Many gamers are starting to believe that AMD is holding PC gaming back by brokering deals that prevent some of today’s hottest games (e.g., Star Wars Jedi: Survivor) from adopting support for NVIDIA’s DLSS technologies, and while the intricacies behind all of that are yet to be uncovered, AMD clearly isn’t sure how to approach the subject, having delivered a canned response yesterday after a publication shared a sizable list of triple-A, AMD-sponsored games that only include support for its own upscaling technology, FidelityFX Super Resolution. “…we give developers the flexibility to implement FSR into whichever games they choose,” AMD said, which sounds pretty cool in itself, but completely evades the actual concern. “AMD is anti-consumer & anti-gamer,” one critic says.
“To clarify, there are community sites that track the implementation of upscaling technologies, and these sites indicate that there are a number of games that support only DLSS currently (for example, see link),” an AMD spokesperson told Wccftech.
“AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution is an open-source technology that supports a variety of GPU architectures, including consoles and competitive solutions, and we believe an open approach that is broadly supported on multiple hardware platforms is the best approach that benefits developers and gamers. AMD is committed to doing what is best for game developers and gamers, and we give developers the flexibility to implement FSR into whichever games they choose.”
“NVIDIA does not and will not block, restrict, discourage, or hinder developers from implementing competitor technologies in any way,” said Keita Iida, vice president of developer relations, NVIDIA. “We provide the support and tools for all game developers to easily integrate DLSS if they choose and even created NVIDIA Streamline to make it easier for game developers to add competitive technologies to their games.
From a Wccftech report:
If we take a look at some of the most recent NVIDIA and AMD-sponsored releases, we would see that almost all NVIDIA-sponsored titles had DLSS and FSR support at or soon after launch. Every title except Battlefield 2042 had DLSS/FSR support added to it. The only reason Battlefield 2024 didn’t have FSR 2 support was that the upscaling technology wasn’t available at the time of the launch.
| Release Date | Title | Bundle Partner | FSR 1/2 Release | DLSS Release |
| 5/2/2023 | Redfall | NVIDIA | 5/2/2023 | 5/2/2023 |
| 4/28/2023 | STAR WARS: Jedi Survivor | AMD | 4/28/2023 | None |
| 4/21/2023 | Dead Island 2 | AMD | 4/21/2023 | None |
| 3/28/2023 | Last of Us Part 1 | AMD | 3/28/2023 | 3/28/2023 |
| 3/23/2023 | Resident Evil 4 Remake | AMD | 3/23/2023 | None |
| 1/24/2023 | Forspoken | AMD | 1/24/2023 | 1/24/2023 |
| 12/2/2022 | Callisto Protocol | AMD | 12/2/2022 | None |
| 12/1/2022 | Marvel’s Midnight Suns | NVIDIA | 12/1/2022 | 12/1/2022 |
| 11/30/2022 | Warhammer 40K Darktide | NVIDIA | 11/30/2022 | 11/30/2022 |
| 10/19/2022 | Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection | AMD | 10/19/2022 | 10/19/2022 |
| 8/23/2022 | Saints Row | AMD | 11/29/2022 | None |
| 8/12/2022 | Marvel’s Spiderman Remastered | NVIDIA | 8/12/2022 | 8/12/2022 |
| 5/25/2022 | Sniper Elite 5 | AMD | 5/25/2022 | None |
| 3/30/2022 | Death Stranding Directors Cut | NVIDIA | 9/28/2022 | 3/30/2022 |
| 3/24/2022 | Ghostwire Tokyo | NVIDIA | 3/24/2022 | 3/24/2022 |
| 11/15/2021 | Halo Infinite | AMD | None | None |
| 10/26/2021 | Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy | NVIDIA | 2/11/2022 | 10/26/2021 |
| 10/7/2021 | Far Cry 6 | AMD | 10/7/2021 | None |
| 10/6/2021 | Battlefield 2042 | NVIDIA | None | 10/6/2021 |
| 5/7/2021 | Resident Evil Village | AMD | 7/19/2021 | None |
| 11/23/2020 | World of Warcraft Shadowlands | AMD | None | None |
Discussion (19 replies)
Join Discussion →This really shouldn't be a surprise. The real question is whether or not AMD prevented the developers from implementing DLSS to get the sponsorship or not. My guess is the answer is "yes" and that is anti-consumer. Not surprising in the least, but I would call that anti-consumer. NVIDIA pulls stuff like that all the time and has done far worse such as trying to co-opt the vendor brands and hold them hostage and lock them out of producing AMD hardware under the same branding.
