Technologies

I Saw the AI Future of Video Games: It Starts With a Character Hopping Over a Box

At the 2025 Game Developers Conference, graphics-chip maker Nvidia showed off its latest tools that use generative AI to augment future games.

At its own GTC AI show in San Jose, California, earlier this month, graphics-chip maker Nvidia unveiled a plethora of partnerships and announcements for its generative AI products and platforms. At the same time, in San Francisco, Nvidia held behind-closed-doors showcases alongside the Game Developers Conference to show game-makers and media how its generative AI technology could augment the video games of the future.

Last year, Nvidia’s GDC 2024 showcase had hands-on demonstrations where I was able to speak with AI-powered nonplayable characters, or NPCs, in pseudo-conversations. They replied to things I typed out, with reasonably contextual responses (though not quite as natural as scripted ones). AI also radically modernized old games for a contemporary graphics look.

This year, at GDC 2025, Nvidia once again invited industry members and press into a hotel room near the Moscone Center, where the convention was held. In a large room ringed with computer rigs packed with its latest GeForce 5070, 5080 and 5090 GPUs, the company showed off more ways gamers could see generative AI remastering old games, offering new options for animators, and evolving NPC interactions.

Nvidia also demonstrated how its latest AI graphics rendering tech, DLSS 4 for its GPU line, improves image quality, light path and framerates in modern games, features that affect gamers every day, though these efforts by Nvidia are more conventional than its other experiments. While some of these advancements rely on studios to implement new tech into their games, others are available right now for gamers to try.

Making animations from text prompts

Nvidia detailed a new tool that generates character model animations based on text prompts — sort of like if you could use ChatGPT in iMovie to make your game’s characters move around in scripted action. The goal? Save developers time. Using the tool could turn programming a several-hour sequence into a several-minute task.

Body Motion, as the tool is called, can be plugged into many digital content creation platforms; Nvidia Senior Product Manager John Malaska, who ran my demo, used Autodesk Maya. To start the demonstration, Malaska set up a sample situation in which he wanted one character to hop over a box, land and move forward. On the timeline for the scene, he selected the moment for each of those three actions and wrote text prompts to have the software generate the animation. Then it was time to tinker.

To refine his animation, he used Body Motion to generate four different variations of the character hopping and chose the one he wanted. (All animations are generated from licensed motion capture data, Malaska said.) Then he specified where exactly he wanted the character to land, and then selected where he wanted them to end up. Body Motion simulated all the frames in between those carefully selected motion pivot points, and boom: animation segment achieved.

In the next section of the demo, Malaska had the same character walking through a fountain to get to a set of stairs. He could edit with text prompts and timeline markers to have the character sneak around and circumvent the courtyard fixtures.

«We’re excited about this,» Malaska said. «It’s really going to help people speed up and accelerate workflows.»

He pointed to situations where a developer may get an animation but want it to run slightly differently and send it back to the animators for edits. A far more time-consuming scenario would be if the animations had been based on actual motion capture, and if the game required such fidelity, getting mocap actors back to record could take days, weeks or months. Tweaking animations with Body Motion based on a library of motion capture data can circumvent all that.

I’d be remiss not to worry for motion capture artists and whether Body Motion could be used to circumvent their work in part or in whole. Generously, this tool could be put to good use making animatics and virtually storyboarding sequences before bringing in professional artists to motion capture finalized scenes. But like any tool, it all depends on who’s using it.

Body Motion is scheduled to be released later in 2025 under the Nvidia Enterprise License.

Another stab at remastering Half-Life 2 using RTX Remix

At last year’s GDC, I’d seen some remastering of Half-Life 2 with Nvidia’s platform for modders, RTX Remix, which is meant to breathe new life into old games. Nvidia’s latest stab at reviving Valve’s classic game was released to the public as a free demo, which gamers can download on Steam to check out for themselves. What I saw of it in Nvidia’s press room was ultimately a tech demo (and not the full game), but it still shows off what RTX Remix can do to update old games to meet modern graphics expectations.

Last year’s RTX Remix Half-Life 2 demonstration was about seeing how old, flat wall textures could be updated with depth effects to, say, make them look like grouted cobblestone, and that’s present here too. When looking at a wall, «the bricks seem to jut out because they use parallax occlusion mapping,» said Nyle Usmani, senior product manager of RTX Remix, who led the demo. But this year’s demo was more about lighting interaction — even to the point of simulating the shadow passing through the glass covering the dial of a gas meter.

