The Wednesday news, the long post:

Russian officials are considering a 'Russian Electronic Arts' to save the country's crumbling games industry
https://www.pcgamer.com/russian-officials-are-considering-a-russian-electronic-arts-to-save-the-countrys-crumbling-games-industry/
With the country's plans for a national game engine on life support, Russia has begun investigating other means of revitalising its faltering games industry. In a meeting held between officials and industry representatives in the Russian Ministry of Digital Development on December 15, the government began to consider a federal project it's calling "The Gaming Industry of the Future". One of the potential options? "Found a Russian Electronic Arts to help streamline the release of high-quality Russian games". Hey, the FIFA licence is available now.
>> **Insert your favorite laughing gif here**

Dropzone creator Archer MacLean dies aged 60
https://www.pcgamer.com/dropzone-creator-archer-maclean-dies-aged-60/
Archer MacLean, the UK developer best-known for Dropzone and International Karate, has died at the age of 60. The news broke over the festive period, with many former colleagues and friends taking to social media to pay tribute to both the man and his body of work.

Hitman 3 is becoming Hitman: World of Assassination, with all content rolled into one big game
https://www.pcgamer.com/hitman-3-is-becoming-hitman-world-of-assassination-with-all-content-rolled-into-one-big-game/
Hitman 3 was good enough to be our pick for the best stealth game of 2021, but the variety of different purchase options was also, as we noted in our newcomer's guide, incredibly confusing. On January 26, that will change, as IO Interactive wraps the whole thing up into one big package called Hitman: World of Assassination.
>> Careful, Chazore! The second link will take you to the Epic Store.

Buy Hitman 3 for $21 right now and you'll get the first two games for free
https://www.pcgamer.com/buy-hitman-3-for-dollar21-right-now-and-youll-get-the-first-two-games-for-free/
In an attempt to make buying Hitman less confusing, IO Interactive is making big changes to how all three of its modern stealth classics are sold: Starting January 26, there will be only one full version of Hitman. That version is called Hitman: World of Assassination, and it'll include every base level from Hitman 1, 2, and 3 in a single package.
>> If you buy it now, you'll also get the Hitman 1 & 2 levels.

Destiny 2 dataminers admit leaked subscription plan was a hoax: 'We trolled everyone'
https://www.pcgamer.com/destiny-2-dataminers-admit-leaked-subscription-plan-was-a-hoax-we-trolled-everyone/
In yet another reminder that you can't believe everything you read (especially if it originates from unverified sources on the internet), a couple of Destiny dataminers have admitted that their discovery of a planned subscription service for Destiny 2 was in fact just 'trolling.'

ZeniMax employees vote to form the biggest videogame union in the US
https://www.pcgamer.com/zenimax-employees-vote-to-form-the-biggest-videogame-union-in-the-us/
The Communications Workers of America announced today that a "supermajority" of quality assurance workers at ZeniMax Studios have officially voted to join the ZeniMax Workers United/CWA, forming the first videogame studio union at parent company Microsoft and what will be—for a while, at least—the largest union of videogame workers in the US.

Super Lesbian Animal RPG is a big hit with the target audience
https://www.pcgamer.com/super-lesbian-animal-rpg-is-a-big-hit-with-the-target-audience/
Today in niche games, the recent release of Super Lesbian Animal RPG seems to have greatly pleased people who enjoy the idea of a game called Super Lesbian Animal RPG. It's a classic-inspired turn-based RPG about a crew of anthropomorphic animals who're variously in love with each other fighting weird monsters in a dungeon to save the world and/or overcome their own anxieties.
>> The article has the trailer for the game, in case you're wondering how it looks like.

Wizards of the Coast has reportedly canceled at least five videogames in development
https://www.pcgamer.com/wizards-of-the-coast-has-reportedly-canceled-at-least-five-videogames-in-development/
Wizards of the Coast, publisher of Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering, has canceled at least five of the videogames it had in development, Bloomberg reports. The publisher declined to comment on individual games when PC Gamer reached out, offering the reply, "We remain committed to using digital games as a cornerstone of our strategy for bringing our games to players around the world. We have made some changes to our long-term portfolio to focus on games which are strategically aligned with developing our existing brands and those which show promise in expanding or engaging our audience in new ways."

