Nvidia has lost the plot with gamers

Nvidia certainly thought it was doing something good for gamers by “upgrading” the faces of our favorite video game characters. But this just shows how much the company is losing this plot.

Nvidia could have marketed its new DLSS 5 real-time lighting technology as a means of manufacturing The future, the next generation Games look better. Instead, it told the world that games people already know and love Looks bad. I focused on recreating the characters’ faces. And now, in the face of expected backlash, Nvidia CEO tells critics we’re ‘completely wrong“.

No matter how it works, the technology emerges as an AI filter that attempts to improve everyone and everything — the bane of artists.

A 15-year-old Hogwarts student? Now he’s like the star of an adult TV series trying to get through adolescence:

An already old professor at Hogwarts? What if we made them look equal the elderly?

Do you like shadows? What if we removed it in… Shadows of Assassin’s Creed?

One answer: investors. Nvidia now A $5 trillion AI companyThe average gamer may seem like an afterthought when he spends all day selling chips to companies that make chatbots. (Financially, even Nvidia’s networking business is bigger than just gaming now.)

Other answers may be darker. Some players have objected to companies for years because, Among other things Horrible thingsTheir personalities are not interesting enough.

There’s another problem ahead: everything may start out the same. As my colleague Andrew Webster pointed out, This is what happens when your technology looks like artificial intelligence. So what does Nvidia do about it?

Damage control is underway. Nvidia GeForce PR Director Ben Berraondo quickly told my colleague Tom Warren that developers love Capcom You have “detailed technical control” on their appearance for their characters, while also noting that the game developer approved the changes Resident Evil Requiem Protagonist Grace above.

Meanwhile, Starfield Game developer Bethesda chirp“This is a very early look, and our art teams will further tweak the lighting and final effect to look the way we think is best for each game. This will all be under the control of our artists, and completely optional for players.”

Here’s the pinned comment at the top of Nvidia’s YouTube video that says pretty much the same thing:

But in industry This can’t stop layoffs It doesn’t matter How well the games performPeople doubt that artists will have creative control, and Journalists are ready to listen From disgruntled developers among Nvidia’s DLSS 5 partners. (BTW, I’m sean.hollister01 on Signal.)

What I want to know is: How did Nvidia not expect this backlash, especially afterward? Previous controversiesWhy didn’t you take this new technology in a completely different direction, focusing on the future of gaming rather than the present?

Gamers seem to be less impressed with each new generation of gaming graphics. The graphical progress doesn’t seem as great as it was between the Super Nintendo and the N64, between the PS1 and PS2, in between half life and Half life 2. Photorealistic images have managed to remain elusive even in the 4K era, with many games still offering muddy graphics, jagged textures, and cut-scenes that look “more realistic” than gameplay.

This photorealistic view is exactly where Nvidia’s technology seems to be taking a leap forward, and I can’t help but agree with some of the Digital FoundryEnthusiasm when I watch The whole video Once. I want to see a generational leap in graphics too. There is an opportunity here.

But Nvidia’s examples kill me. No one should be recreating the faces of game characters like the examples we saw above, regardless of whether they are doing it using AI or not Or different human actors.

It didn’t have to be this way! This same technology could have been a win for Nvidia, if they marketed it for future next-gen games.

Picture this: It’s March 16, 2026, and Nvidia has one more thing to show us on the GTC 2026 stage — not An animated Disney robot and a disturbing music video created by artificial intelligencebut a technical demonstration the likes of which we have never seen before. It’s a completely new game that we’ve never heard of before, and the level of detail is incredible. Look at the water! See how light seems to naturally envelop video game objects that you can practically reach out and touch! See how you can recognize every stone in the castle wall, and how these characters naturally cast shadows over themselves! Look at this world filled with natural light and adorable characters that actually belong there, because it doesn’t conflict with the art direction of this brand new title!

Surely this requires the power of the entire server to pre-render, right? No, Nvidia reveals: It’s “the company’s most significant achievement in computer graphics since real-time ray tracing debuted in 2018.”* Some might say, Wow, I would buy a new GPU or GeForce Now subscription to play games that look like this!

_{*Actual line from Nvidia’s press release.}

But the real moments will come when Nvidia’s CEO hits the switch on and off. Not only does the next-gen game demo run in real-time, but the underlying graphics are even more primitive – it doesn’t require an investment in next-gen technology! It can build on what developers are already doing today. It’s like having a brand new graphics engine, except you can keep using the ones you already have. Bethesda, Capcom, and Ubisoft can tell us – without showing us angry faces – that they’ve seen such excellent results in applying this to existing games that they can’t wait to bring us new ones.

Unfortunately, Nvidia didn’t decide to market the technology this way. Nvidia has included it with DLSS, the same set of AI-enhanced performance optimization techniques that many gamers love to hate, at the same time that PC gamers struggle with it. Nvidia-powered AI servers cause global RAM shortage. We only have one year left The latest controversy surrounding Nvidia’s “fake frames”.And after a month Google AI Games Backlash. By now, you should know Nvidia better.