Introduction:
The Consumer Entertainment Show is not necessarily a video game event, but it always has something for us gamers, in fact, quite a few things. Hi folks, it's Zaid Ikram, and today on Gamix, the 10 Biggest Video Game Announcements at CES 2025.Â
NVIDIA 50 Series GPUs:
Starting with number 10, NVIDIA announced the 50 Series. They announced four of them specifically, the 5090, the 5080, the 5070, and the 5070 Ti. And oh, are these some beefy boys. I'm not gonna detail all their specs. I'm just gonna concentrate on the 5090 and I'm not touching everything, 'cause otherwise we're gonna talk for a very long time.
The 5090 is the only of the four and also the first GeForce GPU to surpass 20,000 CUDA cores, which is crazy. Like absolutely nuts. We're also talking 32 gigabits of RAM, a 512 bit memory bus, and a really high power consumption despite only being a dual slot, and alongside that power consumption, oh my God, the price.
It is MSRP-ing at $2,000, which is crazy high. At the same time, I mean you're gonna get some insane performance out of this thing. It's a huge step up from the 5080 in everything but memory speed. But it basically doubles the memory bandwidth. So again, it's a big difference. And the 5080 is gonna be $999.
The 5090 is gonna be $1,999. So there better be a big jump between these two things. Still, that's an exciting announcement. I'm really excited to see what this thing can do. I'm not sure if I will be buying one. That's a little high for Falcon's wallet, just in case any of you guys think I'm absolutely filthy rich.
No, but still exciting. We'll see, we'll see what happens with this thing. I will say I won't be particularly happy if they start designing games that require a 5090, especially given the fact that, you know, system requirements haven't exactly meant better graphics as we've talked about recently.
Black State Trailer:
And number nine, "Black State" got another trailer. Now if you're not following this, it's absolutely a graphics showcase, although you can tell it's not quite the biggest studio making it. Some of the physics stuff just makes me think AA, despite the fact that, you know, everything else is insane-looking.
I don't really know what "Black State" is. It's got some crazy good graphics. It's an Unreal Engine showcase. I mean it's genuinely nuts. But the description of the game is: "A secret group of scientists called the Architects summons you for a mysterious mission." That doesn't help.
I mean the fact is this is one of the prettiest things I have ever seen in most respects, but I have no frigging idea what's going on, other than it looks incredible. At this point it probably should be regarded more of a technical showcase before they've actually, you know, uncovered some of why you should play it. But I mean, it looks very good.
New Virtua Fighter:
So also we got some, uh, it's in engine footage of a new "Virtua Fighter." It's not necessarily the game, it's pre-development gameplay. But man it looks, (chuckles) it looks very cool. I mean it looks fantastic. This is the game that I've wanted a follow up to for quite a while now.
You know, 'cause it's been quite a while. But Jensen Huang, the CEO, showed it off at CES. It's-it's um, it's something to behold. Alas, I will never be competitive in fighting games. I will never have a career in being good at fighting games. But I mean it's "Street Fighter" and "Virtua Fighter" for me, that's really what got me loving the genre.
We'll actually see more of this in early 2025. I guess there's gonna be a "Virtua Fighter" direct event sometime soon. So keep your eyes peeled for that.
Lenovo Legion Go S:
At number eight, this might not seem like groundbreaking or anything, but Lenovo's Legion Go S is now going to be their first Legion powered by Steam OS.
That means for all intents and purposes, this thing is, it's basically a Steam Deck, except for you don't have to disable the touch pads on every game so that your massive, fat hands don't press them every time you're trying to switch to the portable turret in the finals. I love the Steam Deck but I can definitely see why somebody would maybe want a slightly different piece of hardware for it.
I probably am not among those people. I really like my Steam Deck despite me complaining about that. Still, they're putting some pretty powerful hardware in this thing. So I think that's also a pretty significant appeal to certain people. Like outside of the Steam Deck, this has been, for the most part a hardware line that's gotten a lot of positive talk, and I think moving into the Steam OS area is probably the way to go.
Steam OS is a fantastic, well put together OS for playing games through, and yeah, I could see this being a big thing.
Nitro Blaze Handhelds:
And number seven is more handhelds, the Nitro Blaze 8 and the Nitro Blaze 11. These are Windows handhelds so you're not talking about the Steam OS, you're talking about what is essentially a laptop, but, you know, shaped like a gaming handheld.
The 11 inch is excessive. I don't know if you've ever had like an 11 inch iPad or tablet or anything, but it's a little unwieldy for gaming. Like for a lot of other functions it's fantastic, but I can't see myself getting one of these. It's cool, don't get me wrong. And I'm sure that there are people who would absolutely love to have such a thing.
