GDC Round-up and PlayStation's new AI Upscaling Tech | AI and Games Newsletter
Following up on everything that went down at GDC 2024
Hey all, welcome back to our weekly updates on AI and Games. We have a bunch of updates on future events, some more GDC post-mortem and a little discussion on Sony’s updated PlayStation console.
Some Quick Announcements
As is often the case, I’m a busy guy. So here’s a bunch of updates be it in press or future speaking engagements.
This week in Le Monde [French, Paywalled], I discuss the history of non-player character (NPC) AI in the video games industry, and how it may evolve in the future.
The London Developer Conference is but a week away on April 11th, and I will be there not only providing a talk, but also hosting a panel on the intersection of AI for video games.
I will be hosting roundtables on AI for game development at Barclay’s Game Frenzy 2024 on May 16th
I’m pleased to announce another talk: “A Hype-Free Overview of Generative AI for Games” will be happening at Develop:Brighton in July.
Finally, a special shout-out to the students on the Interactive Media and Game Development (IMGD) course at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Plus a big hug to the IMGD course director, Dr Gillian Smith, who has to deal with students not believing that their former research colleague is that ‘influencer’ on YouTube - so sorry Gillian, love you!
AI and Games: The GDC 2024 Vlog
In last week’s newsletter, I detailed my initial thoughts having just returned from GDC - which you can read below. This included many of the themes I found I was having in conversations with developers and researchers, as well as what we saw in talks at the AI summit.
Now following up on all of this, we have not one but two lovely updates recorded while I was on-site at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
The first is the latest edition of my podcast Branching Factor, in which I caught up with co-host
to discuss our respective weeks and the challenges of surviving one of the biggest events in the gaming calendar.
Secondly, I recorded a vlog throughout the week detailing my experiences and giving more of an insight in what it’s like to attend GDC on a day-to-day basis. This is now live on the AI and Games Plus YouTube channel, and ready to watch below.
PS5 AI Super Sampling Rumours
While there’s much to be said about the AI stuffs happening in and around GDC, there’s also the rumblings being heard far away from the Moscone centre. The story that caught my eye was focussed on new console hardware.
As has been the case since the PS3/Xbox 360 era, it’s common to have a ‘mid-generation refresh’ of gaming console hardware. This is what has led to a number of intermediate releases across both Sony and Microsoft’s gaming provisions, with last generation seeing the release of both a PlayStation 4 Pro, as well as the the Xbox One S and X models which have since standardised Microsoft’s approach to their console SKU’s. Plus, it’s worth mentioning that Nintendo is also prone to doing this, what with the (admittedly excellent) Switch OLED upgrade.
Despite shortages in the opening years of both the Xbox Series S/X and PlayStation 5 lifecycles, we’re very much reached the midpoint of their rollout, and while it won’t be an another few years until new consoles hit store shelves, that mid-gen refresh appears to be right around the corner. Microsoft’s upgraded Xbox codenamed “Brooklin” which was accidentally leaked during the FTC court case for the Activision Blizzard acquisition, is now expected to launch in Q4 2024. Meanwhile rumours of a PlayStation 5 Pro model kicked up some interesting AI updates.
In recent months Jeff Grub of Giant Bomb and Game Mess has reported that the PS5 Pro is expected to be released in late 2024, which has since been corroborated notably by Insider Gaming, and while the upgraded hardware largely addresses hard drive read speeds plus CPU and GPU upgrades that could prove of interest to the most avid of players. For me what was most interesting was the inclusion of what is known as PSSR.
PSSR = DLSS for PlayStation
PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) is an AI feature built into the PlayStation 5’s updated SDK that is designed to provide real-time upscaling of the image on the device. Super sampling is an increasingly popular aspect of gaming that is designed to upscale the rendered image from the graphical processing unit (GPU) of a given device to a higher resolution more efficiently than rendering it at that fidelity directly in the game engine.