Nvidia announces next games to get the DLSS 3 treatment
https://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-announces-that-atomic-heart-and-witchfire-will-support-dlss-3-at-launch/
At CES 2023, Nvidia announced that fantasy shooter Witchfire, well as the highly anticipated Atomic Heart, would both be getting DLSS 3.0 support at launch.
Those aren't the only titles getting DLSS 3 support either. The keynote highlighted a handful of upcoming games that will take advantage of Nvidia's AI frame-boosting tech like Throne and Liberty, Warhaven, and SuperPeople. All games that feel like their titles were also AI-generated.

Elden Ring clinches Steam's GOTY award in results with only one weird surprise
https://www.pcgamer.com/elden-ring-clinches-steams-goty-award-in-results-with-only-one-weird-surprise/
The people have spoken, and they've said… pretty much what you expect. The Steam Awards results are in, and the final tally of December's voting process hasn't produced many surprises. Elden Ring nabbed the main Game of the Year trophy (hey, good choice), and the other ten awards went to a thoroughly unshocking set of games, with one possible exception.
>> Only one of the games I vote for won its category. How about you?

Screw dying, says Hideo Kojima, 'I'll probably become an AI and stick around'
https://www.pcgamer.com/screw-dying-says-hideo-kojima-ill-probably-become-an-ai-and-stick-around/
God love Hideo Kojima because the guy is never boring. Following the announcement of Death Stranding 2 late last year, the Japanese creator gave a festive interview to IGN Japan, during which he jawed on about setting up Kojima Productions, his time at Konami, and yes: his future as an AI.

Madden fans find franchise saves destroyed after EA said they could play 'without issue'
https://www.pcgamer.com/madden-fans-find-franchise-saves-destroyed-after-ea-said-they-could-play-without-issue/
A particularly nasty glitch with Madden NFL 23's Connected Franchise Mode (CFM) seems to have irretrievably destroyed a bunch of players' CFM save files. After investigating connection issues with the mode last week, EA tweeted that it had fixed the problem and that users would be able "to play CFM without issue". But players who tried to log in during the 22-hour period between the 'fix' and 12:45 am EST (9:45 am PST/5:45 pm GMT) had their save data blitzed by bugs that still lurked in the system. Players who didn't log in during that time should be fine, though.
EA says (via Ars Technica) it's working on restoring players' corrupted saves from backups, but says its "team is currently projecting around 40% of leagues to be recovered," leaving over half of those affected (I know, my maths skills are impressive) to restart the long climb to franchise glory. Multiple Reddit users are telling tales of franchises with upwards of 30 players going down the drain because of the glitch.
>> I don't know how many people will have played the game during those doomed hours, but this could lead to a lot of angry players. Well done, EA! You f*cked up.

Their review of the 4070Ti is even worse (and a bit biased, imho):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-FMPbm5CNM

4070 Ti reviews

https://www.techspot.com/review/2601-nvidia-geforce-rtx-4070-ti/

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/asus-geforce-rtx-4070-ti-tuf/32.html

So overall, within 5-10% within the 7900XT. I suspect it's cutdown cache pool + lower memory bandwidth + less vram is really hampering it at 4k similar to what we saw with RDNA 2 at higher resolutions where that raw bandwidth was much more important.

https://videocardz.com/146807/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4070-ti-graphics-card-review-roundup

Thousands of AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX reference cards could be affected by 110°C GPU hotspot issue

https://videocardz.com/newz/thousands-of-amd-radeon-rx-7900-xtx-reference-cards-could-be-affected-by-110c-gpu-hotspot-issue

At this point, hopefully AMD says something at their announcement today

Nvidia's RTX 4090 mobile GPU looks seriously quick, 55% faster than RTX 3080 Ti mobile

https://www.techspot.com/news/97134-nvidia-rtx-4090-mobile-gpu-looks-seriously-quick.html

"It's so fast it can match Nvidia's RTX 3090 desktop GPU"

Truly speaks volume to Lovelace insane efficiency when they can put a GPU that powerful inside a laptop.

