Deals round up Wednesday, Jan. 13
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The Buy Area Staff
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We may have gone a bit overboard with this one, folks. We ve packed so many deals and discounts onto this page, our servers are shuddering under the pressure. The very foundation of our website is quaking. If you plan on shopping today, you may want to hurry – we re not sure how long we can keep her together.
What you need to know
Gears 5 and Gears Tactics now support Variable Rate Shading (VRS) Tier 2 on all DirectX 12 Ultimate supported devices.
VRS is a development technique that can have significant performance gains with GPU-intensive titles like the Gears games.
With Tier 2 support, Gears 5 and Gears Tactics are on the cutting edge and can gain bigger performance boosts with fewer visual anomalies.
The Coalition has also released a blog post detailing how they implemented VRS Tier 2 and how it helps their games.
The Coalition, the studio behind the storied Gears franchise, is well-known for constantly pushing the boundaries for what can be accomplished on Microsoft s hardware. Still, they re far from stopping after the release of next-gen consoles like the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S. Today, the DirectX 12 Ultimate team has announced that Gears 5 and Gears Tactics now support VRS Tier 2 on all supported devices, including Xbox Series X|S and certain PCs running modern GPUs
Source: Windows Central
2020 was a year many of us would most likely rather forget, but for Xbox, 2020 might be remembered as a year of beginnings.
Since Phil Spencer joined Microsoft s senior leadership, Xbox has been moving in a way we haven t seen for decades, maybe ever. While PlayStation and Nintendo continue to grab all the headlines and mindshare, Xbox has been enjoying something of a quiet revolution.
2020 was the year many millions of people ended up stuck at home, seeing gaming engagement break records. The big three continue to struggle to meet the demand for hardware, as the pandemic rages across the west virtually unabated.
Before going any further, it s been an incredible year for video games and gaming publishers. We ve seen publishers have a great 2020, including Devolver Digital (Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, Serious Sam 4, Disc Room, Carrion), Activision (Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Tony Hawk s Pro Skater 1+2, Crash Bandicoot 4: It s About Time), and Electronic Arts (Command & Conquer Remastered Collection, Star Wars Squadrons, NHL 21, Rocket Arena). This year s Best Publisher award ultimately came down to a two-horse race between Xbox Game Studios and PlayStation Studios. While Xbox had a great year with games like Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Tell Me Why, and Gears Tactics, it was PlayStation that stood out above the pack with some of its best games ever made.
Xbox’s 2020 Was Less About This Year and More About the Next Decade
Of the three major first-parties, Xbox is the one that feels like it’s changed the most when you compare it at the beginning of 2020 to the end. Xbox Series X was finally fully revealed and released, alongside its more economical partner in the Series S. Game Pass and xCloud are attempting to redefine the entire way we interact with our games. The most anticipated Xbox game of 2020 became the most anticipated Xbox game of 2021. The gap between Xbox and Sony’s first-party games was as wide as ever, but it’s clear that that’s going to change soon thanks to Microsoft’s unprecedented studio acquisitions. In fact, Xbox’s 2020 was less about what was contained in the year itself and more of a mission statement for the entire decade to come.