This approach has largely been popularised courtesy of GPU’s available for gaming PC’s, most notably the FMD solution by AMD, as well as Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) available on NVIDIA GPUs. While FMD is a more traditional software solution both DLSS and now PSSR are built to achieve upscaling using AI technology - though it’s worth stating AMD are now exploring AI-driven upscaling as well.
As I’ve detailed previously, DLSS is designed to upscale images typically from 1080p to 4K resolution, and runs natively on dedicated cores of the NVIDIA GPUs to achieve this effect without impacting overall performance. You can catch my previous video on the subject (brought to you in association with NVIDIA) to get a high-level overview.
NVIDIA have since made an update to this system, with DLSS 3.5 live as of the middle of 2023. The big innovation as the technology has moved on from the original DLSS, is that it can be achieved without significant effort on the part of the developers themselves. Previously in DLSS v1, developers would need to provide high resolution images of their game that were indicate of the desired output. Whereas now DLSS relies on a generic super resolution model
It appears for all intents and purposes that PSSR is DLSS but built specifically for PlayStation hardware (which amusingly, relies on AMD GPU architectures). At present the system is built to upscale from 1080p up to 4K resolution, though leaked internal documentation implies that future updates to the API will permit up to 8K scaling as well. All of this will run on the beefed up device, requiring approximately 250MB of memory in order to run efficiently.
Is AI Super Sampling a Strong Enough USP?
While this information is derived from leaked sources, it seems reliable enough to believe that the new PS5 will include this upscaling architecture. However, the bigger question is whether this is sufficient for many to consider the purchase of a new slightly updated PlayStation console?
Perhaps contrary to the narrative led by PlayStation 5 finally exceeded the Nintendo Switch as the top selling console of 2023, things are not quite so rosy for Sony’s flagship platform. Undoubtedly the largest indicator is Sony’s recent financials, which saw a decline of software sales and an increase in losses from hardware, combined with an overall 6.5% drop in share price and $10 billion wiped from their stock. This is no doubt a contributing factor to a slew of redundancies across even their most successful studios, and down beloved ‘SingStar’ studio Sony London.
In amongst these larger story points, was two critical elements:
There are no plans for any “major existing franchise titles“ in the next fiscal year.
i.e. No further titles in the Horizon, Last of Us, God of War, Spider-Man etc. franchises.
While PS5 sales figures were provided, there was no word at all on the PSVR2, which only launched in February of 2023.
It’s long known that the PSVR2 isn’t doing terribly well, with the Meta Quest massively outselling it during the holiday 2023 in the US.
Typically the sale of a new mid-gen console is more or less heavily reliant on existing audiences: you sell an upgraded PS5 to people who already have the base model. Given they operate at a higher price point - or the original model receives a price cut - it’s often the most ardent of fans who will stump up the cash for an updated model. The story behind the abysmal performance of the PSVR 2 is that regardless of the tech, you need the games to shift it!
In previous generations - even the most recent upgrades such as the PS4 Pro, and even the PS5 itself - the argument has been in increased visuals and the latter generations relied heavily on the increased sales of 4K televisions. Why not spend a bit more cash on a fancy new piece of hardware that utilises your TV to full effect? Many games had a dedicated visuals mode, or a boost to performance through the updated hardware. But with games now more expensive (both to make and buy), and not many supporting full real-time ray tracing (which is often where upscaling helps offset performance costs), are you going to see much of an improvement that merits the increased expense?
It’s also a much harder sell quite frankly: is AI upscaling a feature that’s going to convince PS5 owners to stump up money when NVIDIA struggles to do the same thing for the more ardent PC audience? I mean at this point NVIDIA are chasing their AI people needing dedicated processors for all sorts of inference and generative models. The little people are increasingly less valuable to their bottom line. But as stated, Sony’s goal is to have existing audiences double dip. I sincerely doubt there’s sufficient enthusiasm for AI upscaling lest there is something else happening in the ‘PS5 Pro’s provision that merits further consideration.
Closing
As always, there’s plenty to be talking about and not enough time to write about it. Tune in next week as I write up my thoughts on the Ubisoft NEO demo from GDC and provide my playthrough footage to boot!