Original Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson has stated on Twitter that his next game will be a Minecraft spiritual successor and that he “basically announced minecraft 2.” Notch had run a Twitter poll asking followers to weigh in on whether he should keep his in-development project’s current direction, or put it on the shelf to make something more like Minecraft.
Notch’s in-development project was a roguelike spin on classic first person dungeon crawlers like Wizardry, Grimrock, or Eye of the Beholder. On New Year’s Day, Notch put out a poll asking followers whether he should keep going in that direction, or switch gears. “I gots to thinking that maybe there are people who like my work but do not share my taste in retro nostalgia and would prefer for me to make a spiritual successor thing to Minecraft,” he wrote. “And I mean sure, I’d take that cash.”
At the time of writing, “make minecraft 2 boomer” is leading “i love uncursing potions” by a commanding 78% to 22% with four days to go. In follow up tweets, Notch insisted that he was “100% serious about all that, btw,” and that he “basically announced minecraft 2.” He further stated that, “I also intend to do this in a way that in no way tried [sic] to sneakily infringe on the incredible work the Mojang team is doing and that Microsoft is successfully doing the microsoft shittification about.
“And I respect them for doing that. It’s their job. And they, from what I understand, let the studio do things their way, which seems very fair to me.”
Notch sold Mojang to Microsoft in 2014 for $2.5 billion, parting ways with the game and the company. In the years since, his reputation as a game developer has been eclipsed by one as a right wing partisan, making bizarre, insensitive, and often cruel or derogatory statements directed primarily at women and trans people. Microsoft and Mojang removed his name from the opening credits of Minecraft in response. Some Notch’s statements in the past 10 years include:
Taking a step back from that and just calling balls and strikes here, I do not believe “basically announcing minecraft 2” on Twitter is the best move, especially once any initial buzz dies down. I don’t know the details of Notch’s deal with Microsoft, but equating a project to a Minecraft sequel while also disparaging Microsoft in what is essentially early marketing strikes me as a contractual no-no, a one way ticket to cease and desist-ville.
I also don’t know what kind of appetite there is for a Minecraft spiritual successor beyond Notch’s own active Twitter following—a necessarily self-selecting group given his pariah status in much of the industry. There are so many games embodied by Minecraft, is this a spiritual successor to Minecraft the survival experience, Minecraft the creative sandbox, or Minecraft the proto-Roblox modding and social platform? “Minecraft 2” can be all of these things when it’s just an idea you’re throwing out on Twitter, but whatever Notch has in mind will wind up being more limited than a game that has been slowly built up over the course of 16 years.
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And there are a ton of other Minecraft spiritual successors already out there and established to compete with: Terraria and Dragon Quest Builders are the closest examples, but depending on how strict your definition is, the entire tree punching, base building survival genre could count. The roguelike dungeon crawler honestly strikes me as a much more interesting game, and it’s a surprisingly under-explored concept in the saturated roguelike space. But also: What’s the point of taking a $2.5 billion buyout if you’re just going to shelve your questionably profitable passion project for what the crowd says it wants?
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1736027430_Minecraft-creator-Notch-says-that-he-basically-announced-minecraft-2.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-01-04 19:29:032025-01-04 19:29:03Minecraft creator Notch says that he ‘basically announced minecraft 2’ with a Twitter poll and a commitment to making a spiritual successor
Make your daily Wordle a silky-smooth breeze with our help. If that looks like a quick trip to today’s answer, then click away and enjoy a record breaking win. If you’re happy to spend some time improving your own puzzle solving, then our tips are ready when you are. And if you just need a gentle push towards the January 4 (1295) winning word, take a look at Saturday’s hint.
I know I’m not winning any awards for speed today, but even so that felt like a smooth and straightforward game. No drama, no fuss, no extra wrinkles as I furrow my brow in frustration (it doesn’t help, but it happens anyway), just a steady stream of fresh clues and good ideas leading to the only word that mattered.
Today’s Wordle hint
(Image credit: Josh Wardle)
Wordle today: A hint for Saturday, January 4
Take your shoes off, lean back, and do today’s answer. Doing this word relieves stress and tension, lets people unwind, and stops people fussing so much over rules.
Is there a double letter in Wordle today?
There are no double letters in today’s Wordle.
Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day
A good starting word can be the difference between victory and defeat with the daily puzzle, but once you’ve got the basics, it’s much easier to nail down those Wordle wins. And as there’s nothing quite like a small victory to set you up for the rest of the day, here are a few tips to help set you on the right path:
A good opening guess should contain a mix of unique consonants and vowels.
Narrow down the pool of letters quickly with a tactical second guess.
Watch out for letters appearing more than once in the answer.
There’s no racing against the clock with Wordle so you don’t need to rush for the answer. Treating the game like a casual newspaper crossword can be a good tactic; that way, you can come back to it later if you’re coming up blank. Stepping away for a while might mean the difference between a win and a line of grey squares.
Today’s Wordle answer
(Image credit: Future)
What is today’s Wordle answer?
Here’s your answer. The answer to the January 4 (1295) Wordle is RELAX.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Previous Wordle answers
The last 10 Wordle answers
Past Wordle answers can give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle-solving fresh. They are also a good way to eliminate guesses for today’s Wordle, as the answer is unlikely to be repeated.
Here are some recent Wordle answers:
January 3: CHEAP
January 2: CHOSE
January 1: NERVE
December 31: LEMUR
December 30: STARE
December 29: MAMBO
December 28: DECRY
December 27: GRAIN
December 26: AFFIX
December 25: SHARE
Learn more about Wordle
(Image credit: Nurphoto via Getty)
Wordle gives you six rows of five boxes each day, and you’ll need to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them to keep up your winning streak.
You should start with a strong word like ARISE, or any other word that contains a good mix of common consonants and multiple vowels. You’ll also want to avoid starting words with repeating letters, as you’re wasting the chance to potentially eliminate or confirm an extra letter. Once you hit Enter, you’ll see which ones you’ve got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn’t in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you’ve got the right letter in the right spot.
Your second guess should compliment the starting word, using another “good” word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn’t present in today’s answer. With a bit of luck, you should have some coloured squares to work with and set you on the right path.
After that, it’s just a case of using what you’ve learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there’s an E). Don’t forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS).
If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you’d like to find out which words have already been used you can scroll to the relevant section above.
Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn’t long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes.
We and our council of games industry luminaries ranked Helldivers 2 highly in our 2023 Most Wanted list, which is a small point of pride. The buzz around Arrowhead’s 2024 co-op shooter wasn’t nothing before it came out, but it was getting a whole lot less mainstream attention before it became PlayStation’s fastest-selling game ever than after. Sometimes we can still call ’em.
And sometimes we can’t—I’ll never live down my prediction that Concord would be popular (and hopefully no one remembers how much I liked Brink)—but I think our hit radar is pretty well tuned on a team-wide scale. As we enter 2025, here are six games PC Gamer staff members think you should know about, because they might turn out to be bigger hits than the current hype levels indicate. (Though maybe not Helldivers 2-level hits.)