I suspect it will be slower in gaming though while costing a kidney.

Samsung promises to bring 50, 63, 76, 89" microLED TVs to the market in 2023

https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1672809312

For the price of your first born but least the microLED trend is starting.

World’s first quad-band WiFi 7 gaming router unveiled by ASUS

https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/wifi-7-gaming-router-04-01-2023/

Impressive while looking very cringe, the Asus way.

RDNA3 GPUs only capable of 36tflops vs 61tflop marketing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/102veop/rdna3_gpus_only_capable_of_36tflops_vs_61tflop/

Take it with a grain of salt until we see more proof but essentially, while with Nvidia, you don't see the advertised theoretical FP32 gains in gaming, in rendering and such, you generally do see those types of gains. With Radeon, that doesn't seem to be the case, least for now.

Asus’ new 27-inch OLED gaming monitor has a heatsink to keep cool

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/3/23537302/asus-27-inch-oled-gaming-monitor-heatsink-1440p-specs

Pretty lame that there is no 32 inch 4k options, least not yet.

Idk what Nvidia are smoking with the 4080 12GB 4070 Ti. No FE cards, so actual cards will be closer to the $900 they were intending to launch with, after initial release. Peformance and value not going up gen on gen. 192-bit bus for said 900 dollars and performs more or less along the lines with a 3090/3090Ti at the same cost as you can get them on them used. Which have significantly more VRAM.

AMD releasing a 7900XT which is really a 7800XT tier GPU for $900 which was originally pitted against the 4080 12GB, which was awful in itself.

Can't make this shit up lol. What a total shitshow, and we're barely into 2023. At this point, people will actually be surprised if Nvidia didn't pull off more BS and AMD stop fumbling at every step.

So overall, it feels like Nvidia and AMD are price fixing the GPU market instead of actually being competitive like in the CPU market.

If you look at the CPU market for example, AMD launched Zen 4 at dumb prices and what did Intel do? They didn't position their CPUs in such a way that would allow them to sell at a much higher margin. Instead they came out with CPUs that destroyed any value proposition that Zen 4 had. 7600X 6 core 12 thread for $300? Lol here's our i5 for $329 that has 14 cores (6p 12 threads + 8e cores). They did that with their i7 and i9 which absolutely demolished Zen 4s lineup to the point where either most people are buying Zen 3 with 5800X3D or going Raptor Lake and AMD was forced to give out massive discounts.

But in the GPU landscape, it's so clear that neither companies are competing to the point where it feels like there's collusion going on. Nvidia has a 4090 which has the performance crown by a pretty large margin, great. But they come out with a 4080 that is horribly priced because they somehow knew that the 7900XTX couldn't compete with a 4090. Like after how close RDNA 2 was, wouldn't a company without spies think oh, perhaps we should take our competitor seriously? But nope, they knew the exact price and performance of the 7900XTX.

So AMD has the choice of destroying the 4080 by pricing the 7900XTX $900 or even lower but they don't. But alright, 7900XTX is slightly faster so perhaps its priced fairly enough. But then they release a 7900XT at $900. So now Nvidia has the chance to make the 7900XT DoA while keeping a good margin. If they released the 4070 Ti at $600 or even $700, would have demolished the 7900XT in value and forced a big discount. But nope, they price it at $800 which allows the 7900XT to exist at it's current price point and they configure the 4070 Ti just enough so that a 7900XT is 5-10% faster for 12% increase in price. Nvidia could have easily configured the 4070 Ti to be as fast as a 7900XT while leaving plenty of room against the 4080 but nope. So now AMD is likely going to release a 7800XT that won't offend 4070 Ti too much from it's price/performance position.

Hell the biggest kicker is that Nvidia could have easily made Radeon choke if they priced the 4080 at $800. Because of how cutdown it is, even with TSMCs price increases and inflation, it would have been doable. I get the whole, need to sell last gen cards but this is nuts.

Hopefully they will get sued for it like how they got sued back in 2008 for price fixing as well:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-amd-ati-graphics,6311.html

It's like how phone companies in Canada don't compete with each other. They simply just match each others prices and offers similar plans and such.

