Remedy Entertainment has revealed that patch 1.0.16.1—for Alan Wake 2—will optimize graphics card performance on older architectures. Digital Foundry's Video Producer, Alex Battaglia, previewed these improvements earlier in the week—he noted that Remedy's Northlight Engine-powered 2023 visual masterpiece was: "one of the most demanding for older hardware. Owing to its use of DX12 Ultimate mesh shaders, the game could run on older hardware but often delivered an unplayable experience, especially on Nvidia's GTX 10-series GPUs built on the Pascal architecture." That generation's lack of mesh shader support is observed as its main "undoing in Alan Wake 2," where a substantial portion of visual delivery is reliant on said technologies. Battaglia observed that: "the game does function on GPUs that don't support mesh shaders, but poor performance and visual errors are the problem: the GTX 1060 at 1080p on FSR 2 quality mode, married up with PS5's performance mode quality presets delivers a game typically running under 60 FPS, more usually hitting circa 15 FPS. Game frame-rate is so low, even game speed and audio playback are compromised."

Today, Remedy's Alan Wake social media account announced the release of the game's latest update: "We've been optimizing the PC version of Alan Wake 2, and as a result the minimum PC system requirements have been lowered. Please check the updated image (below)! These changes take effect with update 1.0.16.1, out on PC now." Certain owners of Team Green Pascal-era hardware, as well as Team Red RDNA 1.0/Navi 10 preservationists will be pleased to find out that Alan Wake 2's minimum specification tier now accommodates NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 and AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics cards. Digital Foundry's preview piece did mention incremental improvements for Vega-based GPUs, albeit with optimizations introduced within earlier Alan Wake 2 patches.

Yesterday, Remedy Entertainment Plc ("Remedy") and 505 Games S.p.A. ("505 Games") announce a transaction upon which all publishing, distribution, marketing and other rights to Control, codename Condor, Control 2, and all future Control products will revert to Remedy. The Control franchise is in the core of Remedy. Having acquired the full rights to Control, Condor and Control 2, Remedy is now in a position to make the right product and business decisions focusing on long-term franchise growth.

The transaction has no immediate effect on the income statement, while we see attractive growth opportunities arising in the mid-to-long term. This transaction will enable us to negotiate better deals for current and future Control games. We can now weigh up the options between self-publishing and a new publishing partner for Condor and Control 2. At the same time, we are in a better negotiating position than before as Control is an established brand and Alan Wake 2 has been successful. We are confident that these factors combined will enable us to get the right partner, deal structure and risk-reward profile that benefit Remedy and are the best fit for the Control franchise. We will evaluate and negotiate with potential future partners over the coming months.

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) today announced the PlayStation 5 console (PS5) has surpassed 50 million units sold through to consumers, three years since its Nov. 2020 launch. Thanks to the support of PlayStation fans globally, the PS5 console has experienced strong momentum this year, driven by a slate of highly popular games and SIE's continued focus on bringing innovation to the gaming experience, including PS5 game streaming for PlayStation Plus Premium members.

"Achieving this PS5 sales milestone is a testament to the unwavering support of the global PlayStation community and their passion for the incredible experiences created by the talented developers from PlayStation Studios and our partners," said Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment. "We're grateful for all of our players who have joined the PS5 journey so far, and we're thrilled that this is the first holiday season since launch that we have a full supply of PS5 consoles—so anyone who wants to get one can get one."

"Alan Wake II," released earlier this week, is the latest third person action adventure loaded with psychological thriller elements that call back to some of the best works of Remedy Entertainment, including "Control," "Max Payne 2," and "Alan Wake." It's also a visual feast as our performance review of the game should show you, leveraging the full spectrum of the DirectX 12 Ultimate feature-set. In the run up to the release, when Remedy put out the system requirements lists for "Alan Wake II" with clear segregation for experiences with ray tracing and without; what wasn't clear was just how much the game depended on hardware support for mesh shaders, which is why its bare minimum list called for at least an NVIDIA RTX 2060 "Turing," or at least an AMD RX 6600 XT RDNA2, both of which are DirectX 12 Ultimate GPUs with hardware mesh shaders support.

There was some confusion among gaming online forums over the requirement for hardware mesh shaders. Many people assumed that the game will not work on GPUs without mesh shader support, locking out lots of gamers. Through the course of our testing for our performance review, we learned that while it is true that "Alan Wake II" relies on hardware support for mesh shaders, the lack of this does not break gameplay. You will, however, pay a heavy performance penalty on GPUs that lack hardware mesh shader support. On such GPUs, the game is designed to show users a warning dialog box that their GPU lacks mesh shader support (screenshot below), but you can choose to ignore this warning, and go ahead to play the game. The game considers mesh shaders a "recommended GPU feature," and not a requirement. Without mesh shaders, you can expect a severe performance loss that is best illustrated with the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT based on the RDNA architecture, which lacks hardware mesh shaders.