Solasta 2
Solasta II – Official Announcement Trailer – The Game Awards 2024 – YouTube
We can only replay Baldur’s Gate 3 so many times. (He said, though his Honour Mode run is still in act two.) Solasta: Crown of the Magister provided an alternative way to get your fix of D&D 5E in videogame form, and a sequel that did the same thing with better writing and more of D&D’s character options available at launch—rather than having to wait for DLC to fill in the weird stuff—would be welcome. Don’t underestimate the audience of people who yearn for opportunities to upcast magic missiles. Solasta 2 doesn’t have a release date yet, but an early access release on Steam is expected this year. —Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor
The developer of the excellent Battle Brothers has a new game on the way that looks to combine that game’s emergent storytelling and brutal scrabbling for survival with an XCOM-style alien invasion. There’s not a ton of turn-based strategy games on the docket for 2025 yet, and I think this could end up being a real high point for the genre this year. I think the one thing that held Battle Brothers back from being a much bigger hit was its quirky and slightly basic visuals—Menace‘s more cinematic looks feel like the final piece of the puzzle dropping into place. –Robin Valentine, Senior Editor
When the developer of Untitled Goose Game announced its “online walker-talker” I thought to myself “oh neat” and then sort of forgot about it. But I think there’s a good chance Big Walk has a viral moment this year equal to the chaos goose antics of 2020.
Big Walk looks like it could arrive near the peak of one of the current PC gaming trends we’ve been watching: the rise of co-op proximity chat horror games like Lethal Company. This one isn’t horror but it has that goofing about with friends, physics, and puzzles energy that makes me think of my favorite moments in Phasmophobia, Sea of Thieves, and We Were Here all smashed together. The reveal trailer for Big Walk makes it pretty clear that House House is absolutely still in touch with its mastery of physical comedy and comedic timing. I can already hear my Discord group chat having a good cackle while wandering around Big Walk and if it lands in the right month it could be an unexpected multiplayer hit for the year. —Lauren Morton, Associate Editor
Hyper Light Breaker
Hyper Light Breaker | Release Date Trailer – YouTube
Hyper Light Breaker isn’t exactly niche or a complete unknown, but I think it has a good shot of breaking containment and finding a sustained, explosive success like Risk of Rain 2—a game HLB has no shortage of similarities with. And since RoR 2 has had a ton of difficulties since transitioning to Gearbox’s stewardship from creator Hopoo Games (now part of Valve), there could be an underestimated appetite out there for “3D action roguelike sequel to 2010s pixel art indie favorite.”
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Further bolstering my vibes-based prognostication, it’s always seemed to me that Hyper Light Drifter was a game well-loved outside the usual indie game appreciator crowd, and a big portion of its audience may have skipped Heart Machine’s initially Epic-exclusive follow-up, Solar Ash. Breaker’s definitely on the right track releasing in early access (and on Steam) right at the beginning of the year on January 13 though—Elden Ring: Nightreign, which is slated to release later on in 2025, presents some stiff competition in the 3D roguelike action-RPG space. —Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor
Psycho Patrol R
Psycho Patrol R Gameplay Compilation from creators of Cruelty Squad – YouTube
Cruelty Squad should be a true sicko’s game, an action-forward immersive sim whose complex systems, psychedelic art style, and surreal writing all feel actively hostile to the player. So I’ve always been struck at how enduringly popular it is: Nearly 18,000 overwhelmingly positive Steam reviews at the time of writing, with clips from and references to the game surprising me where I least expect them on social media. Its comically nihilistic vision of a financialized, gig economy-ified far future really makes it the perfect game for our moment though—I thank my lucky stars Luigi Mangione never played it and the funny papers had to try and spin up a controversy about him being into Among Us instead.
Consumer Softproducts’ next game, Psycho Patrol R, has a lot of shared elements with Cruelty Squad: That anarchic, pitch black sense of humor, sprawling and intricate immersive sim level design, and an in-game stock market responding to the player’s actions, to name a few. There’s at least one big curve ball though: It’s a mech game where you can freely swap between on-foot and armored exploration, Titanfall-style. Not only did Cruelty Squad inspire tons of imitators and show there’s a clear audience for its type of thing, but I also think the free flow from on-foot shooting to mech piloting and back again is a rarely attempted, difficult to pull off concept that could broaden Psycho Patrol R’s appeal even further. —Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor
Midnight Murder Club
Midnight Murder Club – Crossplay Beta Trailer | PS5 & PC Games – YouTube
Midnight Murder Club looks somewhat similar to Phasmophobia—flashlights, prox chat, spookiness—but it’s PvP and everyone has a revolver. I’m not sure how I feel about the red laser beam tracers following the bullet paths (maybe I’ll get it when I play it myself), but otherwise it looks like a lot of fun. It’s made by Velan Studios, which previously developed Knockout City—that game didn’t have the best longevity as a live service thing, but it was excellent, so there’s a precedent for quality here.
Aside from its thematic similarities to games like Phasmophobia and Lethal Company, I pick up a ‘Hunt: Showdown lite’ vibe from Midnight Murder Club. There was a beta in December, and the response has been good. It’ll be out in February, according to the Steam page, and I think we’ll see it climb pretty high up the Twitch charts. —Tyler Wilde, US Editor-in-Chief
I know what you’re saying: there are six of these games I’ve never even heard of? Weird, but true: GTA (that’s what fans apparently call it) has been around since 1997, developed by studio “Rockstar Games” (OK, calm down, you’re not real rockstars!). Though it’s largely been ignored by the media and gaming community, I think GTA 6 has some potential to be a breakout hit: the trailer looks decent, though a bit heavy on the driving segments. Maybe that’s why it’s called Grand Theft “Auto”? We’ll know for sure later this year.—Christopher Livingston, Senior Editor
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1735955298_6-games-that-could-be-bigger-hits-than-youre-expecting.jpg6781200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-01-03 23:50:192025-01-03 23:50:196 games that could be bigger hits than you’re expecting in 2025
We’ve seen plenty of 45-inch ultrawide OLED gaming monitors before. But they’ve all suffered a horribly low 3,440 by 1,440 resolution. Well, not any more. LG has just announced a new 5K2K 45-inch OLED, the LG UltraGear 45GX950A.
A first world problem if ever there was, but 3,440 by 1,440 is pretty modest when stretched across a huge 45-inch monitor as opposed to, say, a 34 incher like the excellent Alienware 34 AW3423DWF. The result is a slightly grim pixel density of just over 80 PPI. A tragedy, indeed.
But 5K2K means 5,120 by 2,160 pixels. The resolution is basically a standard 4K pixel grid taken out from 16:9 aspect to 21:9. In terms of pixel density, it works out to 125 PPI. That’s a little short of the circa 140 PPI of a 32-inch 4K monitor. It’s quite a ways off the 166 PPI of the new 4K 27-inch OLEDs we mentioned earlier today, too, obviously.
