The trailer for the new Injustice 2 fighter pack went up, and while Raiden was an interesting choice, since this is not Mortal Kombat, and Black Manta (Aquaman’s number one villain) was a given, Hellboy is something I didn’t see coming. Mostly because he is from neither NetherRealm’s stable of characters (Mortal Kombat) or from the DC Comics library. He is Dark Horse Comic’s most recognizable hero, and if he can cross over, who else might come out to play? I have my fingers crossed for Dark Horse’s other main hero, The Rocketeer! For now though, I am very happy with HB joining the line up.
What I Want From My Xbox One X!
I was able to pre-order my Xbox One X: Scorpio Edition, and I can’t wait. I love new consoles, but here is the kicker, I don’t have a 4K TV, so the feature I want from this super powerful console is an Ultra 1080P/60 FPS mode. I know some games are going to have it, but I hope it is a common occurrence.
I want the high res textures with super-sampling. I want to run games without screen tearing or frame hitches. Devs are saying the Xbox One X is like a fast PC with an NVidia GTX 1070 in it, and the 1070, while it can do some games in 4K, really shines at running games with max settings in both 1080p and 1440p, so while there are not a lot of 1440p resolution TVs out there, if you render the games at 1440p and then downscale to 1080p it should look amazing! (Yes I know that is what super-sampling is, which I mentioned earlier!)
While I hope the 4K is great with the Xbox One X, and that people with 4K TVs love it, I just want a true full featured 1080p experience which neither the PS4 or the Xbox One were ever really able to provide, but the Xbox One X should be more than up to the task!
The New Twitch App Is Pretty Great!
I know I was bemoaning all the apps we need to download so we can play computer games in an earlier post, but if Twitch/Amazon wants to be successful in the PC video game business, they needed to update their very bare bones app. Thankfully their new desktop app is a like fifty steps in the right direction.
You can watch streams, have video chats, manage and add to your game library, and of course stream your games all from the same Twitch app. Instead of some random launcher for just games, this app does it all. It is still missing a few features, with cloud save syncing being chief among them, but they have assured me they are listening to their consumers, and that they want to make the Twitch Desktop App as feature rich as possible. Apparently they already have save syncing working internally, so it shouldn’t be long until we see it out in the wild. I mean it isn’t like Amazon doesn’t have the server space.
If you are a fan of Twitch, or just want Steam to have an actual competitor to keep it honest, it is nice to see Amazon making their service and the tools for that service better. Now all Twitch needs is for a few major AAA games to launch on its store and we could have an actual competitive digital PC sales marketplace. I am all for that!
Crypto-Mining Is Ruining PC Gaming!
Lately I have been playing a lot of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG). It is a great game and tons of fun, but I have noticed that my graphics card isn’t quite up to snuff, so I thought I would check and see what video card prices are these days, and let me tell you, I was surprised. There are no more mid-range video cards. The RX 580’s and 570’s are either gone or selling for almost $500. While the NVidia GTX 1070’s are also MIA. The GTX 1060’s are still in stock, but going for almost $300, which is $100 too high. The low end cards are still available, as are the super high end cards, but those are either not worth anyone’s time, or way to expensive for the every day gamer.
Why has this happened you ask? Crypto-mining. The AMD RX series are super good at mining those sweet, sweet crypto-hashes, as are the mid-upper NVidia cards, and the more of those cards you get, the more hashes you can crack. This was a problem back when Bitcoin first took off as well, but thankfully the hashes got too hard to crack for all but the biggest mining operations, but now Ethereum has launched. It is like Bitcoin’s younger brother. It seems odd that there would be so much value in yet another crypto-currency, but here we are again off to the races, and we poor PC gamers are once again footing the bill.
I know what you are thinking. If we wait out Ethereum, the hashes will get hard to mine, and then cards will start flooding the market just like what happened with Bitcoin, but here is the deal, now that people know they can make a ton of money at this, there will always be another currency to mine. That means there will always be a need for tons of mid-range video cards. Which means PC gaming is always going to be super expensive. Which is a shame because there is nothing quite like playing games on a PC. It is just a more intimate experience than a console. A PC is just for you, while a console is more about family entertainment.
Don’t mind me. I am going to return to the ocean and shake my fist tide, and scream to no-one in particular about crypto-miners stealing all the good video cards. While the people around me wonder what the heck I am screaming about and hide their children from the strange angry man.
Is AMD’s Vega Too Late?
Yesterday AMD FINALLY announced their Vega lineup of cards. Their top end card will be the Radeon RX Vega 64, starting at $499 US, and their slightly lower end card is called the Radeon RX Vega 56, starting at $399 US. As an AMD fanboy I was excited to see their new cards, and even more excited that they should be hitting stores soon, August 14th, but the sad news was that they were merely going to go toe to toe with the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 and the GeFore GTX 1070 respectively.
Coming out a year later and not being faster than those cards is a real bummer. Don’t get me wrong, Nvidia needs the competition, but considering Nvidia already has their ultra fast GTX 1080ti out, and it easily bests the Vega 64, that means Nvidia’s next round of cards that are coming out soon will be even faster than Vega without even trying very hard.
Granted AMD will be able to compete on price like they always have, and they are promising to keep the supply chains stocked to keep crypto-miners from driving the price up, but it just would have been fun to see a fight for the high end graphics market again. If Vega would have come out even six months ago maybe would we be talking about some sort of Super-Vega to compete with the 1080ti, but that didn’t happen, and now if you want super high-end graphics Nvidia is still the company you should turn to.