Posts By Mat Growcott

With the announcement of the 5000 series of graphics cards this week, there was an odd reaction. Even the highest end 5090 – £2,000 or more – wasn’t enough. The talk about “real” rendering vs processing like DLSS and frame generation came to a head in PC spaces. A small, vocal minority were extremely angry that their new very expensive graphics card was mostly focussed on tricks to make the image look better instead of genuine, ...

The New Year is upon us. Filled with possibility, 2025 could see new highs and lows hit our industry. Here are just a few we can see happening. For the first time in a while, 2025 feels like it can stand alone without reference to Covid. While the last couple of years have been chocked full of delayed titles, this year seems quieter somehow. Then again, we’ve said that before. While there may not be the bulk of anticipated titles…

For the second year in a row, I’m writing a gaming round-up that will feel less about the games and more about the industry. Unfortunately there’s no escaping that in 2024. After a packed 2023, this year felt like it had the potential to be a bit quieter. Not the case. Release after release came and went. Nearly 19,000 games released on Steam. A few of them were successful. But most people weren’t playing new games. For all the releases…

Thirty years ago, Sony released the PlayStation onto the world. It has been the standard console ever since. It certainly still is. If someone walks into a shop and asks for a traditional gaming experience, they’re walking out with a PlayStation 5. It’s just the way it is, for better or for worse. Sony have made a great show of the nostalgia associated with them over the last few months, first with Astrobot and then with a series of adverts…

Have you heard that almost everything is an Xbox? Your tablet, your phone. That old lady over the street who you don’t see as much as you used to. Now she’s an Xbox. That’s the latest marketing slogan from the team at Microsoft Gaming. They’re putting a lot of time and money into telling you that you don’t need to buy their console to be part of the Xbox ecosystem. And so for this more than any other gaming device…

It’s (probably) almost here! The successor to the mighty Nintendo Switch will be in hands within the next six months – providing of course that Nintendo ever decide to announce it. Excuse the bitterness. I’ve spent the last three years recommending the Switch, but with the caveat that a new one is on the horizon. We’ve seen pictures of it (mostly from Chinese accessory makers, such as the one above), we’ve got details of the ...

In just a couple of weeks, Nvidia is going to announce it’s next wave of graphics cards for desktop PCs. That makes writing this article quite difficult. On the one hand, there’s never been a better time to get into PC gaming. There are options to suit almost every single budget, and there are very few games you’ll miss out on by leaning heavily into the platform. On the other hand, it all comes down to price. Clever consumers might…

There are some games that hit the zeitgeist so hard that it’s hard not to see them mentioned everywhere. 1000xResist is one of those games. I knew the name long before I knew anything else about it, and the message was clear: you have to play this game. Mostly a visual novel, it tells the story of scandal and betrayal within what is basically a religious cult, and the aftermath of exposing it. It asks difficult questions and often handles…

There was a time when games you could play in your browser were huge. Miniclip, Habbo Hotel, Neopets – they were the lifeblood one all tweens in the early 2000s. With the rise of mobile, those days disappeared. Now it seems they’re coming back. And for those of us old enough to remember IT classes spent playing crappy Flash games, we got the short straw. Gone of the days of slow loading and terrible graphics. Us fogies are now secure…

Outrage! Calls of unfairness and exploitation! Broken features without a day one patch! This is Indiana Jones weekend for the privileged few and conversation has once more tipped towards early access. On the face of it, it’s a pretty obvious ploy. If you want to enjoy the latest game over the weekend, you have to pay a premium for it. If you want to be part of the initial conversation instead of nursing your FOMO from a distance, you have…