News - Nvidia and Ubisoft form PC gaming alliance

[HEXUS]

Expect specially PC enhanced titles and more Nvidia/Ubisoft bundling action.

Read more.

[Jimbo75]

So no change basically as Dubiousoft has forever been an extension of Nvidia. Expect more dodgy benchmark shenanigans as Nvidia gets more desperate.

[kalniel]

Bundling games = fine in my book. But if by PC enhanced they mean deliberately locking features out from a large chuck of the PC market then Ubisoft can consider themselves boycotted.

[Lil-Diabo]

Bundling games = fine in my book. But if by PC enhanced they mean deliberately locking features out from a large chuck of the PC market then Ubisoft can consider themselves boycotted.

Isn't that kinda like what they did with PhysX

[crossy]

Nvidia and Ubisoft have used the Gamescom event to announce a new gaming alliance. Under the new cooperative scheme Ubisoft will, with the help of Nvidia, offer PC-exclusive enhancements to its new and upcoming games titles. Games which are highlighted to receive this special treatment include; Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag, Splinter Cell Blacklist, and Watch Dogs.

The technologies that will be implemented in these games titles exclusively on the PC include DirectX 11-powered Tessellation, NVIDIA TXAA (temporal anti-aliasing), NVIDIA HBAO+, (horizon-based ambient occlusion) and full NVIDIA SLI support for people with dual Nvidia GPU setups. Unfortunately some of these graphic enhancement technologies require Nvidia hardware such as a GeForce GTX 600 and 700 Series graphics card.

I've got a Radeon card, so the "enhancements" I can look forward to are ... DX11 tessellation only. Big whoop!

Although I don't know what I'm getting het up about, since the only title that had any interest for me was ACIV, and even that looked lamer than a two-legged centipede (says someone that was a big AC fan up to - but not including - the US-based one). So I think I'll pass on all of these Ubi.

Am I being alarmist, but I've got to wonder if this also bodes ill for console ports of these games. After all the PS4 uses Radeon, so if Ubi are preferring NVidia h/w in their "A-List" titles, stands to reason that the PS4 versions of these games aren't perhaps going to be as good as they would have been if Ubi was "graphics vendor neutral".

Although if you've got a PC with a 780 slapped in it (which I was seriously considering when I bought my 7970) then you'll be cheered by this announcement.

[OilSheikh]

Who buys PC games anymore ? They are not saleable!

[Kushan]

I don't know why you're all kicking up a fuss. Partnerships with AMD and nVidia are absolutely nothing new in the PC gaming industry. Boot up any big game for the past decade and you'll nearly always see the AMD/ATI or nVidia logo somewhere.

It's just marketing, that's all it is.

[kalniel]

I don't know why you're all kicking up a fuss. Partnerships with AMD and nVidia are absolutely nothing new in the PC gaming industry. Boot up any big game for the past decade and you'll nearly always see the AMD/ATI or nVidia logo somewhere.

It's just marketing, that's all it is.

But it hasn't been just marketing, that's the problem. Fine if the partnerships are good for all gamers, but sometimes they're not - encouraging propitiatory or closed methods is a bad thing for PC gaming, which doesn't need to further fracture its small market.

[AETAaAS]

Isn't that kinda like what they did with PhysX

Worrying about that depends on how much you care about having electronic diarrhoea all over your screen.

I remember watching the Borderlands 2 and Hawken videos and thought, "it looks ugly and it doesn't really contribute much". It is just chaff, particles and unrealistic goo cluttering up your screen. In a competitive game, PhysX could be a detriment to your performance.

I can't remember the last Ubisoft title I bought. I got annoyed when the DRM meant I could only play the game half of the time.

[stevie lee]

Who buys PC games anymore ? They are not saleable!

who buys games just to resell them?


I buy games because I enjoy the game. Still got tape copies of loads of C64 games, floppy discs with lemmings and dizzy on, never resold any PC game or otherwise in my life.




as for kushan and not kicking up a fuss, us PC gamers feel hard done by when there's epic games that are only available on PS3 or XBOX, how do you think we'll feel if the games companies start dictating to us that we have to have specific hardware in our PCs just to play a PC game? we might aswell just buy a console. we build the PCs to suit our needs then enjoy the games.
the custom build market will be pointless if you could only play, say GTAV if you had a nividia 700 and a haswell, and it didn't even load up if you had a Radeon 7xxx and a AM3.

[george1976]

I have a Radeon graphics card on my PC. I will probably wait for a graphics cards comparison for these games. If there is a big difference between Nvidia and Radeon I won't even bother to buy that particular game.
I think Scoobysoft wants another debate like the one about their DRM,or,who knows,maybe in the corporate quarters this really looks like a good idea LOL.

[Platinum]

Who buys PC games anymore ? They are not saleable!

Not sure if trolling?

The PC gaming market is as big as its ever been.

[GeorgeStorm]

Who buys PC games anymore ? They are not saleable!

???

Not sure what you mean by that, lots and lots of people buy PC games.

[crossy]

I don't know why you're all kicking up a fuss. Partnerships with AMD and nVidia are absolutely nothing new in the PC gaming industry. Boot up any big game for the past decade and you'll nearly always see the AMD/ATI or nVidia logo somewhere. It's just marketing, that's all it is.

Marketing partnerships (e.g. "Runs best on NVidia" that pops up when I run JC2) are one thing, this might be something more.

But it hasn't been just marketing, that's the problem. Fine if the partnerships are good for all gamers, but sometimes they're not - encouraging propitiatory or closed methods is a bad thing for PC gaming, which doesn't need to further fracture its small market.

Agree 100%, although I'd hope even Ubi wouldn't be utterly moronic enough to exclude the AMD/ATi crew. That said, they do have the worst ecommerce support I've ever encountered. PhysX was really stupid and I much prefer OpenCL to CUDA.

Worrying about that depends on how much you care about having electronic diarrhoea all over your screen. I remember watching the Borderlands 2 and Hawken videos and thought, "it looks ugly and it doesn't really contribute much". It is just chaff, particles and unrealistic goo cluttering up your screen. In a competitive game, PhysX could be a detriment to your performance.

Yes, but read the article - it mentions "full SLI support", that's NOT "electronic diarrhoea" that's close to "core functionality" if you're one of the folks who rely on SLi to deliver a decent frame rate. Likewise I've had some of those Radeon-specific settings that definitely make an image look better - again not E.D.

That out of the way, PhysX being poor I'll agree with. Then again, I think NVidia "screwed the pooch" on that - they should have tried to make it a standard, confident that their implementation would be the best (because they set the standard).

[ninja2000]

Well until Ubisoft stop using their nasty always connected DRM I am not interested in any of their titles

[Marenghi]

Well until Ubisoft stop using their nasty always connected DRM I am not interested in any of their titles

bet you have a steam/origin account though