But it’s also a fair bit better than the 108 PPI of a regular 27-inch 1440p panel and the usual 34-inch ultrawides, including OLEDs. In truth, we’ll have to see it with our own beady peepers to decide just how much the pixel density improvement over those popular monitor formats translates into more visual clarity, sharpness and detail.
LG hasn’t quoted any specs for the panel beyond listing the same 0.03 ms as other LG OLEDs along with a refresh of 165 Hz. That implies there’s nothing dramatically new about it save for the form factor and resolution, and thus it will likely mirror LG’s existing 3rd gen WOLED gaming monitor panel technology.
Image 1 of 2
(Image credit: LG)
(Image credit: LG)
That’s no bad thing. But it probably means we won’t see any advance in terms of full-screen brightness, which is still a limitation on all OLED gaming monitors, and colour brightness, which is a little weaker on LG’s WOLED versus Samsung’s QD-OLED tech.
Along with this LG UltraGear 45GX950A, there’s also an LG UltraGear 45GX990A. It’s essentially the same monitor but in a bendable format. Where the 45GX950A offers a fixed and quite extreme 800R curve, the 45GX990A can go from fully flat through to 900R. Oh, and it achieves that bend via a remote control and motors as opposed to manually.
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For the record, both panels also offer a secondary 2,560 by 1,080 pixel doubled mode offering 330 Hz refresh. It’s a similar dual-mode feature to 4K monitors that can also run at 1080p but at a higher refresh rate.
In truth, these pixel-doubled modes never look quite as crisp as the same resolution in native format on a similarly sized panel. But it’s a nice little extra all the same.
As for the sordid matter of money, the fixed curve 45GX950A has an MSRP of $1,999. The bendable 45GX990A hasn’t been priced up, but what with the fancy motorised panel bending shizzle, we suspect it will be at least $2,500. Ouch.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1735919163_LGs-new-45-inch-5K2K-OLED-could-be-the-pixel-packed-gaming.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-01-03 15:03:582025-01-03 15:03:58LG’s new 45-inch 5K2K OLED could be the pixel-packed gaming monitor you’ve been waiting for
Take a look at our Wordle tips if you’d like to learn how to make the best of every letter you come across—green, yellow, and even grey—and feel free to use today’s clue if you’ve got some ideas, but would still like to make sure you’re heading in the right direction. The answer for the January 3 (1294) Wordle’s only a click away if nothing seems to be working this Friday, feel free to use it if you need to.
Well, that was lovely. When my first row revealed nothing but grey letters I assumed I was in for a tough fight today, but it turned out to be just the nudge I needed. With my first guess being so completely wrong the only thing for it was to completely change tack and go off on a new tangent, which quickly led to a rich seam of helpful yellows, and the answer soon after.
Today’s Wordle hint
(Image credit: Josh Wardle)
Wordle today: A hint for Friday, January 3
Something inexpensive, or at a much lower price than similar items or services, could be called this. Can also have negative connotations at times, describing something shoddy or of little value.
Is there a double letter in Wordle today?
No, there is no double letter in today’s puzzle.
Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day
A good starting word can be the difference between victory and defeat with the daily puzzle, but once you’ve got the basics, it’s much easier to nail down those Wordle wins. And as there’s nothing quite like a small victory to set you up for the rest of the day, here are a few tips to help set you on the right path:
A good opening guess should contain a mix of unique consonants and vowels.
Narrow down the pool of letters quickly with a tactical second guess.
Watch out for letters appearing more than once in the answer.
There’s no racing against the clock with Wordle so you don’t need to rush for the answer. Treating the game like a casual newspaper crossword can be a good tactic; that way, you can come back to it later if you’re coming up blank. Stepping away for a while might mean the difference between a win and a line of grey squares.
Today’s Wordle answer
(Image credit: Future)
What is today’s Wordle answer?
No idea? No problem. The answer to the January 3 (1294) Wordle is CHEAP.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Previous Wordle answers
The last 10 Wordle answers
Past Wordle answers can give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle-solving fresh. They are also a good way to eliminate guesses for today’s Wordle, as the answer is unlikely to be repeated.
Here are some recent Wordle answers:
January 2: CHOSE
January 1: NERVE
December 31: LEMUR
December 30: STARE
December 29: MAMBO
December 28: DECRY
December 27: GRAIN
December 26: AFFIX
December 25: SHARE
December 24: EAGLE
Learn more about Wordle
(Image credit: Nurphoto via Getty)
Wordle gives you six rows of five boxes each day, and you’ll need to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them to keep up your winning streak.
You should start with a strong word like ARISE, or any other word that contains a good mix of common consonants and multiple vowels. You’ll also want to avoid starting words with repeating letters, as you’re wasting the chance to potentially eliminate or confirm an extra letter. Once you hit Enter, you’ll see which ones you’ve got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn’t in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you’ve got the right letter in the right spot.
Your second guess should compliment the starting word, using another “good” word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn’t present in today’s answer. With a bit of luck, you should have some coloured squares to work with and set you on the right path.
After that, it’s just a case of using what you’ve learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there’s an E). Don’t forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS).
If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you’d like to find out which words have already been used you can scroll to the relevant section above.
Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn’t long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes.
The TESRenewal modding group has been working on Skyblivion, a remastered version of Oblivion playable in Skyrim Special Edition, since 2018 “in earnest” though the project “officially started over 11 years ago,” as the latest progress video explains. Said video also mentions how close to completion Skyblivion is, fast approaching its scheduled 2025 release. “We are nearly ready to release an entirely remastered Elder Scrolls game,” the team says.
More specifically, they say, “We’re finalizing the world map, with only the Nibenay region on Cyrodiil’s eastern border left to complete. Massive swathes of the map are ready for the Hero of Kvatch to explore.”
While 93% of the cells that make up Skyblivion’s landscape are complete, only 44% of them have been navmeshed—a process that tells NPCs which parts of the terrain are traversable. There’s still a ways to go on that front, and that’s why the team is calling for volunteers to help them get Skyblivion over the finishing line. If you’re an experienced modder, head to the volunteers section of their website to sign up.
As previously mentioned, Skyblivion won’t include material from Oblivion’s expansions at launch. “We are currently focused on the main game experience to ensure it is released on time,” the team says. “Once the main game of Skyblivion is released we will look into how we can tackle DLCs and we will be sure to share more information on our next steps closer to the time. We’re less than a year away from our target release of Skyblivion.”
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1735788536_Skyblivion-only-has-one-region-of-the-map-left-to.jpg6781200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-01-02 03:05:512025-01-02 03:05:51Skyblivion only has one region of the map left to finish: ‘We are nearly ready to release an entirely remastered Elder Scrolls game’
I’m not usually one for all this New Year malarkey—time ticks over at the same rate as it ever did, and I’m no big believer in astrology, so what does the calendar date matter? (And bah, humbug!) But even I can’t help getting a little excited at what 2025 might offer us PC gamers.
