cavalcade

I think that's the crazy thing with PCs at the moment. My main PC system is getting long in the tooth, it's a AMD 5800x CPU and a 5070GPU, with 32Gb of DDR4 RAM. By all accounts, apart from the GPU, that's a 5 year old core combo, that should be way off the pace. I did want to upgrade the core, and have slowly been assembling a DDR5, AM5 rig. I'll then swap the 5700 in and give the older system to my kids. Even with around 800 quid in outlay on the new RAM and CPU, in gaming I'll see, at best a small to moderate performance bump. Productivity, perhaps a little more. But not a generational leap, and probably not even that noticeable in most games (especially eSports or slightly older titles, already running at 100s of fps).

Heck, even my 3070 laptop seems fine. If ever a game isn't running at 60fps, a dash of 2x framegen and it's fine.

There's no technology inbound we need more grunt for - 4k is as high as we need to go resolution wise and I think upscaled 1440p is fine for 99% of people. 60fps is probably enough for a majority of games, it's only competitive shooters you benefit from 120fps plus (and you need a similarly fast refresh screen). HDR is always good, but the current consoles do it fine. There's no inbound tech like 3D TV, or 8k that we realistically need to worry about. Dev times are long enough on the existing tech, let alone needing to scale up again to build assets of even higher quality. Even Nintendo hasn't found an innovation space in controllers (the Switch 2 is fairly conventional). VR is probably on its death legs now (ultimately a tech that cuts you off from your surrounding isn't going to be a mass market proposition) - though I do see some growth potential here from those glasses that you can wear that make it look like you're sitting in front of a massive screen. Motion control. Dead.

The only area I sometimes think is a tangible chase might be how Gen Z and Gen Alpha like their Mecha Chameleon style social event games. The big thing that draws people into a community. Since the early 360 era there's been such a splintering of online communities that you're rarely playing the same game as anyone else (also true on the Society - when was the last time any of us, few of us there are, ever met on the same game?). I'm not saying Xbox were right all along with the "everything is TV" pitch, but you know how people are selling Walkmans and physical books back to the under 20s - I wonder if there's some design space there to make a platform that's event/streaming/community/moments based in some way. What that is, I can't really imagine, as there'll always be a million distractions.

Yeah, it's great on the Claw (slightly chippier on the Ally). I was wanting to pay it on the Switch 2 - but the 30fps is a bit of a buzzkill. it's a shame they couldn't wring 40fps out of the engine, as that would've been fine.

Also, in defence of the Switch 2 - the power thing is true, but it also is insanely performant for the power draw it has. I can see that being a big thing in the future - efficient compute, especially as raw material prices begin to spiral. It'll be fake frames, low voltage CPUs found in the back of a skip, and sub 10 watt gaming at 60fps we'll be hankering for - as we slowly boil to death at 50 degrees in Aberdeen.

PC gaming is niche? Steam alone has the same monthly active user count as PSN. And that excludes a lot of gigantic live service games that don't launch via Steam.

The future is likely to be everything is a variant of a PC + a novelty Nintendo platform (which is probably also a PC). Because why not? Nobody wants exotic Cell-like architecture. Everything has largely coalesced on a fairly similar platform now. It's going to be a pick-you-flavour of OS thing.

So, another game in the saga of me testing games so you don't have to - Final Fantasy VII Remake. I saw it was really cheap on the eShop on Switch 2, but then discovered it was 30fps (and ain't nobody got no time for that). I then found it was also cheap on PC. I quite enjoyed FF13, ambivalent to 15, never played 16. I also totally missed the Playstation the first time around, so FF7 holds no special place in my heart (for me it's FFX on the PS2). But I thought I'd give it a go.

And it's another weird win for the Claw. It struggles even at 30 watts on the Ally, with frame time glitches and microstuttering. A lot more fluid on the Claw, and also I'd swear (I was genuinely flipping between the two - I need to get a life) the graphics look a little sharper too - might be the screens perhaps? I dunno. It's playable on the Ally, and once I'd tweaked stuff it was fine at 15 Watts and more than playable. But it does run a little better on the Claw.

But there you go, another Claw not entirely worthless update for you. I feel like I'm turning into Digital Foundry.