Usmani walked me through all the lighting and fire effects, which modernized some of the more iconically haunting parts of Half-Life 2’s fallen Ravenholm area. But the most striking application was in an area where the iconic headcrab enemies attack, when Usmani paused and pointed out how backlight was filtering through the fleshy parts of the grotesque pseudo-zombies, which made them glow a translucent red, much like what happens when you put a finger in front of a flashlight. Coinciding with GDC, Nvidia released this effect, called subsurface scattering, in a software development kit so game developers can start using it.

RTX Remix has other tricks that Usmani pointed out, like a new neural shader for the latest version of the platform — the one in the Half-Life 2 demo. Essentially, he explained, a bunch of neural networks train live on the game data as you play, and tailor the indirect lighting to what the player sees, making areas lit more like they’d be in real life. In an example, he swapped between old and new RTX Remix versions, showing, in the new version, light properly filtering through the broken rafters of a garage. Better still, it bumped the frames per second to 100, up from 87.

«Traditionally, we would trace a ray and bounce it many times to illuminate a room,» Usmani said. «Now we trace a ray and bounce it only two to three times and then we terminate it, and the AI infers a multitude of bounces after. Over enough frames, it’s almost like it’s calculating an infinite amount of bounces, so we’re able to get more accuracy because it’s tracing less rays [and getting] more performance.»

Still, I was seeing the demo on an RTX 5070 GPU, which retails for $550, and the demo requires at least an RTX 3060 Ti, so owners of graphics cards older than that are out of luck. «That’s purely because path tracing is very expensive — I mean, it’s the future, basically the cutting edge, and it’s the most advanced path tracing,» Usmani said.

Nvidia ACE uses AI to help NPCs think

Last year’s NPC AI station demonstrated how nonplayer characters can uniquely respond to the player, but this year’s Nvidia ACE tech showed how players can suggest new thoughts for NPCs that’ll change their behavior and the lives around them.

The GPU maker demonstrated the tech as plugged into InZoi, a Sims-like game where players care for NPCs with their own behaviors. But with an upcoming update, players can toggle on Smart Zoi, which uses Nvidia ACE to insert thoughts directly into the minds of the Zois (characters) they oversee… and then watch them react accordingly. These thoughts can’t go against their own traits, explained Nvidia Geforce Tech Marketing Analyst Wynne Riawan, so they’ll send the Zoi in directions that make sense.

«So, by encouraging them, for example, ‘I want to make people’s day feel better,» it’ll encourage them to talk to more Zois around them,» Riawan said. «Try is the key word: They do still fail. They’re just like humans.»

Riawan inserted a thought into the Zoi’s head: «What if I’m just an AI in a simulation?» The poor Zoi freaked out but still ran to the public bathroom to brush her teeth, which fit her traits of, apparently, being really into dental hygiene.

Those NPC actions following up on player-inserted thoughts are powered by a small language model with half a billion parameters (large language models can go from 1 billion to over 30 billion parameters, with higher giving more opportunity for nuanced responses). The one used in-game is based on the 8 billion parameter Mistral NeMo Minitron model shrunken down to be able to be used by older and less powerful GPUs.

«We do purposely squish down the model to a smaller model so that it’s accessible to more people,» Riawan said.

The Nvidia ACE tech runs on-device using computer GPUs — Krafton, the publisher behind InZoi, recommends a minimum GPU spec of an Nvidia RTX 3060 with 8GB of virtual memory to use this feature, Riawan said. Krafton gave Nvidia a «budget» of one gigabyte of VRAM in order to ensure the graphics card has enough resources to render, well, the graphics. Hence the need to minimize the parameters.

Nvidia is still internally discussing how or whether to unlock the ability to use larger-parameter language models if players have more powerful GPUs. Players may be able to see the difference, as the NPCs «do react more dynamically as they react better to your surroundings with a bigger model,» Riawan said. «Right now, with this, the emphasis is mostly on their thoughts and feelings.»

An early access version of the Smart Zoi feature will go out to all users for free, starting March 28. Nvidia sees it and the Nvidia ACE technology as a stepping stone that could one day lead to truly dynamic NPCs.

«If you have MMORPGs with Nvidia ACE in it, NPCs will not be stagnant and just keep repeating the same dialogue — they can just be more dynamic and generate their own responses based on your reputation or something. Like, Hey, you’re a bad person, I don’t want to sell my goods to you,» Riawan said.

Technologies

Zelle App Is Gone. Use These Alternatives to Send Money Digitally

You still have lots of free ways to send money to friends and family electronically.

