On the other hand, the entertainment side is a bit more severe. If you stream songs and videos through Xbox Music and Video, you won't be able to access either one. You also can't browse through the Xbox Video and Music stores for new content. If you're using Netflix, Hulu Plus, or another streaming service on your Xbox, you should be fine for now. While the online gaming issue only affects the Xbox One, the issues with Xbox Video and Music spread to the Xbox One, Xbox 360 and other devices using the Xbox app.

The cause of the problem has yet to be determined, with the company telling customers that the issue is being investigated, but there is no definitive timeline as to when both services will be fully functional again.
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It's Day 0 at E3, and like always, Microsoft is first up on the list. Coming off last week's announcement of the 1 TB version of the Xbox One as well as a big partnership with Oculus, the company still had a lot to show for its annual E3 event.

Halo 5: Guardians

We start with the landmark game for the Microsoft console and a trailer showing a brief look at the game's storyline with its new character, Spartan Locke, hunting down Master Chief.

We also got to see gameplay footage of four-player cooperative mode featuring heavy explosions and bullets flying everywhere. Communication between the four characters in the game adds to the storyline, so all the players need to do is fight their way through while supporting their teammates, all without the need of verbal communication. New enemies appear alongside familiar foes with powerful melee moves and more dangerous weapons.

You will be able to switch between two squads, led by Master Chief and Spartan Locke, respectively. The game's storyline will also be incorporated into the game's multiplayer mode called Warzone. The series revolutionized the modern multiplayer genre, and with this new version 343 Industries hopes to make Halo multiplayer king of the hill again.

We'll see more of Halo 5: Guardians later today, when we get a few minutes to actually play the latest iteration in the popular series. For now, you have to wait until its release date of October 27 of this year.

Recore

We also got to see the trailer for a new title called Recore from Keiji Inafune and some of the developers behind the popular Metroid Prime games. It showed a woman and her robotic dog-like companion as they traverse a freezing tundra and the hot desert sands, encountering dangerous mechanical beasts. However, it seems that the protagonist can gather the enemy's robotic cores and then turn enemies into helpful allies.

This Xbox exclusive will be out in Spring 2016.

Backwards Compatibility Is Here

Phil Spencer also came out to announce that the Xbox One will finally be able to play Xbox 360 games on its latest console. This has been an issue with the next generation consoles, and with this move, Microsoft is challenging Sony's game streaming service and digital store, both of which provide classic titles from the original PlayStation to the PlayStation 3.

They showed off a classic, Mass Effect, playing on Xbox One. The game performs like it was on Xbox 360, but Xbox Live allows you to take screenshots, stream titles, and DVR your videos via Windows 10. The feature will be available later this holiday season, and as an added bonus, you will not be charged extra for the Xbox 360 games that you already own.

Elite Controller

We also got a look at the new Xbox Elite wireless controller featuring a new analog thumbstick, rear paddles, and even modular capabilities. The controller will work with Xbox One and Windows 10. Details as far as price and release date are still unclear, but if they're showing it off now, it's bound to come soon.

Fallout 4

Fresh from its event last night, Bethesda's Todd Howard showed off gameplay from the new Fallout 4. For the most part, it's almost the same gameplay we saw from Bethesda's event yesterday, with a few smaller details added this time such as moving around in the enormous Power Armor and using new weapons like the Laser Musket. We even saw the protagonist take down the terrifying Deathclaw.

Howard also mentioned that mods on the PC can be transferred and shared for free for Xbox One players. Again, it's another cog in the upcoming Windows 10 platform wheel, with Microsoft going full steam ahead with merging its console and the new operating system.

EA

EA is having its own press conference later today, but it also had a presence at Xbox's event. The big sell here is EA Access, which allows players to play upcoming titles a few days before anyone else as well as getting exclusive content before everyone else for a monthly subscription. Titanfall and Dragon Age: Inquisition will also make their way to EA Access soon.

We also got to see the next installation in the Plants vs. Zombies franchise with Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2, which comes next year. There was a brief trailer showing off the rise of the zombies in Zomburbia. Again, new and old characters make their appearances, such as huge oranges, shooting corn cobs and a pirate zombie.

Forza 6

Racing is back with Turn 10 Studios' latest title, Forza Motorsport 6. We also got to see an actual Ford GT come down from the ceiling as part of the fanfare. It seems that the developers have a new partner for their latest title.

A brief trailer was shown with the new cars and beautiful race tracks that make the series a staple in the racing genre. For multiplayer, you can now have 24-car races, increasing the size of the field you can compete in. The game comes out on September 15.

Dark Souls III

It's time to die again and again and again. From Software is back on the Xbox One with a trailer for Dark Souls III, showing a crumbling city, ugly monsters, and a lone warrior to take on the wrath of evil. The game is coming out in 2016.