The big ones to look out for will obviously be new graphics cards from both Nvidia and AMD and handheld gaming PCs featuring the latest AMD and Intel mobile processors. We’re hoping to see many of these things at CES in January, and on that front, I’d recommend checking out our Andy’s run through everything we expect to see at the show.
But I’m looking beyond all that, across the distant horizon, into the land of what the more sceptical might call pure fantasy. But actually, I think many of the things on this hardware wishlist are reasonable expectations for 2025, and some of them downright likely. So, here’s what I’m looking out for in 2025:
They might not be the most glamorous piece of kit, but SSDs keep the data flowin’. And over the course of 2024 we already saw massive improvements in SSDs, to the extent that fast 2 TB drives are now a pretty standard affair, even if some system builders still need to be given that particular memo. These improvements, however, were primarily of the PCIe 4.0 variety.
We’re still recommending Gen4 drives as the best SSDs for gaming, and that’s primarily because Gen5 drives are too hot and expensive. The controllers they use get so toasty they usually require gigantic coolers on top just to run, and they often cost an inordinate amount more than the now-reasonably priced Gen 4 drives.
So I’m really hoping 2025 is the year cheap and cool PCIe 5.0 SSDs hit the mainstream market. There’s reason to believe this could happen because we now have CPU generations and motherboards that can really make use of them thanks to more PCIe 5.0 lanes and slots, and there will surely be more such motherboards to come.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
2. AI-accelerated rendering
(Image credit: Future)
It’s no secret that Nvidia’s in the business of AI, and it’s no surprise that this business has—for good or for ill—infected the PC gaming market. AI-accelerated DLSS upscaling and frame generation has become something of a soft requirement for playing many modern titles at anything like a reasonable frame rate.
But where can we go next? Well, obviously we’re all hoping that DLSS 4 (and possibly FSR 4) will give us frame generation and upscaling improvements, but it’ll be cool if it gives us something new, too.
It turns out we already have intimations of just such a thing in the form of “neural rendering“, which an AIB manufacturer recently mentioned in seeming relation to next-gen Nvidia GPUs. If AI can do for rendering what it’s done for upscaling and frame gen, we might be in for a treat.
And listen, I’m pretty split over AI-accelerated anything. I like to own the frame rate-producing power that I pay for when I buy a graphics card, not (essentially) rent it out from Nvidia’s neural network. But hey, frames are frames, and if such tech gives a significant enough improvement, maybe I shouldn’t complain.
3. An all-Nvidia laptop
(Image credit: NurPhoto | Getty Images)
It used to be that Nvidia sat comfortably in GPU-land, Intel sat in CPU-land, and AMD straddled the boundary of both. But we’ve already seen Intel slide into the GPU market with its Arc graphics cards and Xe architecture, and we’ve also heard rumour of Nvidia joining the CPU scene for about a year decade now.
This would be an ARM chip, not an x86 one. The word on the street is that there are tons of improvements to Windows on ARM in the works—we’ve already seen that an Insider build now supports AVX and AVX2 instructions, which should help get more games up and running—so there’s reason to believe that’s true.
Not to mention the sheer existence of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips, which shows, to a limited extent, what Windows on Arm might be capable of. Now, in 2025, we just need to see what the green team (hopefully) has to offer on this front.
4. A powerful AMD Strix Halo laptop processor
(Image credit: Future)
I never thought I’d see the day when I was actually more excited for new integrated graphics than discrete graphics, but with just how good APUs are these days—I mean, just look at handhelds—I think I’m over that threshold now. And topping that integrated graphics list is a possible AMD Strix Halo chip.
“Strix Point” is the codename for AMD’s latest AI 300-series processors, which we’re expecting to see in some handhelds and laptops come 2025 (and indeed, we already see Strix Point in the OneXPlayer OneXFly F1 Pro). Strix Halo refers to an as-yet unannounced top-of-the-line “halo” product using this architecture.
The latest rumours have us anticipating up to 16 Zen 5 cores and 40 RDNA 3.5 CUs in Strix Halo. For reference, the AMD Radeon 880M—the mobile GPU found in the AI 9 HX 370—has 12 CUs, so you can see why we’re hopeful for some Strix Halo Products.
Strix Halo probably won’t hold a candle to the kind of high-end discrete graphics available in some of the best gaming laptops, but it should offer performance that far surpasses current handhelds, all for far less power consumption than laptops with discrete GPUs. Which might mean gaming laptops that can play today’s games relatively well without draining the battery in under 2 hours (as seems to be the prerogative of gaming laptops today).
5. More AMD X3D chips
(Image credit: Future)
The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which launched a couple of months ago, is far and away the best CPU for gaming. X3D chips are great for gaming because they vertically stack tons of cache, and games are quite hungry for this. The 9000-series X3D design improved on the 7000-series one by putting this cache underneath the chip rather than on top, which allows for better cooling and therefore better performance.
There have been rumours circulating for a while that the Ryzen 7 9800X3D will be followed up in early 2025 by a more powerful Ryzen 9 9900X3D and 9950X3D. If these do launch, they’ll probably be for those who want stellar 3D-stacked gaming performance but better productivity performance than the 9800X3D.
The previous-gen Ryzen 9 7950X3D and 7900X3D stacked the same 64 MB of extra L3 cache on a chiplet, but there were more cores in the processors (half of which didn’t use that stacked cache) for better multi-core performance.
In the case of the 7900X3D, a 12-core chip, this actually meant that only six cores (one chiplet’s worth) rather than the 7800X3D’s full eight cores, could use the stacked cache, which meant it was actually a little worse for gaming than the Ryzen 7 chip.
If we get a 9900X3D, it’ll be interesting to see whether the same design choice is made or whether both chiplets will get access to the stacked cache. If both chiplets did get access to the stacked cache, then we could expect that same top-tier gaming performance without any software required behind the scenes to continually place workloads on the best cores.
6. Steam Machines
(Image credit: Future)
Remember Steam Machines? Me neither—they were somewhat DOA after the circa 2015 launch. But if they’d worked out, what a thing they would have been: Steam-based devices like a Steam Deck, but desktopified.
A Valve branding document (PDF) stated: “The Powered by SteamOS logo indicates that a hardware device will run the SteamOS and boot into SteamOS upon powering on the device. Partners / manufacturers will ship hardware with a Steam image in the form provided by and / or developed in close collaboration with Valve.”
We’re currently expecting this to signal the existence of non-Valve-made but nevertheless SteamOS-powered handhelds, and a recently announced January Lenovo event featuring Valve as a special guest suggests as much, albeit far from definitively.
In addition to handhelds, though, it’s hard to imagine “Powered by SteamOS” being something limited to just handhelds, especially given that Valve’s long been working towards a general SteamOS release. And if there is such a release, well, that’ll open the doors to all kinds of third-party or DIY Steam Machines running Valve’s OS. Maybe even an all Nvidia/ARM laptop. And heck, maybe even an official Valve one.
