Month: March 2022

Enlarge / Microsoft's DirectStorage API makes a measurable, if minor, difference when it comes to loading PC games. (credit: Luminous Productions via The Verge)

Microsoft's DirectStorage API promises to speed up game-load times, both on the Xbox Series X/S and on Windows PCs (where Microsoft recently exited its developer-preview phase). One of the first games to demonstrate the benefits of DirectStorage on the PC is Square Enix's Forspoken, which was shown off by Luminous Productions technical director Teppei Ono at GDC this week. As reported by The Verge, Ono said that, with a fast NVMe SSD and DirectStorage support, some scenes in Forspoken could load in as little as one second. That is certainly a monstrous jump from the days of waiting for a PlayStation 2 to load giant open-world maps from a DVD.

As a demonstration of DirectStorage, though, Forspoken's numbers are a mixed bag. On the one hand, the scenes Ono demonstrated do clearly demonstrate DirectStorage loading scenes more quickly on the same hardware, compared to the legacy Win32 API—from 2.6 seconds to 2.2 seconds in one scene, and from 2.4 seconds to 1.9 seconds in another. Forspoken demonstrated performance improvements on older SATA-based SSDs as well, despite being marketed as a feature that will primarily benefit NVMe drives—dropping from 5.0 to 4.6 seconds in one scene, and from 4.1 to 3.4 seconds in another. Speed improvements for SATA SSDs have been limited for the better part of a decade now because the SATA interface itself (rather than the SSD controller or NAND flash chips) has been holding them back. So eking out any kind of measurable improvement for those drives is noteworthy.  

On the other hand, Ono's demo showed that game-load time wasn't improving as dramatically as the raw I/O speeds would suggest. On an NVMe SSD, I/O speeds increased from 2,862MB/s using Win32 to 4,829MB/s using DirectStorage—nearly a 70 percent increase. But the load time for the scene decreased from 2.1 to 1.9 seconds. That's a decrease which wouldn't be noticeable even if you were trying to notice it.

Enlarge / GameStop branch in Munich, Germany on November 23, 2021. (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto )

GameStop has refused to pay $30 million in fees to Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the consulting firm alleged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

BCG said that GameStop has "unpaid fees of approximately $30,000,000" but added that the exact amount "is undetermined at this time" because GameStop executives have refused to attend mandatory meetings or "furnish the data necessary to determine certain profit improvements." The lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the District of Delaware, and it seeks financial damages for breach of contract and breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing.

The complaint says that GameStop and BCG signed a contract in August 2019 in an attempt to turn around the game retailer's business. "Once a highly profitable company, GameStop's profits and financial prospects had fallen precipitously by the mid-2010s and by 2019 GameStop was on life support," the lawsuit said. "Hemorrhaging customers and unable to grow its business, GameStop reported net operating losses of almost $800 million in 2018, including a $970.7 million 'goodwill impairment charge' to account for the loss of value from its brand."

Enlarge / Let's see, you landed on my "Google Ads" space, and with three houses... that will be $1,400. (credit: Ron Amadeo / Hasbro)

Google is once again not putting its foot down on big developers who refuse to use its in-app billing system. The Play Store always required developers to use Google Play's in-app billing system, but many big developers like Netflix and Spotify simply ignored the rule and did their own billing anyway. Google never punished these companies, but it did announce a deadline to switch to Google Play billing by September 2021—and then allowed extensions to March 31, 2022. This is the second time the deadline has gotten close to arriving, and we're again seeing cracks in Google's attempts to enforce its rules. The latest news is that Google is expanding third-party billing in the Play Store, at least for one huge streaming company.

Google's latest blog post said the company is now launching a "pilot" program called "user choice billing." Google said the program will "allow a small number of participating developers to offer an additional billing option next to Google Play’s billing system." The only announced participating developer is Spotify, one of the two highest-profile companies to continuously ignore Google's rules. Google said, "This pilot will help us to increase our understanding of whether and how user choice billing works for users in different countries and for developers of different sizes and categories."

In South Korea, you can pick a payment processor from inside Google Play. (credit: Google)

Google says the program is based on the work it was forced to do in South Korea, where a law that passed in 2021 requires app stores to allow third-party payments. In Korea, when you press the checkout button in Google Play, a card pops up asking you which payment processor you want to use. Previously, apps would kick users out to an external webpage (sometimes a webpage embedded right in the app, making for a seamless checkout experience), but now, you'll be able to do this through Google Play.

Enlarge / Dell XPS 17. (credit: Dell)

Dell updated its largest XPS clamshells on Thursday to include the latest mobile chips from Intel. Now, 12th-gen "Alder Lake" chips are available in the 17- and 15.6-inch versions of the XPS.

Both the XPS 17 and 15 now have options for an Intel Core i5-12500H or i7-12700H. The former has four performance cores (P-cores), eight efficiency cores (E-cores), and a turbo clock speed of up to 4.5 GHz, while the latter has six P-Cores and eight E-cores and can hit up to 4.7 GHz. To get Intel's highest-end i9-12900HK, which has six P-cores and eight E-cores and can hit 5 GHz, you'll have to get the smaller-screened XPS 15. It'll be made available in the XPS 17, which makes sense, as it's the largest, more expensive XPS, around April 18, a Dell rep told Ars Technica.

The updated XPS 17 and 15 are both available with integrated Intel graphics only, but for more graphical horsepower, you can configure the machines with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 (4GB GDDR6) running at 60 W. The XPS 17 will also include an option for the RTX 3060 (6GB, 60 W) in April, while you can currently get the XPS 15 with an RTX 3050 Ti (4GB, 45 W).

Enlarge / Players selling tools like this can be hard to discourage with anything short of technical protections or legal action.

SAN FRANCISCO—If you're a developer of an online game, you're probably used to treating cheaters like vermin that need to be exterminated in order to maintain the health of your game. But Clint Sereday and Nemanja Mulasmajic—Riot Games alumni and co-founders of anti-tamper company Byfron Technologies—argued in a GDC presentation that cheaters aren't always simply the enemy; they can often be some of a game's best players, customers, collectors, and content creators.

Attacking cheaters with a zero-tolerance, one-size-fits-all policy can be akin to attacking your game's community, the pair argued. "Cheating is born out of a love for the game a lot of times," Sereday said, and in those cases, seeking to reform or dissuade the cheaters can be more effective than trying to ban them.

In their talk, the co-founders broke down the motivations they see driving cheaters in online games. Each one requires a different approach to maintain the integrity of the game without destroying the community's trust in the process.