The Division And Rainbow Six

Ubisoft's new online action shooter, Tom Clancy's The Division, also made an appearance despite the game's delay to next year. Still, that didn't stop a new gameplay trailer showing the chaos and destruction visited upon New York City. As a member of the Division, it's your job to eradicate enemy forces in an attempt to bring peace and order back to one of the nation's largest cities.

Xbox players will get a first look at the game through an exclusive beta in December.

Ubisoft also talked about Rainbow Six: Siege, coming out in October. Thanks to the new backwards compatibility feature, fans will also be able to play Rainbow Six: Vegas and Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 on Xbox One because they come free with the new game. Another trailer was shown with players in team-based combat, with one holding a hostage while the other team attempts to rescue the hostage without taking any casualties.

Windows 10 And Xbox One

We finally also got to see the first game that would work on both Xbox One and Windows 10, and it's called Gigantic. The game features multiple characters, each with different skills. Players can summon powerful monsters to help out in the fight. The game will have a beta later this year.

Other cross-platform indie games were shown to work with both systems. Microsoft really wants people to switch to Windows 10, and this large lineup of games including Ark, Below and Mean Greens means that there will be a lot of content available in the new system.

Indie Games

Microsoft wants to put a huge emphasis on small, independent developers and their titles to add to its ever-growing lineup of games, and we saw some new titles from the indies.

Gone Home's Steve Gaynor talked about his new game, Tacoma, which is set in a space station. Players must walk around and discover the secret of the mysterious space station. The game will be coming out in 2016.

Beyond Eyes is another indie title, showing a painting-like world where the environment springs up like paint on a canvas as you continue to explore your surroundings. The game is out this summer.

Other indies such as Ashen, Cuphead and Ion were shown. There's also a new feature for developers called Xbox Game Preview, which allows players to play early access games, like Frontier's Elite Dangerous and Bohemia Interactive's DayZ. This is nothing new for Steam users, but this is a first step to bringing early access games to a wider audience through the Xbox One console.

Rise Of The Tomb Raider

The sequel to the reboot is finally here. Lara Croft's adventures continue with the first gameplay trailer for Rise of the Tomb Raider. We see Lara traversing a treacherous and snowy mountain, trying to reach the summit in search of a long-lost ruin.

As always, a Lara Croft adventure isn't easy, as she encounters falling ice, death-defying jumps, and unrelenting weather conditions. Oh, and there's an avalanche, just to keep you on your toes.

It's only the beginning as she continues to face local wildlife, merciless soldiers and even more unknown forces to reach her goal. The game comes out on November 10, the same release date as Fallout 4.

Rare Nostalgia

Titles such as Perfect Dark, Banjo Kazooie and Viva Pinata are going to be placed in one huge collection consisting of 30 games called the Rare Replay. The entire lineup of nostalgic titles from the classic development team at Rare will be available August 4.

However, Rare also announced a new title in its roster called Sea of Thieves. The gameplay trailer features a first-person adventure where you can play with other people in a cooperative mode as you sail the seas, in what seems to be a fully-functioning ship, and battle other pirates and skeletal monsters while also searching for treasure.

Fable Legends

We've already seen Fable Legends a few times, most notably earlier this year with the first showcase of Windows 10. The multiplayer game became a free-to-play title a few months ago, and it was one of the first titles at the time to work with Windows 10 and Xbox One. This means that gameplay content on the PC and Xbox One can easily be transferred.

VR

With Sony's Morpheus VR headset coming out next year, Microsoft was left without its own VR technology to compete with its gaming rival. That changed last week when it partnered with the mighty Oculus Rift, giving players the Xbox One controller and allowing the headset's use along with Windows 10 and Xbox streaming via the new operating system.

However, we found out that Microsoft is also working with Valve VR in what could be a monumental change in gaming. With Microsoft working with not one, but two VR headsets, it's going to have a big impact in the VR space, filling the incredibly important content void with tons of titles in the future.

HoloLens was also discussed, and we finally saw it in action, specifically how it works with the popular Minecraft.

Just as Microsoft did with its onstage demos at Build, the experience used a special camera that showed viewers what it looks like if you are wearing HoloLens. Even if you don't have a HoloLens, you can still play together with the Surface tablet.

You can also put the world of the game on an actual table, bringing the experience with you wherever you go. You can manipulate the environment with hands and voice, as well as zoom in and out and peer inside buildings like a giant. Even on a limited space, the game map moves to show different locations on such a small board. You can even move the map up and down to see subterranean levels while you can watch other players move around in your world. It really makes you feel like a god as you can call down thunder on locations and set marks for your friends to see.

More information about Minecraft will come soon, but it's good to know that we're seeing HoloLens more in action.