The 8 would look more my speed in terms of what we're dealing with here. They do look very pretty though. The screens are really... (slurps) Now these things aren't OLEDs, they've got IPS displays, which is at least better than an LED. And like I said, they look very pretty. I know there are people who disagree with me on the 11 inch thing like there are people who think that's like the future of handheld gaming.
I've had a few conversations, and I don't know if I agree with that or not, but I do know that there is a demand for it and it's good that there's something for that. It looks good. Again, I would probably take the 8. And these are Windows gaming handhelds, keep in mind. So I mean you got a lot of other functionality in this box, but to me, the Steam OS is the Superior OS for a gaming handheld at the moment.
Unless you really want to be able to do spreadsheets too. I don't know, I'm sure there's people who do that. There might be people who buy these things and take the controllers off the side, put up the kickstand and Bluetooth a keyboard and mouse into it more than they game with it, I don't know.
It look like a very good piece of hardware though. And I have a feeling that there's gonna be a lot of people who are really excited about it.
600 and 750 Hertz Monitors:
And number six, we are getting 600 and 750 hertz refresh rates on some new gaming monitors. MSI announced a 600 Hertz monitor and Koorui, I don't know if I'm saying that right, Koo-roo-ee? I don't know.
They were like, "Ha ha! 600? How about 750?" Now I'm not gonna lie and say I think that this is necessary. I don't, but that's not really what the CES is about. This is a show where they kind of brute force insane shit in your face. And in truth, this is impressive. Both of these monitors are impressive.
Obviously 750 Hertz is higher than 600, but 600 is probably higher than it ever needs to be. I mean I'm still dealing with, you know, lowly 144 Hertz monitors at this point. I can't imagine needing something higher than the refresh rate I'm at now. But I mean, there are people who are much, much more gooder at games than me.
So meh, if you want the best, you have the right to have the best. And this is crazy, these just are crazy refresh rates.
Wemade’s "Mir5" with AI Bosses:
And number five, a company called Wemade is touting its game called "Mir5," which has NVIDIA ACE-powered AI bosses. This means these bosses are powered by large language models and actually learn, they don't follow script-based patterns, which to me, I don't know, kind of is why bosses are interesting.
You gotta learn how to beat 'em and that usually involves patterns. And I don't know. I'm not the kind of person who just preemptively shits on everything AI because it's AI, but I'm also not immediately impressed with everything just because it's AI. This kind of feels dumb. A lot of people have made a lot of comments on it.
A lot of people have rightly pointed out that if it actually is machine learning and it's supposedly is, it's powered on a large language model. But if it does learn and adapt, it's eventually going to be impossible to beat. And I've seen more than a few people calling it absolutely unhinged.
I'm not sure if I completely agree with that. I think there's potential for this to be cool, but I do feel like there has to be a cap on what it can do. We'll see though.
DLSS 4:
Moving on to number four, it's DLSS 4. Appropriately numbered, right? Yeah? Now this might not sound like a big announcement but I will go ahead and say there is a pretty serious jump here that everybody needs to understand. There are other features that are coming alongside DLSS 4, but specifically the thing that matters is Multi Frame Generation.
Now where you could get stuttering and you could have a frame generated to cover it up entirely using DLSS, it couldn't do it if there was a stutter that was more than one frame. If you're running a game at 30 frames per second, you only get 29 in the second. DLSS could make up for that by generating a frame, or multiple frames if there are multiple gaps. But a gap could only be a frame and, um, that has changed.
Now keep in mind this is only on the 50 series, the really expensive cards we just talked about at the top of this video. So it's not gonna benefit everybody, but still, that's badass. Like we talk about how not-great frame rates have been in recent years because the upgrades in technology have not necessarily represented games working or even looking better in a lot of cases. But to me this sounds like there's a keen possibility that trend may start reversing. Or, at least I hope.
PlayStation Announcements:
And number three, this one I have mixed feelings about. You'll see exactly why. PlayStation announced several movies and an anime. I'll say the anime first 'cause it's unambiguously something I want. It's a "Ghost of Tsushima" anime. I can't imagine not wanting a Ghost of Tsushima anime.
Duh. Hell, I would actually like a "Ghost of Tsushima" movie. Like give me a full on movie, I'll take it, make a trilogy. There's enough content in the game for the trilogy, right? You could do it right. "Helldivers II" also getting a movie adaption. This one I think is gonna take a little more care than the "Ghost of Tsushima" adaption.
I think that one just reeks of adaption from the get go, but "Helldivers II" is kind of an adaption of an existing movie. It's "Starship Troopers." I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. There are a lot of times new movies are made that seem like they're the idea of old movies.
But it's also been a while and I don't mind the idea of going back through that one. I do hope there's some new ideas brought into it, and it's made something distinct from "Starship Troopers." That being said, a spiritual sequel to "Starship Troopers" in the movie theater I don't think would me piss off.