Yeah it does feel like there is some sort price fixing going on. Sadly its not such a rare occurance in the PC hardware space. When there are inflated prices, companies want to keep selling them as they were during those times. Take the memory fixing and DRAM debacle we had a few years ago, and another a couple years prior where there were several companies involved in that - including Micron, Hynix Samsung etc.

Its just rather stupid to attempt it in the vein of the mining crash and one of the worst times for inflation and recession we've seen in years. But things will come back full circle when these GPU's sit on shelves. Again. But hey at least Nvidia can get rid of their old 3000 series cards.. right? :l

It just feels like both companies companies want to stick to status quo with keeping current prices and are happy increasing cost throughout the stack and hope consumers suck it up to please their shareholders. Like what happened to smartphones at the high end. But unlike smartphones there are only two companies that are offering GPU's (or three) if you can count Intel lol, so there is competition. And at the very least, there is much more incentive to offer value for consumers; from the budget, to midrange and flagship phones.

The following could be if interesit for those that game on a Linux platform, and for an hypothetical Steam Deck 2:

Valve's working on HDR for Linux gaming, paving the way for an eventual OLED Steam Deck
https://www.pcgamer.com/valves-working-on-hdr-for-linux-gaming-paving-the-way-for-an-eventual-oled-steam-deck/
A Valve designer has revealed that at least one developer associated with the company is working on spinning up HDR for Linux gaming.

Joshua Ashton, who works on key bits of tech like DXVK and VKD3D-Proton, has apparently gotten HDR properly going. The development was noted by Steam Deck developer Pierre-Loup Griffais via Twitter (opens in new tab), where he showed off both Halo Infinite and Deep Rock Galactic.

I didn't know HDR didn't work on Linux until after reading this article. Well, now that's solved.

I swear the past 2 yrs of having lockdowns and ppl staying indoors that then caused big consumer retention/spending, has cast some weird and yet vile spell on companies.

I say this, because this starting year should have been one where Jan new yr sales should have offered the usual discount that ppl expect from their usual stores (clothes shops and such), yet when I went downtown this week, there was hardly any of that, which lead to me thinking that companies became too used to having 2 yrs of ppl just shopping online and paying whatever to get it sent to their doorstep, that they would rather retain as higher price as they can and still expect ppl to pay.

I'm starting to see this with nvidia and AMD now, both are absolutely refusing to compete and both have at some point, been greatly aided by the mining/scalping shitshows, that I feel like those two are used to that level of retention/sales, that they now just don't want to compete, don't want to read the room as soon as they step inside it, and would rather just happily coast yet another gen of doing sweet fuck all, yet charging more for less.

Like god damn have the past 3 fucking gens of GPU's been utter garbage for me, be it price, availability, drivers or shit I want locked down to a GPU I can neither afford nor find. I hope to god Nvidia/AMD get sued for this shitshow of theirs, because it's been 3 gens now, this is getting really tiresome and really fucking stupid, about as stupid as watching the FTC/Sony acting like manbabies against MS. 

I just want a god damn good GPU that doesn't cost more than my 1080ti and lasts me as long as it has. I'm never going back to consoles, they are a step back for what I'm after in gaming, and cost too much over the long-term. I hate being gated this hard in a hobby I've loved for 3 decades. 

Pretty much. It's why it's best just to get a 3080 12GB or 6800XT and just hunker down for 4-6 years until the market corrects itself. Those two cards have full DX12 Ultimate feature set and are much faster than consoles so they should last really the entire generation if needed. Alternatively wait and see with Blackwell cause this gen is not gonna be pretty for GPUs from both Nvidia and AMD. The only hope is if enough people don't buy them, they will get discounted sooner than later. If the 4080 can come down to $800, then it's a good deal cause while in paper specs, its cutdown more compared to a 3080 vs 3090, in actual performance, it's able to keep up against a 7900xtx even if it's a bit slower in averages. But who knows if it will ever happen.

It's quite the shame cause without looking at the pricing, the 4070 Ti, 4080 and certainly the 4090 offers a good to great gen on gen leap over its predecessors along with introducing new features which will become the norm. It's just such a shame the pricing is so god awful this gen.