NVIDIA trying to decide what ASUS or GIGABYTE can do with ROG and Aorus respectively is far worse than AMD sponsored titles not implementing DLSS. Especially when NVIDIA cards generally support FSR as well.
I dunno - helping subsidize development of a feature in exchange for some exclusivity isn’t a big ask.
Now if they were making anyone who implemented FSR do this, that would be one thing - but if you want “free” dev assistance, and the price is that you can’t include DLSS… that I think is fair
I love that when nvidia does its evil things people inmediatly go grab a pitchfork, but when AMD does it, its ok, because nvidia is evil. :rolleyes::rolleyes:
FSR works across all cards & doesn't discriminate between cards in terms of features/performance etc.
I know this could open up a whole other can of worms for debate but the one game/series on the list I do play are the Resident Evil games and while I'd like them to have DLSS I've also found that the REngine is dynamic and efficient enough that it doesn't really need it. That brings up the question of optimization. How many of these AMD "only" titles are optimized well enough that DLSS might not provide much of a benefit? Obviously, The Stutter Protocol doesn't apply but what about the others? At a glance, I don't think I have any of them so I can't say but I do wonder about it.
The issue of developers leaning on DLSS as a crutch to compensate for poor optimization has been brought up before. I like DLSS and have enjoyed using it but I've played plenty of games that needed a lot more to get them up to par after launch so there is that to consider. I'm still mixed on frame generation though.
Except its IQ is clearly behind DLSS.
I recall some people blamed nvidia when FSR first came out as it took quite a while to get adopted (and still lags behind DLSS in game support) claiming nvidia blocked developers from implementing FSR. Go figure...
Hmm..
That's fair.
But DLSS doesn't help anyone with an AMD or Intel card, so better IQ versus working at all for those folks
I'd also argue: it's better to not need FSR/DLSS in the first place, it's a crutch no matter what you are looking at. So the fact that one crutch is a bit better than the other is not really a good position to be in no matter how you look at it.
BTW AMD is also blocking XeSS which is crossplatform
Don't get me wrong, I have an Nvidia GPU and I appreciate when I can use DLSS technology, but I do agree with AMD.
The entire market is harmed when proprietary solutions are used. Lets have more open standards for accomplishing this stuff. The GPU makers should compete on performance, not on features. If they compete on features they accomplish nothing but breaking compatibility.
don't think for a second that AMD uses open standards because of their good heart. It's simply because they won't dedicate resources/time to make a propietary one, also because they don't have the marketshare to push their own.
And hey, lets settle for an inferior technology since its open... :rolleyes::rolleyes:
You are absolutely right about this - it's purely a "Hey, we are stuck in second place" play - they know they don't have the market share or pull to enforce anything too proprietary, so play the good guy.
That said, I'm with Zath. I tend to support open standards over even superior proprietary ones - because I hate seeing vendor lock-in. It never turns out good for the consumer in the end.
Yeah its not like CUDA help catapult nvidia to a trillion dollar company...:rolleyes::rolleyes:, but hey there's openCL
I used to favor open standards, but I just like the technology that works better even if its propietary, after all competition makes things better, also sometimes the open standards catchup like freesync vs gsync so in the end the consumer wins.
BTW, eventually FSR3 will be released and its rumored to only work with RDNA3. will it still be ok if AMD continues to block DLSS and XeSS?
Well let's not take this out of context - AMD isn't blanket blocking DLSS and XeSS. They are only requesting that in exchange for development help / assistance and promotion. If you want to have FSR and DLSS and XeSS in your title - you are free to do so. But if you want development and marketing money from AMD, you need to sign on the dotted line.
So they are blocking them :rolleyes::rolleyes:
In contrast nvidia sponsored games are free to use FSR/Xess
Open standards are very important for a good deal of things, like pcie, usb,... I don't think something like dlss needs to be open.
Well amd should work hard at better hardware, and at supporting more codecs with their gpus.