Horizon Zero Dawn Movie:
And then we get to the inverse problem with "Horizon Zero Dawn," which is honestly a very cool IP. I really enjoyed "Horizon Zero Dawn." I think it is something that would work great as a movie, but I don't know how it's gonna make any money. It doesn't really have a built-in movie audience, although it does explain the Lego game that came out on the Switch a little bit more.
That is very obviously just working to get more people to understand that there is a "Horizon Zero Dawn." Honestly, like I said, it could make a very good movie and if they can keep the budget low enough, they probably could make a movie that succeeds and maybe even becomes a sleeper hit. But "Sonic the Hedgehog," it's not gonna be.
If it does well in the box office, it's because there were a lot of wise moves made in the creation of that movie. Just to be frank, that's probably the one out of those three that has the most potential as a movie. "Ghost of Tsushima," I think they're keeping as an anime because there is actually a lot of content and story that makes sense to do as, you know, a series that's broken up into episodes.
"Helldivers II," I mean, again, "Starship Troopers." "Horizon Zero Dawn" could be a really cool movie, but it is very, very limited in its appeal. It is not a niche game, it's pretty mainstream. It's a pretty successful game franchise. But like, let's think of, you know, "Uncharted," which is a similar game in some ways and much bigger.
Did that movie really do that good? It had $120 million budget, made $407 million. So it was a profitable movie, but that budget really cut into the profitability. You have to double a budget to account for the marketing campaign. That's where the break even point for a film typically is. Some say it's 2.5 rather than two.
If it was 2.5, this movie was barely profitable. But if you could make a "Horizon Zero Dawn" movie for 60 million, I think that would be a great investment 'cause it has a potential to do that same kind of box office numbers if marketed right, marketed like it doesn't have a built-in audience. I've talked about this too long. Let's move on.
GeForce Now on Steam Deck:
At number two, GeForce now is getting full support on the Steam Deck. So you're gonna be able to cloud game. And I just want to say that sounds maybe lame, but it's not. Like it's gonna save to your Steam Cloud saves. It's going to integrate with Steam.
And for all intents and purposes, you're just gonna get way better performance, possibly some lag, I'm not 100% sure, but potentially you could get way, way better and that may be a really good thing. I mean, I don't know about you but I had an interesting time getting "Indiana Jones and the Great Circle" set up on my Steam Deck.
It really ran like shit and it looked like shit and I had to spend time with the settings. I mean what's weird is that I made it look better and it ran better. So I don't even remember what I did. But the potential here is that that could be something that is avoided. I would probably, if I could get a lag-less experience, prefer to cloud stream "Indiana Jones and the Great Circle" because even though I have it looking better and running better, I'll bet it would look and run quite a bit better that way.Â
I don't know, so there's a lot of advantages that GeForce now could bring.
Atari Gamestation Pro:
And at number one, Atari seems to be doing something cool. I mean, way back in the day there was the Atari Gamestation. Now there's the Atari Gamestation Pro, a handheld that gives you access to a ton of Atari games and I think I'm actually sold on it.
It's $149, it'll come out later in the year and it actually seems like an all-in-one Atari thing. There's an HDMI out on it, you can Bluetooth controllers onto it and it's got like all of the Atari stuff. Like all of the Atari stuff. Probably not all of it, but there's a lot of it on here.
I don't mind Atari being back. That's the reason this it at number one, I love Atari. Atari, actually you know, it was the game generation before I got into video games. I was minorly familiar with Atari from like classrooms. In kindergarten there was an Atari. I'm really making sure that you know that I'm extremely old.
Yeah, I'm psyched. I'm gonna buy one of these. It looks cool. It's got a bunch of cool features. It's very neat.
Bonus Content:
I do have a quick bonus for you. It's this new MCON iPhone controller that actually magnets onto the MagSafe thing on the back of the iPhone. If you have an Android, it's still compatible and actually gives you stuff to add the same feature to your Android.
It looks really cool. It reminds me of a DS except for it's got real nice fancy Hall Effect joysticks on it. It's really neat. And then the other thing I have to show you is Sony with this big "Last of Us" LED screen. It looks kind of like an on-rails old school arcade shooter of "The Last of Us," but it's just like brought up to the nth degree.
Like it's all around you, it's on LED screens. Honestly sounds kind of lame, but actually looks pretty cool. I loved that old type of on-rails shooter, "Virtua Cop" or "Terminator 2" type old-school game. And I would love to see that return in a giant room where the game surrounds you entirely.
Conclusion
That's all I got for you today. Leave us a comment, let us know what you think. I thank you very much for reading this blog. We'll see you next time, right here on Gamix.
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