And this last option might not seem so crazy when you consider my next 2025 wishlist item.
7. A Steam Controller 2
(Image credit: Valve)
Yes, here’s another throwback to circa 2015, and again to another product that never really caught on—although it did have a substantial following of ardent defenders. It featured back-paddles, gyro movement, and two trackpads in lieu of twin thumbsticks. The idea was that, by using proper custom configs, these strange controls could allow you to easily play games that lack great traditional controller support and give you some approximation of the accuracy of keyboard and mouse control in a pad.
Now, there’s rumour that the Steam Controller 2 (codenamed “Ibex”) is already Sin mass production. That there will be a Steam Controller 2 isn’t so much of a surprise given that Steam Deck designer Lawrence Yang said in 2022, “yeah, we want to make it happen. It’s just a question of how and when.” What’s surprising is that, if the mass production rumour is true, this “when” could be very soon.
We don’t know exactly what a Steam Controller 2 will bring, either, which is exciting. It could bring the same design as the first version, but Valve has also learnt a lot since then. The Steam Deck, for instance, has both trackpads and thumbsticks, so a Steam Controller 2 could opt for a similar design to this. We’ll have to wait and see, hopefully sometime in the coming year.
8. A Valve Deckard VR headset
(Image credit: Future)
We’ve heard whispers and intimations of an upcoming Valve “Deckard” VR headset for years. For those unaware, this is a rumoured Valve Index successor that might be completely standalone, meaning it’s able to be powered by its own internal hardware rather than by your PC. So no cables. Or your PC for more power.
This isn’t all whispers, either. Valve even released a patent including plans for a new VR headset back in 2021, and although submitting a patent doesn’t commit you to producing the product, this was on top of tons of other reasonable rumours surrounding the headset.
Part of the reason this is exciting is because the Valve Index was seriously stunning when it came out, offering a truly top-tier VR experience. But tech has moved on since then, and now the Index seems a little dated. In other words, Valve’s due a high-end VR refresh, in my eyes. And with all the company’s learnt about hardware production over the past few years, I’m hopeful.
9. More hidden connector motherboards
(Image credit: Future)
It might not be as exciting as new VR headsets and handhelds, but one trend that tickled my fancy in 2024 was the introduction of Back Connect / Back-to-the-Future/Back-to-Front (BTF) hidden motherboard connector designs.
People first seemed to take note of such designs with MSI’s Project Zero in 2024, but we’d already seen Gigabyte do it in 2022. The idea is pretty simple: take all those motherboard connectors (especially the bigboi 24-pin power connector) and shimmy them around to the back for better airflow (ehh, whatever) and a cleaner look (now that’s more like it). It can even mean building the GPU power slot into the motherboard itself to eliminate those garish 8-pins, as per Asus‘ ecosystem
Of course, you need room around the back for all those connections and cables, and cut-outs for them, too. That means custom design cases are required, which is one thing that has prevented these motherboards from becoming mainstream too soon. Well, that and the fact that there’s only a small handful of them out there.
But I’m keeping my fingers crossed that 2025 has these motherboards at least dipping their toes outside of the “niche” market segment. They just look so clean.
10. Cheaper CUDIMM memory
(Image credit: Future)
It seems like every couple of weeks there’s a new “world record” CUDIMM memory overclock. At the time of writing, the record stands at an eerie 12,666 MT/s, and such speeds can’t help but whet my appetite for the memory standard.
CUDIMM RAM is memory that uses “clocked, unbuffered” DIMMs, meaning it has a clock driver that regenerates the clock signal for better signal integrity, allowing for higher frequencies and more transfers per second. This allows it to run so fast that it than makes up for slower timings and ends up being well worth it. Only problem is, it’s expensive.
It would be nice if 2025 could give us more CUDIMM memory kits that can offer such speeds for a reasonable price. Then we’d see significant memory improvements without even moving up a DDR generation.
11. More CAMM2 memory
(Image credit: Future)
Okay, now this one’s more of a “hopeful” than a “likely” development, but it’d be nice if CAMM2 memory started its path towards wider adoption in desktop gaming builds.
CAMM2 memory is a memory form factor that lies flat against the motherboard, and we got a first glimpse of it in a desktop at Computex early in 2024. We’re expecting more laptop manufacturers to opt for the flush form factor to save space and allow for easier cooling, but there’s less incentive to slap them inside desktops.
But less incentive isn’t no incentive. Having memory lying flat could allow for SSD-style top-mounted cooling, which would allow clocks to be pushed further. More importantly, though, in my opinion—and perhaps most naively—it looks rather nice, and would certainly match a hidden connector motherboard. It might be a fool’s hope, but it’s a hope I’m clinging to for 2025.
I was a little late to the game but I eventually fixed my goggles on an OLED panel in the Omen Transcend 14 laptop, and I struggle to describe just how wonderful these screens look. OLED panels are genuinely gorgeous.
But my God are they expensive. We’re talking prices that could bag you an entirely new gaming PC, and not a bad one at that.
I’m hoping that 2025 is the year when OLED monitor prices drop, even if just a little. Perhaps this would mean the introduction of new Samsung or LG 1440p OLED panels with a moderate refresh rate, rather than 32-inch 4K ones.
I know such manufacturing changes can’t be embarked upon on a whim, but I reckon there’d be enough demand there for them for it to be worthwhile. And given 2024 saw a decided push into the standalone OLED monitor market (as opposed to the OLED laptop market), 2025 might be the time for this to occur. I sure hope so.
13. ARM desktop chips
(Image credit: Photo by Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The main ARM-based chips already out in the wild are Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X processors, which run Windows on ARM surprisingly well and offer stellar battery life. These are all laptop chips, for now, though—unfortunately, the desktop dev kit we liked the look of was cancelled.
Given the seeming upward trajectory of Windows on ARM, the prospect of ARM-based desktop chips is quite exciting. And it’s not a pipe dream, either, given Qualcomm has already teased such CPUs and said that we “should expect to see Qualcomm in every PC form factor”.
It’s not as simple as just porting things straight over to desktop, though. For one, ARM chips don’t currently have PCIe lane capabilities, which is a big requirement for, you know, connecting all your PC’s bits and bobs together. And to pair an ARM chip with discrete graphics would require driver support, too, which currently doesn’t exist.
But these problems aren’t insurmountable, thus Qualcomm’s seeming confidence that desktop chips will arrive. And if Qualcomm’s correct in its assessment, Arm itself might be considering making its own chips. Heck, as discussed above, even Nvidia’s said to be building off of an ARM architecture for its rumoured in-house CPUs.