If Zelle has been your go-to app for sending money digitally, it’s time to find a new method. The digital payment app shut down on April 1.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use Zelle altogether, however. Zelle has only discontinued its standalone app. You can still send money using Zelle if your bank belongs to the Zelle network. You’ll just need to do it through your bank’s app or website. You also have other services to choose from. Here’s what you need to know about this change and your options moving forward.

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Why the Zelle app is shutting down

When Zelle launched in 2017, only about 60 US financial institutions offered the service by the end of that year. Today, that number exceeds 2,200. As a result, less than 2% of Zelle transactions occur through the standalone app. Zelle has been phasing out the ability to make transactions on its mobile app since October 2024.

«Today, the vast majority of people using Zelle to send money use it through their financial institution’s mobile app or online banking experience, and we believe this is the best place for Zelle transactions to occur,» Zelle said in an October 2024 press release.

In December, Zelle was in the spotlight when the Consumer Financial Protected Bureau sued the company and three of the largest US banks for failing to protect consumers from widespread fraud on the peer-to-peer payment network. The lawsuit has since been dropped.

Other ways to send money digitally

You can still use Zelle through your bank’s app or website if it belongs to the Zelle network. You can also switch to another digital payment app, such as:

Apple Wallet
Cash App
PayPal
Venmo

Take some basic precautions when using Zelle or any other digital payment service. These apps are a frequent target for scammers, and Chase Bank has started blocking some Zelle payments it believes could be fraudulent. Only send money to people you know and trust, and watch for red flags like an urgent message claiming to be from your bank or an online ad for concert tickets that seem impossibly cheap.

Technologies

Marvel Rivals Season 2 Starts Next Week, Devs Drop Big News

Emma Frost and Ultron are joining the Rivals roster in season 2, and developers are upping the pace to one new hero per month starting with season 3.

After surviving the endless night in New York City with the Fantastic Four, Marvel Rivals players are getting invited to the shores of Krakoa for the start of season 2 on April 11. The game dropped the first trailer for the new season, giving us our first official look at the new heroes, and a developer vision video dropped major news about the future of hero releases.

The trailer features the former foe and sometimes-leader of the X-Men, Emma Frost, inviting people from across Rivals’ various timelines to the mutant nation of Krakoa, where everyone gets dressed up for a fancy gala — even Wolverine puts on a white tux. The event, however, is unceremoniously interrupted when Ultron shows up preaching extermination.

We also got a look at some of the cosmetics in season 2, though it’s unclear which are from the shop and which might be in the battle pass. In addition to the dressed-up Wolverine, we also got looks at Magik and Psylocke in the traditional X-Men blue and yellow. Nonmutant guests are also getting in on the fun, with fancy attire for heroes like Cap, Widow and Luna Snow.

New Heroes and balance changes in Marvel Rivals Season 2

Emma Frost joins the roster as a Vanguard. We don’t have detailed information about her abilities yet but expect that information to drop ahead of next week’s season launch. Ultron is coming in the season 2.5 update, which should be in late May.

Some team-ups are changing in season 2, including three new team-up abilities that were previewed in the newest developer vision video.

Emma Frost allows Magneto and Psylocke to create illusions of themselves.
Doctor Strange teams up with Scarlet Witch allowing her to use small portals to seemingly increase her damage output via a rapid-shooting alternate fire.
Cap finally teams up with Bucky, allowing the Winter Soldier to leap to allies.

A few existing team-ups are getting adjustments, with Psylocke, Winter Soldier and Doctor Strange being removed from older team-ups in favor of new ones, and Namor moving from working with Luna’s anchor to Hulk’s to empower his ultimate with gamma energy. Two team-ups are being removed entirely: Magneto can no longer team up with Scarlet Witch, and Thor is no longer anchoring Cap and Storm.

The developers vaguely teased other balance changes, including buffs to Peni, Mister Fantastic and Moon Knight, with Strange trading offensive pressure for more survivability and Rocket getting more utility while Loki and Adam Warlock receive nerfs to their Regeneration Domain and Soul Bond abilities.

Future seasons will be shorter, which means more new heroes

One of the most surprising moments in the developer video was the announcement that, beginning with season 3, seasons will be two months long instead of roughly three. There has been a lot of discussion online about whether Rivals’ pace of new heroes (about eight per year based on three-month seasons) was sustainable. Well, apparently the Rivals devs took that personally and are cranking up that pace to a new hero every month, meaning 12 new heroes per year.