Gears Of War

Gears of War has been a longtime staple of the Xbox franchise, and an Ultimate Edition of the game's past titles was announced with improved graphics and 60 fps gameplay. It's coming out on August 25, but fans can participate in the public beta for one week only, starting today.

We also got to see the next iteration in the series. The gameplay showed a new character with the traditional armor seen in past titles. Together with a female counterpart, you explore a dark and creepy set of ruins.

Unlike its predecessors, which have sprawling cities with ongoing combat at every corner, the gameplay seemed more exploratory as you hunt down some unknown monster. It definitely gives the feeling that even though you and your partner are two strong soldiers, the frightening foe might be too tough to handle. For the most part, gameplay looks very similar, including the popular chainsaw execution.

Gears of War 4 is slated to arrive during the holiday season of 2016.

A Big Start

Even though the big sign on stage says "Xbox," there was a larger emphasis on more features with Windows 10 and VR. However, Phil Spencer and the Xbox team haven't forgotten about the core gamer. Halo 5 and Forza 6 keep the diehards happy, while popular titles and indie games round out the roster. We're going to see Microsoft more throughout E3, and we'll see how many of these games we can play in the coming days.

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Nintendo recently stated that "NX" was the code name for a new game console under development. No information on this console has been given except the code name, but what does Nintendo need to do with its new game console?

The relatively new Wii U originally launched worldwide in Q4 2012, but it has faced problems since its inception, many of which can be traced to the hardware inside of the Wii U.

According to a page from an IBM manual, the Wii U uses three RISC CPU cores based off of a PowerPC architecture, which is the same architecture used inside of Nintendo's previous two game consoles. The core speeds have never been officially stated, but according to hacker Hector Martin, the cores run at 1.24 GHz.

The reason for maintaining a similar architecture is to make the new console backwards compatible with previous consoles, which is not an uncommon practice. Microsoft and Sony try to maintain backwards compatibility with older consoles as well, but they use other methods that are less restrictive on hardware, but suffer in other ways.

The Xbox 360, for example, is only able to play a portion of games from the original Xbox, and to make these games work, each one requires a separate download and may experience bugs and performance issues.

Maintaining backwards compatibility can hamper growth, though, as the best hardware for new consoles often isn't compatible with the older hardware. On the other hand, it does increase the console's available library of games.

As a result of the limited hardware, the Wii U has fallen behind the Playstation 4 and Xbox One in performance. According to the technical director on Frostbite for EA, Johan Andersson, the Wii U had difficulties running the Frostbite 2 engine, and so the company never attempted the Frostbite 3 engine on the console.

In the latest generation of gaming consoles, both Sony and Microsoft went with AMD x86 processors for the Playstation 4 and Xbox One, respectively. This benefits game developers by offering a high level of compatibility between the new consoles and PCs, making it easier, cheaper, and faster to develop and port games to these devices.

The Wii U's PowerPC CPU architecture is not compatible with the x86-based hardware and software used in other consoles, and as a result, porting games to the Wii U requires more time and is more expensive. The added cost, in addition to the limited hardware performance, has caused many companies such as Ubisoft and EA to halt production of several games for Wii U.

Despite the challenges, Nintendo has so far been able to profit off of the Wii U, but the sale of games and hardware units is much lower than the competition. The console's game library has been carried almost entirely by first-party games by Nintendo.

Although Nintendo has been able to keep its console going, it seems doubtful that the company can continue to produce first-party games at a rate that would satisfy customers long term without over-producing games in its major franchises. Too many Zelda or Mario games could drop in quality, or feature repetitive game play and ultimately leave customers dissatisfied.

Even if Nintendo is able to produce enough first-party games to satisfy customers who only buy a handful of titles a year, there are many gamers who can run through a game in a week and then want something new. No single company can produce a new high-quality game every week without the support of third-party game developers, and as a result many gamers turn to other consoles.

The only way out for Nintendo is to design a new console that can overcome the shortcomings of the Wii U. The new console would need to at least be competitive with the Xbox One and Playstation 4 from a performance standpoint, but that may not be enough to attract third-party game developers back over, as the cost for porting games would still be potentially prohibitively high.

The best solution for Nintendo is to design a console that uses x86-based processors, which would allow third-party developers to easily port games to the NX console. The largest first-party game library, combined with strong support from third-party game developers, could place Nintendo back on top of the home gaming console market.

Developing a new console could also cause Nintendo some problems, though; although a new console could be much more successful than the Wii U, the Wii U is only about 2.5 years old. Over 9.2 million Wii U consoles have already been sold, and it's a lot to ask customers to buy a new console so (relatively) soon.

Nintendo could try to support both consoles, but clearly the new system would receive the most attention and receive better content.

It's a tough situation for Nintendo to be in, but in the end a new console might be the only way to keep Nintendo in the home gaming market.

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