It’s not a given, but 2025 could be the year when all these things come into fruition and we start to see the stirrings of ARM-based desktop processor competition. With ARM’s potential for great power efficiency and battery life, such processors could certainly make for some interesting gaming PCs.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/1735752518_2025-PC-hardware-preview-This-is-the-tech-we-want.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2025-01-01 15:31:292025-01-01 15:31:292025 PC hardware preview: This is the tech we want in our gaming rigs from the coming year
Happy New Year everyone! Whether you’re adding to your ongoing Wordle win streak today or just starting out, you’ll find everything you need to succeed right here. We’ve got general tips to help get you in a guessing mindset, a clue for the January 1 (1292) puzzle, and today’s answer ready if you need to turn a tough game around, or just want to make sure you get the year started on the right foot.
If today’s Wordle was any indication of how the rest of my puzzle-solving year is going to go… hmm. I had a solid core to work with from my second go, the only problem was working out what the heck was supposed to fit around the edges of it. I did get there in the end though—mostly out of stubbornness. It still counts, though.
Today’s Wordle hint
(Image credit: Josh Wardle)
Wordle today: A hint for Wednesday, January 1
These thin fibres carry information, instructions, and sensations from the body to the brain. If somebody metaphorically got yours, they’d be irritating you.
Is there a double letter in Wordle today?
Yes, there is a double letter in today’s puzzle.
Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day
Playing Wordle well is like achieving a small victory every day—who doesn’t like a well-earned winning streak in a game you enjoy? If you’re new to the daily word game, or just want a refresher, I’m going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success:
You want a balanced mix of unique consonants and vowels in your opening word.
A solid second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.
The answer could contain letters more than once.
There’s no time pressure beyond making sure it’s done by the end of the day. If you’re struggling to find the answer or a tactical word for your next guess, there’s no harm in coming back to it later on.
Today’s Wordle answer
(Image credit: Future)
What is today’s Wordle answer?
Happy New Year! The answer to the January 1 (1292) Wordle is NERVE.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Previous Wordle answers
The last 10 Wordle answers
Knowing previous Wordle solutions can be helpful in eliminating current possibilities. It’s unlikely a word will be repeated and you can find inspiration for guesses or starting words that may be eluding you.
Here are some recent Wordle answers:
December 31: LEMUR
December 30: STARE
December 29: MAMBO
December 28: DECRY
December 27: GRAIN
December 26: AFFIX
December 25: SHARE
December 24: EAGLE
December 23: SAUNA
December 22: BRAWN
Learn more about Wordle
(Image credit: Nurphoto via Getty)
Wordle gives you six rows of five boxes each day, and it’s your job to work out which five-letter word is hiding by eliminating or confirming the letters it contains.
Starting with a strong word like LEASH—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters—is a good place to start. Once you hit Enter, the boxes will show you which letters you’ve got right or wrong. If a box turns ⬛️, it means that letter isn’t in the secret word at all. 🟨 means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. 🟩 means you’ve got the right letter in the right spot.
Your second go should compliment the starting word, using another “good” guess to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn’t present in today’s answer. After that, it’s just a case of using what you’ve learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there’s an E). Don’t forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS).
If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you’d like to find out which words have already been used, you can scroll to the relevant section above.
Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn’t long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it’s only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes.
It’s that time of year again. No, not the holiday season, we’re over that, but the time when CES 2025 approaches. The Consumer Electronics Show will officially start on January 7 in sunny Las Vegas, Nevada, and this year’s event is already full of hope and promise, and most especially for PC gamers.
After all, with Nvidia’s Jensen Huang delivering the keynote (and hopefully announcing some next-generation RTX 50-series Nvidia GPUs) and every tech company worth knowing ramping up the potential announcement dates, it’s looking like CES 2025 will be jam-packed full of delicious hardware, much of it of the gaming variety.
I’ll be packing my holiday bags and gambling money (just kidding) and heading off to this year’s show with several other members of the PC Gamer hardware team to provide on-the-ground coverage. Las Vegas here we come.
But before then, I’ve put together a run down of everything we’re expecting to see, along with a few possibilities that are of the more hopeful variety. Who says we’re cynics, ey?
Okay, you don’t all have to put your hands up at once.
Nvidia 50-series graphics cards
(Image credit: Nvidia)
At this point, I’d eat my metaphorical hat if we didn’t see at least some of Nvidia’s next-generation RTX 50-series graphics card lineup announced at CES. That’s probably no surprise to those of you keeping up with your newsfeeds in recent months, as the leaks have been coming in thick and fast for what’s likely to be the biggest GPU release in many moons.
No one was more surprised than us when CES 2025 became the hot tip for a launch location, as it’s traditionally thought of as a more laptop-focussed show. Still, the most recent rumours suggest that we’ll be seeing the RTX 5090, RTX 5080, and the RTX 5070 revealed all at once. This would be another break in recent tradition from Nvidia, as it’s been the two top-tier cards that debuted before the mid-range offerings of the past couple of generations.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Recent leaks suggest that the RTX 5090 will be an absolute monster of a card, with kopite7kimi claiming it’ll have 32 GB of GDDR7 memory across a 512-bit bus, a peak power demand of 600 W, and 21,760 CUDA cores. For those keeping count, that’d be 33% more cores than the RTX 4090, a GPU that’s still considered overpowered to this day. That tracks with an even more recent RTX 50-series specs leak, this time apparently from Zotac—and this one even lists a potential core count for the RTX 5070 Ti.
So could we be looking at four desktop GPUs launched at once? We’ve even heard rumours that mobile GPUs could be on the table, too, although at this point the speculative roar is so loud, it’s difficult to sort fact from fiction. Regardless, it looks like Nvidia GPUs are marching on the horizon, so expect to see new Blackwell-based graphics cards galore come the start of the show—with potentially some AI sorcery in the form of “Neural Rendering“.
What’s that then? We’ll be honest—we won’t really know unless it’s formally announced, as technically DLSS, Frame Generation, and Ray Reconstruction could all be referred to as Neural Rendering. So it could simply be a repackage of all those existing features. But Nvidia is about as deep in the AI toolbox as it could possibly be, so I wouldn’t rule out some high-faluting, all-AI-all-the-time rendering technique we haven’t seen yet. At least, in a way that actually works for gaming, rather than a tech demo.
Exciting stuff though, isn’t it?
AMD RDNA 4 next-generation GPUs
(Image credit: AMD)
It’s not just Nvidia GPU announcements we’re expecting to see at CES 2025, as AMD’s RDNA 4 graphics cards have long been tipped to make an appearance. We reported back in September that the next-generation AMD cards were expected to launch in January, although those of you looking for a potential RTX 5090 or RTX 5080 competitor will likely be disappointed.
That’s because AMD’s Jack Huyhn has gone on record saying that the high-end market isn’t the priority. This tracks with more recent reports that what’s rumoured to be the top-end card,the RX 8800 XT, will instead deliver raster performance similar to the RTX 4080 Super, and 45% faster ray tracing performance than the current top-end AMD card, the RX 7900 XTX.
And you know what? I’m kinda down with that. After all, we’re expecting Nvidia’s top-end offerings to be mightily expensive, so if AMD can launch a card that matches the RTX 4080 Super for raw grunt and fix the woeful ray tracing performance of the previous generation, I reckon it might be a bit of a winner—providing it’s launched at the right price.