This feels borderline ludicrous compared with other hero shooters that average about three new heroes per year, or even MOBAs like League of Legends, which has averaged about four new champions per year over the past five years. Rivals benefits from having an overflowing stable of Marvel characters to pull from rather than inventing their own hero concepts, and compared with Overwatch, the developers seem less worried about mechanical overlap in their heroes, as seen with many support ultimates. Still, a new hero every month feels unheard of for a hero shooter.

New Krakoa map and competitive changes

A new Krakoa-themed domination map is being added in season 2, and Yggsgard: Royal Palace (domination) and Tokyo 2099: Shin-Shibuya (convergence) will rotate out of the map pool for ranked modes, though they’ll still be available in quick play and custom games.

The threshold for competitive picks and bans, which currently only happen in diamond-ranked lobbies, will be lowered to gold 3. Players in Eternity or One Above All ranks will only be able to duo queue, instead of queuing with larger groups — a measure that’s likely intended to keep high-level teams from stomping lobbies.

Speaking of ranks, season 2 will drop everyone by 9 divisions, which is equal to 3 ranks. That means players in Eternity will drop to diamond, and any players at platinum 3 or below will start their climb from bronze 3 again. (AGAIN… AGAIN.)

Rivals developers also announced that individual player performance will be weighted higher when determining competitive progress after a match, meaning if your stats outperform your team’s, you’ll earn more for winning and drop less for losing. This change can help elevate smurfs and other high-skill players in lower-ranked lobbies by getting them into their appropriate ranks faster. However, it can also lead to players stat-farming, instead of playing in a way that is most effective for winning games. Overall, given that Rivals doesn’t use any sort of competitive placement matches, this should be a net positive for the game.

Other announcements

Rivals is adding new skin recolors to certain hero skins and (finally) giving players the option to gift costumes to their friends so they can surprise someone for their birthday, which you definitely did not forget about.

Missions are changing a bit, with the addition of weekly missions and a redistribution of where battle-pass-progressing chrono tokens are earned. The devs framed this as creating a «smoother expectation» of how to earn chrono tokens, but the surface-level description sounds like they’re just making it harder to earn battle pass progress over the season by tucking away more progress under missions with shorter time limits.

The developer vision update also gave us our first look at the competitive distribution, showing how many Rivals players are in each tier as of season 1.5.

The Hellfire Gala trailer says season 2 will start on April 11. While it doesn’t give a specific start time, expect the between-seasons maintenance to finish sometime in the middle of the night in the US.

For more on Marvel Rivals, check out which heroes and roles you should play and how to get free skins.

Technologies

Nintendo Switch 2 vs. Switch 1: Every Detail Compared

The Nintendo Switch 2’s official specs aren’t too different, but the new console has a lot of upgrades on the original Switch.

The Nintendo Switch 2 may look like its predecessor, but there’s been a lot of changes to its features and under the hood. The new console has «10x the graphics performance» compared to the original Switch, says Nvidia, which built the custom processor powering the Switch 2.

The Switch 2, with a release date on June 5, is priced at $450 alone or $500 in a bundle with Mario Kart World, the headliner of the console’s launch games. Here’s all the info on how to preorder the Switch 2.

Note that we’re mostly comparing the Switch 2 to the original Switch 1 released in March 2017, because looping in the Switch Lite and Switch OLED gets complicated.

Design

Broadly, the Switch 2 is a larger version of its predecessor, with everything looking slightly inflated: bigger footprint, bigger screen, bigger Joy-Cons.

Original Switch: The original Switch, with Joy-Cons slotted into the side rails, is a little over 9.4 inches wide, 4 inches tall, a little over half an inch thick and weighs about 10.5 ounces (297 grams). The Joy-Cons slide into place from the top of the device’s sides, while a thin wedge of plastic pops out of the back of the console to serve as a kickstand.

The Switch also came with a dock, which the console could slot into to for recharging and outputting to a TV or large display via HDMI port.

Switch 2: The new Switch 2 is bigger in every way, but it has the same overall shape and layout as the original. The new Joy-Cons will indeed be held in place on the console magnetically, and connect to the console via pins. The new console also sports a wide U-shaped kickstand that spans almost its entire rear width, which can be moved around to prop up the Switch 2 at a variety of angles. Nintendo says the console has more powerful speakers, which we’re looking forward to testing.

The Switch 2’s dock is largely similar in function though it has rounded edges and an internal fan to cool down the console during long game sessions. More importantly, it can output games in 4K to TVs, but only for select games.

Joy-Cons

The Joy-Cons were a marvel when they arrived on the first Switch, and while they’re functionally similar in its successor, there have been upgrades in the Switch 2’s controllers.

