A lot has happened in the PC gaming industry in the past three months alone. This last quarter of the year has already received some good news, so be ready to expect more. Here are the latest news in PC gaming and the technologies behind it, as reported by the technology publisher, Digital Trends.
DRM Affects Several Games and Upsets Players
In the weekend leading to November 2021, Denuvo, an Austrian-based digital right management (DRM) service, prevented many players from accessing their games. According to Digital Trends, the news came as one of the most popular DRM services available had problems with its domain name.
First, players weren’t able to access the DRM’s server on November 7. They were met with an error that said, “server not reachable.” According to Digital Trends, Denuvo’s domain name has already expired months before, in September. Because of negligence though, they weren’t able to resolve the issue until
the day that resulted in the problematic access of many players. It looked like they weren’t able to renew the domain they used to authenticate games, although Denuvo never confirmed this theory.
Popular games that were affected by the fiasco included Guardians of the Galaxy, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Persona 4 Golden, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and Wolfenstein Youngblood, which are offline single-player games. For many players, it’s been frustrating. DRMs are bought as anti-piracy measures, but the
latest Denuvo disaster made players look like illegal buyers of PC games. Hopefully, this doesn’t occur again in the future.
Second, Denuvo again got in the way when several new games were recently released but have been deemed incompatible with the DRM. Players were looking forward to Forza Horizon 5 and Call of Duty Vanguard, but was dismayed to find out that they’re not able to play.
The incompatibility stemmed from the new Intel 12th-gen Alder Lake processor. Denuvo had some issues with the processor, which caused operating systems to crash, particularly Windows 10 and 11.
Haptic Feedback on Headphones Makes it to the Market
Headphones with haptic feedback are now on the market. However, players are not that all too into it. For some that do, they liken wearing one to having a headache while one is playing. It’s not all that bad, though.
According to Digital Trends, it makes sense to have haptic feedback on headphones while a player is gaming. While sound can vibrate, physical vibration is simply sound that humans can’t hear.
Vibrating headphones available today work in the 20Hz to 180Hz frequencies. You, on the other hand, can hear in the range of 20Hz to 20kHz. High frequencies are hard on the ear, often manifested as high-pitched sounds. Low frequencies however are manifested as vibrations. Headphones with “bass
boost” modes are a perfect example.
Experts believe haptic can improve the digital experience from movie watching to gaming. Hopefully, available hardware today can be improved in the years to come.
Sales of Graphics Processing Units Continue to Rise
If you want to build a high-performance gaming PC, now is the perfect season to do it. The rise in sales of graphics processing units (GPU) has prompted manufacturers to develop some of the best graphics cards that the industry has seen.
According to Digital Trends, consumers, especially PC game players, are consistently on the prowl for the best graphics cards they could get their hands on. Because of this, GPUs have been sold in more than 101 million units in this quarter alone. It is an unprecedented number, even higher than those before the
pandemic began.
Two of the leading GPU manufacturers today are Nvidia and AMD. Intel, however, will join the race slightly late but with powerful GPUs. Its 4th Gen Arc Alchemist GPU is set for launch in the first quarter of 2022, and for each year until 2025, they will continue to produce graphics cards to replace the older ones.
Intel Released its New Processor
Intel released Alder Lake, it’s the newest processor for desktop PCs, in the first week of November. Before the month ends, the tech giant is set to deliver the mobile version of their new processor to manufacturers of laptops and mobile devices.
The newest processor isn’t available for consumers yet. However, reviews have been positive.
Alder Lake processors have proven they can outperform some of the best CPUs available today. In fact, according to Digital Trends, it can do better than AMD Ryzen 9 5980HX and Apple M1 Max. Experts believe this can also be true once the chips are used in laptops.
How News Can Help You
The good thing about this news is that you now know what to pick as gifts for your friends who love to play PC games. While some of them aren’t still available, they can guide you on what items to get for now and which ones to avoid. Hopefully, though, manufacturers and developers will get to produce improved products in the next months or years.