(Image credit: Future)
That’s a big if, of course. Further down the lineup, there have been rumblings of a non-XT variant of what might become AMD’s new top-end card (of this generation, at least), and potentially an RX 8700 and RX 8600 as well.
So don’t cry too deeply into your cereal, AMD fans. There are more potential developments to get excited about in the team red enclosure as well, in the form of FSR 4. The scuttlebutt suggests that the upcoming version of AMD’s DLSS upscaling competitor will be AI-based, which also hints that the new cards will have some sort of NPU/Tensor core equivalent to handle the load. And if we see the new cards revealed as expected? Then FSR 4 will likely follow.
As my own testing shows, FSR 3.1 is still behind the curve when compared to the latest version of DLSS—so an AI-enhanced version is something to get excited about for those of us hoping for performant-yet-affordable RDNA 4 GPUs in our future. Fingers crossed, at the very least.
Gaming laptops galore
(Image credit: Future)
Well, here’s a return to tradition: CES is usually about laptop releases, and this year they’ve got some shiny new chips to nestle inside. We’ve already had a play with AMD’s Strix Point Ryzen AI 300-series CPUs and Intel’s Core Ultra 200-series mobile CPUs, and we’ve been thoroughly impressed. So we’re expecting to see every major gaming laptop manufacturer under the sun release new models at CES 2025, many of them taking advantage of the shiniest silicon available today.
That means Razer, Asus, Alienware—basically, think of a gaming laptop manufacturer, and I’d be surprised if they didn’t have a new model or two to reveal at this year’s show with either AMD or Intel’s most recent efforts
So January’s looking like a superb time to start thinking about your next gaming laptop. With existing efforts like the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 and the Razer Blade 14 taking the form to sleeker, svelter, and more desirable heights, I reckon 2025 might be the year we see gaming laptops blossom wholesale into the ultra-desirable machines we imagine in our heads.
The cantankerous chassis designs of old are starting to fall behind us now, so I’m expecting slim, portable, and luxurious to be the order of the day.
And I haven’t even got onto the displays yet. OLEDs in gaming laptops are a proper thing now, and I’d wager we’ll see plenty more models released with screens capable of inky dark black levels and gorgeous colour reproduction. Probably the odd Mini LED unit too, just to shake things up a bit.
Oh, and higher refresh rates. It can’t just be me who’s noticed most gaming laptop displays creeping towards the 240 Hz mark and beyond, and I can’t see that slowing down anytime soon. Speaking of which…
Ultra-high refresh gaming monitors, OLEDs, and more
(Image credit: Future)
CES has also traditionally been about monitor releases. Or rather, TVs and monitors, as it’s technically the Consumer Electronics Show, so expect plenty of screens designed to sit in your front room as well as on your desktop from many of the major manufacturers.
Expect gaming monitors of all sizes, shapes, and feature sets to dominate your newsfeeds over the course of the show, many of them aiming to reach new heights of refresh rate nirvana. Esports is a major driving factor for many monitor manufacturers these days, so I’m expecting to have to elbow my way through internet megastars (the names of which I do not know) in order to get to whatever hot new monitor of the moment they’ve come to promote.
I’ll be gentle, I promise. Still, speedy screens make for great gaming monitors for the rest of us (to a certain extent), and it’s in person where that refresh rate becomes less of a number on the box and more of a lovely thing to behold. So I’ll be sure to pump myself up with caffeine and plonk myself down in front of as many of them as I can, along with our other team members. The conversation will be fast-paced and nerdy. Of this, you can be sure.
Again, OLED gaming monitors everywhere is the expectation—and perhaps even some more affordable models, if we’ve been really, really good. Plus, there are usually some laptops with fold-out screens to admire, before we all agree that it looks a bit flimsy and move ourselves on to the next booth. Anyway, monitors, lovely screens, expect lots.
Handheld gaming PCs
(Image credit: Future)
Remember what I said about new chips? Well, now that Lunar Lake and Strix Point are officially a thing, we’ve all been very excited at PC Gamer towers to usher in the next generation of gaming handhelds. The APUs in the older devices are starting to look a bit long in the tooth, so high-powered handheld gaming PCs are something we’re hoping will be the order of the day.
Personally, I’m going to be keeping an eye on Lenovo, as leaks regarding the Lenovo Legion Go S have been so frequent this year, I feel like I’ve seen it already. Providing it does actually exist (wouldn’t it be a turn-up for the books if it didn’t?) and makes an appearance (who knows?), it’ll likely find itself sitting in amongst some tough competition, given that the handheld market seems to be growing at a phenomenal rate.
The original MSI Claw didn’t exactly set our hearts aflutter earlier this year, but the MSI Claw 8 AI+ is touting some remarkably high benchmark numbers, courtesy of testing performed by, err, MSI. We’ll be sure to get our hands on one of those if we see one, although obviously we won’t be able to benchmark it ourselves at the booth if MSI has one to show off. I mean, probably. Still, it’s an interesting thing and seems much worthier of consideration than the old, Meteor Lake-based model.
Then there’s the Adata handheld prototype my beloved hardware overlord Dave got his hands on at Computex this year. A bizarre machine for sure, but we loved the creativity on display. Will it make a reappearance, potentially with some tweaks? Time will tell. Still, I’m hoping to have a play around with some handhelds that dazzle, so keep an eye out for our coverage as we scythe our way through the show floor, hunting down all the latest portable PCs.
Motherboard chipsets
(Image credit: Future)
How’s this for confusing—thanks to some leaks, we’re expecting to see motherboards using new chipsets from both Intel and AMD, and they’re said to be called the B860 and, err, the B850. Yep, two entirely different new chipsets, from two different and highly competitive companies, separated by a single-digit change.
So for clarification, the B860 is expected to be Intel’s latest Arrow Lake-S chipset. If the leaks are to be believed, it’ll sit below the current Z890 chipset in the lineup with support for 45 total high-speed I/O lanes and up to 12 USB 2 ports, and six USB 3.2 ports. It’s currently believed to be locked for chip overclocks, although RAM overclocking is said to be supported. Keen eyes have already spotted listings for Asus motherboards using the new chipset, supposedly arriving at CES 2025.
On the AMD side of things, we have what’s expected to be the B850 chipset for Zen 5 CPUs.Videocardz already has photos of what a reader claims is the Gigabyte B850M Aorus Elite WiFi6e Ice (another catchy motherboard name to add to the list), and it’s said to offer PCIe 5 support for NVMe drives, and optionally graphics. The leaked board photos show four DDR5 DIMM slots, connections for 24+8 pin power connectors, and a whole lot of board elements hidden underneath some shiny white covers.
Not the most thrilling CES expectation, I guess, but that’s what we have to go on for now. Expect to watch me become confused by chipset naming schemes at this year’s show, and in fact, probably at future ones as well.