Alan Wake II by Remedy Entertainment promises to be the year's most visually intense AAA title. The publisher put out the various tiered system requirements lists that highlight just what it takes to max the game out. As with most publishers these days, the company put out separate lists for RT and non-RT experiences. The common minimum requirements across all tiers include 90 GB of SSD-based storage, Windows 10 or Windows 11, and 16 GB of main memory. At the bare minimum, you'll need a quad-core Intel Core i5-7600K or comparable processor. For all other tiers, Remedy recommends at least an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X or Intel equivalent processor (which would mean at least a Core i7-10700K), or an 8-core/16-thread processor that's as fast as the 3700X.

The bare minimum GPU requirement calls for an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 or Radeon RX 6600. With this, you can expect 1080p @ 30 FPS, and can use the "quality" setting with DLSS 2 or FSR 2. The non-RT "Medium" list, is either 1440p @ 30 FPS or 1080p @ 60 FPS. For 1440p @ 30 FPS, you'll need a GPU at least as fast as a GeForce RTX 3060 or Radeon RX 6600 XT. 1080p @ 60 FPS requires at least a GeForce RTX 3070 or Radeon RX 6700 XT. The "Ultra" non-RT preset with 4K @ 60 Hz, which is the best experience you can possibly have without ray tracing, demands at least a GeForce RTX 4070 or Radeon RX 7800 XT. Ray tracing is a whole different beast.

Uncover the source of the supernatural darkness in Remedy Entertainment's Alan Wake 2, with the power of the GeForce RTX 40 Series. Experience two beautiful yet terrifying worlds enhanced with full ray tracing for the highest levels of fidelity, accelerated and enhanced by DLSS 3.5 with Ray Reconstruction. And get the most responsive gameplay possible thanks to NVIDIA Reflex. Solve the deadly mysteries of Alan Wake 2 with RTX On - the definitive way to play.

In 2019, NVIDIA and Remedy Entertainment partnered to enhance Control, one of the first ray-traced and DLSS-enhanced games, which to this day remains a stunning title that demonstrates the advanced capabilities of the PC platform. In Alan Wake 2, our technical partnership takes the PC edition of Remedy's new, eagerly awaited game to the next level with fully ray-traced, path-traced graphics that are beyond anything you've previously seen.

As part of NVIDIA and Microsoft's collaboration to bring more choice to gamers, new Microsoft Store integration has been added to GeForce NOW that lets gamers stream select titles from the Xbox PC Game Pass catalog on GeForce NOW, starting today. With the Microsoft Store integration, members will see a brand-new Xbox button on supported PC games and can seamlessly launch these titles across their devices, provided they either purchased the standalone games through the Microsoft Store or have an active Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass subscription.

Hot off our recent Gamescom announcement, four blockbuster titles are coming to GeForce NOW this fall: Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty expansion, Party Animals and PAYDAY 3. Plus, head to the cloud and stream the 25 new titles joining the cloud this week, including DOOM 2016 from Bethesda.

Remedy Entertainment announced last month, via a FAQ, that it plans to keep Alan Wake 2 exclusive to digital platforms for an October 17 (this year) release, with no consideration given to customers demanding physical copies. Eurogamer questioned the game's creative director Sam Lake, and director Kyle Rowley at Summer Games Fest (earlier this month)—the site's reporter demanded a more detailed explanation regarding the long-anticipated sequel's eschewing of physical media. Lake responded first: "Yeah, it is digital only, and kind of coming to this idea, both from Remedy and Epic's perspective, that's our current thinking. It just felt it makes sense for this, and the timing felt right." His colleague, Rowley added further insight: "As creatives obviously, by going digital-only it does allow us more time to polish the game. Like, a significant number of weeks actually. Because otherwise, the game that goes on the disc, obviously it has to be playable without a patch. We didn't want to release something that we weren't proud of basically, and that we didn't want players to play. So hopefully this way we can give you a better version of the game."

The gaming community has debated at length about the temporary nature of digital releases—termination of online services and changes in ownership rights have resulted in certain titles becoming completely inaccessible to players/fans. Preservationists have fought hard for the continued release of physical media, but some publishers have resorted to bundling a download code in a disc-less retail box. Remedy Entertainment's FAQ proposes that digital platforms provide a more cost effective option for customers: "There are many reasons for this. For one, a large number of players have shifted to digital only. You can buy a Sony PlayStation 5 without a disc drive and Microsoft's Xbox Series S is a digital only console. It is not uncommon to release modern games as digital-only...Secondly, not releasing a disc helps keep the price of the game at $59.99 / €59.99 and the PC version at $49.99 / €49.99...Finally, we did not want to ship a disc product and have it require a download for the game - we do not think this would make for a great experience either."