Original Switch: The Switch Joy-Cons are simple but powerful controllers that slid on and off the console via plastic rails, connecting and recharging via pins on the side. Detach and they become their own micro-controllers, with little shoulder buttons to boot.

Switch 2: The new console’s Joy-Cons are larger to fit the Switch 2, and lock into the side of the console via powerful magnets — there are small inward-facing buttons to the side of ZR and ZL to detach the controllers from the console. The larger-size Joy-Cons have longer L and R outside shoulder buttons, as well as much wider SL and SR internal shoulder buttons, which are accessible when detached from the console.

And yes, you can use the Switch 2 Joy-Cons as mice by placing their inner edges flat on a surface. During the Nintendo Direct, we saw it being used to control active action games like the wheelchair basketball-simulating DragXDrive and strategy games like Civilization VII.

Display size

Original Switch: The original Switch has a 6.2-inch LCD screen with 1,280×720-pixel resolution, which was reasonably impressive at launch in 2017 but has been outclassed by newer handhelds with sharper displays. The Switch OLED upgraded this with a larger 7-inch display showing deeper blacks and colors, but no upgrade in resolution. The Switch Lite has a 5.5-inch LCD screen.

Switch 2: Unsurprisingly, the Switch 2’s larger size means a larger display. The new console has a 7.9-inch 1080p LCD screen that can get up to 120Hz refresh rate in handheld mode, or up to 4K when docked and outputting to a TV.

Why no OLED display? Possibly to save on costs… or possibly to give Nintendo room to release a Switch 2 OLED version down the line.

CPU/GPU

Original Switch: The original Switch runs on an Nvidia custom Tegra X1 processor split into four ARM Cortex A57 CPU cores, and according to Hackaday, there are four extra A53 cores that aren’t used.

Switch 2: Once again, Nintendo hasn’t released any official info on the Switch 2’s specs, even after the Nintendo Direct reveal stream — and they most the company reveals is that it has a «custom processor made by Nvidia» on the Switch 2’s official specs page. Nvidia confirmed it also has a custom GPU, claiming that the new console has «10x the graphics performance» of the Switch 1, and the custom processor’s AI-powered features include Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), face tracking and background removal for video chat and real-time ray tracing.

We do still have more supposed details from previous leaks. Months ago on X (formerly Twitter), leaker Zuby_Tech posted that the Switch 2’s CPU will be an eight-core Arm Cortex A78C. They also suggested that the GPU will be an Nvidia T239 Ampere, aligning with years of similar rumors reported on by Eurogamer and others about the custom chip, which derives from Nvidia’s Tegra line of chips for smartphones and mobile devices.

RAM and storage

Original Switch. The Switch has 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 32GB of onboard storage, expandable up to 2TB via microSD cards in the slot beneath the kickstand.

Switch 2: Even after the reveal stream, Nintendo didn’t release official specs for RAM. Leaker Zuby_Tech posted on X back in September suggesting the Switch 2 will have 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB of onboard storage. That leak also suggested the new console will have two internal fans, up from the single one in the original Switch.

Nintendo did confirm that the new console will have 256GB of onboard storage, which can be expanded with special microSD Express cards — sorry, your old Switch-compatible microSD cards won’t work on the Switch 2.

Battery life

Original Switch: The original Switch packs a 4,310-mAh battery, which gives between 4.5 and 9 hours of battery life depending on screen brightness and other factors.

Switch 2: Though Nintendo didn’t release details on the Switch 2’s capacity in the reveal stream, the company does list specs on its website, showing it packs a 5,220mAh battery. While that’s notably larger than the one in its predecessor, Nintendo estimates this will only get players between an estimated 2 and 6.5 hours, depending on games played.

Ports

Original Switch: The first Switch sports a single USB-C port out the bottom, a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top and Wi-Fi 5 plus Bluetooth 4.1 connectivity. On the top is a slot at the top for Switch game cartridges as well as the microSD slot beneath the kickstand on the rear of the console.

Switch 2: The Switch 2 retains the original’s USB-C port on the bottom and 3.5mm jack on the top while adding another USB-C port topside, and now we know what it’s for: to connect with accessories like the Nintendo Switch Camera, a webcam-like camera on a stand to let you do Nintendo’s version of FaceTiming while you play games with your friends.

Nintendo hasn’t clarified the console’s connectivity options, and rumors are scarce on the subject.

As for cartridges, Switch 2 will play some original Switch games in physical versions. The cartridge slot is to the right of the headphone jack in the above image, which is where the slot is on the original Switch. You can tell game cartridges from the two console generations apart by color: ones for the new Switch 2 are red, while older Switch 1 games are black.