HDMI 2.2
(Image credit: Diy13 via Getty Images)
Now we’re talking: cable and connection standards! The current HDMI 2.1 specification supports 4K resolution at 120 Hz uncompressed, and up to 10K 100 Hz with Display Stream Compression (DSC). That’s all dependent on what cable and monitor (or TV) you use, of course, but rumours suggest that we’ll see the announcement of HDMI 2.2 at CES 2025, which will support…
Actually, we have no idea. Just the potential announcement, that’s what’s been leaked at this point. Of course, if we do get a new HDMI connection standard then it’s likely to be capable of far exceeding the 42 Gbps maximum data rate of current HDMI 2.1 connections. But by how much, we really can’t say at this point.
Still, when it comes to gaming monitors we’re currently looking at a 240 Hz limit at 4K using the current top HDMI standard, so this may simply be sowing the seeds for 8K ultra-high refresh rate displays to come. Not that modern GPUs can really make use of that sort of headroom at the moment, but hey, faster hardware is coming, and that means faster connections and cables will eventually be needed to accommodate it.
I wouldn’t expect to see an HDMI 2.2 port on new graphics cards from any of the major players for a while yet, but you never know, do you?
AI everywhere, again
(Image credit: Future)
Last year’s show was all about AI. Guess what this one might be about? Yes, the AI boom is still far from bust, so it’s once again time to put on our anti-hogwash hats and delve into all the AI offerings to see if any of them are worth talking about.
I kid, I kid, AI has its uses. I mean, we struggled to find them at last year’s event, but in 2025 we’ll be once again stalking the halls to see if we can find AI products that make sense. Of course, Nvidia will likely be talking up all sorts of AI shenanigans, and I’ve already covered the potential AI integration we’re expecting to see in FSR 4 if it arrives. Perhaps we’ll get another chance to play with Nvidia ACE, the AI-NPC tech that left our Jacob stunned in 2024?
And who can forget my legendary post-show article from last year, summing up three AI features we thought we might use, and three we definitely wouldn’t? Even me apparently, because I’ve just rediscovered it. Still, AI will be all over Las Vegas this year as well I’m sure, so here’s hoping I end up writing an AI product redemption piece now the tech has hopefully matured. See, I told you we weren’t cynical. Just bitter, and that’s a different thing entirely.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/1735680407_CES-2025-From-next-gen-Nvidia-GPUs-to-gaming-laptops-galore.png6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2024-12-31 20:00:002024-12-31 20:00:00CES 2025: From next-gen Nvidia GPUs to gaming laptops galore, here’s everything we expect to see at January’s show
One of the best things I did in a game this year was spend ten minutes riding an oxcart from one city to another in Dragon’s Dogma 2 because its fast travel system is so limited (intentionally) as to functionally not exist. The second best thing was turning off the wayfinding settings, quest log, and minimap in Dragon Age: The Veilguard so I could spend a little time getting lost in its cities.
Those experiences aren’t the norm when most games want to make sure I can fast travel, complete quests, and manage my inventory nearly without conscious thought. I love when games waste my time, just a little bit, and I hope that 2025 brings me more games that are slightly inconvenient.
I’m not here to say that accessibility settings are bad (they aren’t) or that easy modes are ruining games (they also aren’t), but I am one of those curmudgeons who thinks we’re better off on the whole without minimaps and I have a special fondness for the mundanity of manually organizing items in my array of storage chests in every crafting survival game.
(Image credit: Capcom)
The popular demand is that games should “respect the player’s time,” but anything can be taken too far: A game that’s 100% optimized for time respecting would automatically quit to desktop instead of letting me spend an hour doing menial daily quests. When games get so frictionless that clicking buttons solves all the problems for me, I check out. My live service game brain fog has conditioned me to click on those “new item” red dots in any interface without experiencing any satisfaction and now all my real joy comes from every little nod towards realism that breaks through that optimization malaise.
The best example in recent memory is the fantastic world map in Outward. There’s no player marker on it at all, so you have to navigate entirely by recognizing landmarks and learning your surroundings. Years later I still know the route from the starter city Cierzo to Berg through the Enmerkar Forest. Walking those roads by memory is one of the best feelings I may have ever had in a game. Sea of Thieves has a similar concept with its treasure maps that will give you a diagram of an island and an X to mark the spot but leave you to identify your surroundings.
I’m always thrilled when a game doesn’t give me a hand quest log entry for the loose ends of every single one of its mysteries and instead hands me a set of custom map markers and a place to jot down notes of my own. Procedurally generated murder mystery game Shadows of Doubt was particularly great at that. Sometimes clues and evidence are immediately obvious like fingerprints at a murder scene but other times I have to make a custom note on my conspiracy board noting down a name or address until I can find out where it fits into the big picture. The moment when I can finally draw a real piece of red string between my disparate jotted notes is more thrilling than a shootout with a perp.
NPC schedules in life sims are another favourite of mine. Knowing just where to intercept a character to deliver them a gift gives me a warm fuzzy feeling harkening back to the first time I ever kept a game journal tracking the residents of Clock Town in Majora’s Mask.
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Much as I loved ’90s anime-themed Fields of Mistria this year I’ll admit I was a little bummed when I realized that I could walk into a store and buy supplies from the register even if the owner was out walking around town. I’m sure many other Stardew Valley players who’ve been spurned by ranch owner Marnie’s inattentiveness to her own store heaved a sigh of relief at the convenience that Mistria offered but I felt just a little let down that it was willing to suspend disbelief just so I wouldn’t have to come back later to buy a treat for my chickens.
Aside from the toggle-able wayfinding settings in The Veilguard, I was disappointed by some of its other systems that were hellbent on not letting me mess up or get even slightly confused. It often used popups on screen during cutscenes to explain to me how characters were feeling in the middle of a conversation where a character was telling me in dialogue how they were feeling. Really wish I could have toggled that off too.
(Image credit: NPC Studio)
Less egregious but also disappointing was its gifting system. In past Dragon Age games there were all sorts of gift items to give your companions—some with obvious recipients and others less so—but in The Veilguard there’s only one gift per team member to give and a quest log entry that won’t allow you to give it to the wrong person. I sort of missed having to look up a gift guide.
At the risk of getting really existential right at the end of the year, this may in part be a sort of emotional rebellion against the way AI is getting shoved into so many parts of our lives. I really don’t want Siri or Copilot or even my games to do all of the thinking and problem solving for me. I like walking around smelling the flowers without fast travel. I like that I never know where the hell Elliot enjoys hanging out in Pelican Town. I like a little well-tuned inconvenience in my hobby.
I hope next year, even as some studios continue shaving the rough edges off their action-RPG mush and AI further invades, that some games will still be willing to waste my time.
https://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/1735644311_Next-year-I-actually-want-more-games-willing-to-waste.jpg6751200Carlos Pachecohttps://gamingarmyunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Website-Logo-300x74.pngCarlos Pacheco2024-12-31 11:00:002024-12-31 11:00:00Next year I actually want more games willing to waste my time
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