Remedy Entertainment ("Remedy") has signed an agreement with 505 Games, an international video game publisher and a subsidiary of Digital Bros Group, under which Remedy and 505 Games will co-develop and co-publish Control 2 (formerly known as Codename Heron), a sequel to Remedy's award-winning game Control.

Control 2's initial development budget amounts to EUR 50 million, and Remedy will retain the ownership of the game's intellectual property. The development, marketing, and post-launch investments as well as the future net revenues generated by the game will be equally split between 505 Games and Remedy. The game will be available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, and it will be built on Remedy's proprietary Northlight engine and tools. Remedy will publish the game on the PC platform and 505 Games will publish it on the console platforms. The project is currently in concept stage.

Remedy Entertainment, the creators of Max Payne, are pleased to announce that they will remake the iconic Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne video games in a new development agreement with Rockstar Games. The relationship between Remedy and Rockstar Games dates back to the original release of the critically acclaimed Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne games, developed by Remedy and published by Rockstar Games. Both games left an indelible mark in popular culture, lauded for their neo-noir atmosphere, groundbreaking storytelling and "bullet-time" gunplay.

"We were thrilled when our long-time friends at Remedy approached us about remaking the original Max Payne games," said Sam Houser, Founder of Rockstar Games "We are massive fans of the work the Remedy team has created over the years, and we can't wait to play these new versions." "Max Payne has always held a special place in the hearts of everyone at Remedy, and we know the millions of fans worldwide feel the same," said Remedy CEO, Tero Virtala. "We're hugely excited to be working with our partners at Rockstar Games once again for the chance to bring the story, action and atmosphere of the original Max Payne games back to players in new ways."

Every now and then, the Epic Games store gets a major discount on popular games. If you have been following the free game deals on the store, you may have seen that sometimes even the AAA-class of games get a free offer and you can purchase them without spending a dime. Today is one of those days where Epic Games store is offering the Control game for free. The offer expires on June 17th, when it again becomes paid offer. If you haven't heard of Control, you can read the the game information below. You can check out the deal here.

After a secretive agency in New York is invaded by an otherworldly threat, you become the new Director struggling to regain Control.
From developer Remedy Entertainment, this supernatural 3rd person action-adventure will challenge you to master the combination of supernatural abilities, modifiable loadouts and reactive environments while fighting through a deep and unpredictable world.
Control is Jesse Faden's story and her personal search for answers as she grows into the role of the Director. The world of Control has its own story, as do the allies Jesse meets along the way. Jesse works with other Bureau agents and discovers strange experiments and secrets.

Nintendo has launched limited game streaming trials with the Nintendo Switch in Japan however these have tended to be prohibitively expensive and were never offered outside of Japan. That is all changing with the launch of Control Ultimate Edition from Remedy Entertainment which is only available as a cloud version. The game is streamed from Ubitus servers to the Nintendo Switch at 30 FPS with the choice of a graphical or performance mode.

The graphical mode features limited raytracing enabled by the server GPUs which would not be possible with the local hardware. used by Ubitus, Control Ultimate Edition - Cloud Version is now available via the Nintendo eShop for players in North America, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and parts of Europe. The game is offered as a free download to test connection requirements but to play you will require a 39.99 USD Access Pass.

The 2020 DICE (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) Awards offered their Game of the Year title to "Untitled Goose Game", developed by Indie Studio House House. That game also took home the "Outstanding Achievement for an independent Game" award, as well as Outstanding Achievement in Audio Design.

The awards were also good for Control, the paranormal-esque game developed by renowned Remedy Entertainment. The game was victor in four different categories: Action Game of the Year, Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction, Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction, and Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition. Disco Elysium, the quasi-combatless story-based RPG from ZA/UM Studios that was 2019's biggest achievement (for this writer at least) won the Outstanding Achievement in Story award. Look after the break for the full list of categories, nominees, and winners.

Free games are always hard to pass, so if you are craving some meaty releases to tide you over until something new and fresh that catches your fancy comes along, this Epic Games Store might (and might not) be for you. From October 17th through October 24th, the digital storefront so many love to hate is offering two generally well thought-off games i the form of Observer and Alan Wake's American Nightmare.

Whether you crave a meaty, cyberpunk-inspired detective story in Observer, or a not so meaty, all-hell-broken-lose experience set in the excellent Alan Wake universe, you can drop by your Epic Games Store Launcher (we know you have it installed, come on) and just add them to your cart for free. They're yours to keep forever. And if you don't have the Epic Games Store launcher, perhaps you should. Observer might very well make it worth all the hassle of downloading and clicking through a menu three or four times. And as a very relevant footnote, the Epic Games Store has just started its Halloween Sale, which goes from today, October 18th, through November 1st. You can find some older games discounted up to 70%, with the discount decreasing somewhat linearly according to release date.