Four Big PC Gaming Themes for 2025
CES isn’t just for gaming news, but it certainly felt like a very game-heavy show this year. We got to see early previews of the tech that’s going to shape the gaming industry for the year to come. And, if CES is any indication, we’re in for a year full of impressive graphics cards and handheld gaming.
NVIDIA Announces New 50 Series Graphics Cards
The biggest gaming news is undeniably NVIDIA’s announcement of their GeForce RTX 50 Series cards, with the first cards -- the 5080 and 5090 -- coming later this month. The GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is purported to produce similar results to last generation’s flagship card, the GeForce RTX 4090, for less than half the price.
Photo: NVIDIA But the 50 Series isn’t coming in alone. The next generation of NVIDIA’s frame generation software, DLSS 4, is being launched alongside the new wave of GPUs. DLSS has been a great boon to those who have the cards to handle it, bumping up frame rates and delivering smoother in AAA and esports titles alike, and now thanks to AI enhancements, it's going to do even more of the heavy lifting
What NVIDIA 50 Series could mean for gaming
The launch of a new generation of GPUs is always a massive moment for gaming, but the full effects of that launch won’t really be felt for some time yet. We’ll certainly be seeing more games that push these new cards to their limits, but with so many gamers using older, more budget-friendly cards (the official Steam Hardware survey says most gamers are still using the GeForce RTX 3060, though the GeForce RTX 4060 is closely tailing) minimum specs for new releases should remain fairly modest. Keep an eye on the recommended and high-end specs, though, as those will certainly start to creep up as more gamers adopt the latest generation.
The impact of DLSS 4, however, has the potential to change things very quickly. While limited to the 50 Series cards, multi-frame-generation is a huge boon for high-framerate enthusiasts. Generating up to three frames for each rendered frame can easily skyrocket the framerate for even the most graphically intense games. How far this technology will spread is yet to be seen, but with 75 games and apps supporting it at launch, I would expect to see DLSS 4 pop up in plenty of new releases throughout the year.
More Handheld Gaming and Steam Deck Competitors Announced
PC handhelds had a massive showing at CES this year, with multiple companies announcing their own take on the popular Steam Deck. Acer debuted their Nitro Blaze 8 and 11, and MSI showed off the next-gen Claw handheld, while Lenovo announced two versions of their Legion Go – one using a Windows OS and the other using Steam OS, making it the first non-Deck to officially support Steam’s proprietary OS.
Photo: Dan Ackerman What More Handheld Gaming PCs Could Mean for Gaming
When Steam entered the ring with the Steam Deck, dedicated, on-the-go handheld PCs that support AAA titles became a tentpole of the gaming market. It also created a Venn Diagram of gamers, with one circle looking for easy, on-the-go gaming and the other looking for top-of-the-line desktop experiences (with a hearty overlap in the middle).
Steam’s 100 most played Steam Deck games is wildly diverse, including graphically intense games like Elden Ring as well as lighter games like Balatro. The question is not “will we see more handhelds” (the answer is yes; Lenovo has already announced their Legion Go Gen 2) but “will handhelds impact how developers create their games?” If the market for handhelds continues to grow, it’s possible developers will start to look at ways to optimize games for the less-powerful handhelds, much like how the Nintendo Switch often sees less-powerful ports of AAA releases. This could absolutely create a divide between minimum and recommended specs, with minimum specs becoming more accessible to account for handhelds. Or…
NVIDIA Brings GeForce NOW to more platforms, including Steam Deck
NVIDIA’s GeForce NOW is a cloud service that offers a wide range of games ready to play, wherever and whenever you are – so long as you have a compatible device. This year, NOW is coming to a range of VR platforms like the Quest 3 and 3S as well as the omnipresent Steam Deck. That’s going to make it easier than ever to play the latest AAA releases at high fidelity whether you’re at home on your desktop or in the coffee shop down the road.
Photo: NVIDIA What More Cloud Gaming Could Mean for Gaming
This might be the year cloud gaming finally takes off. Between Xbox’s This is an Xbox campaign and NVIDIA’s continued support for the service, we might see cloud gaming become a staple of the game industry. With the meteoric rise of handheld PC systems like the Steam Deck, this might be the middle ground that developers are looking for: design AAA titles for desktop computers with handheld gamers accessing them via cloud services.
The real benefit of cloud gaming is that, while there is a bit of a graphical hit and some latency to streamed games, they’ll still look better than dropping all settings to minimum just to get a AAA to run at 30FPS on a handheld. And, as the services continue to improve, the small graphical hit to run games remotely may get even smaller yet.
Monitors Continue to Get Nicer
There were a lot of nice, new monitors announced at CES (check out five of our favorites here). OLED is the big buzzword of the showcase, and for good reason. The monitors shown were some of the nicest we’ve ever seen, with gorgeous OLED displays, high resolutions, and high refresh rates. It’s looking like it’ll be a good year for the gamers who love a high-quality monitor.
What Better Monitors Could Mean for Gaming
On a longer timeline, we should start to see the previous top-of-the-line monitors start to become more budget-friendly and new top-of-the-line monitors push the old guard into the mid-range price point. That means that the average gamer could soon have the 2K, high-refresh rate, OLED monitor we’ve all been dreaming of.
It also means it’ll be easier than ever to convince your friends that no, the 4:3, 60Hz monitor from 2006 is not a suitable gaming monitor. Get a nice monitor.
Read More CES News:
- Everything We've Seen at CES 2025: Laptops, All-In-Ones, GPUs, Handhelds, Monitors, and More
- What to Expect from AI and PCs at CES 2025
- This Week in AI: Time for CES to Show What AI Can Be
- Dell's Great PC Reboot: Meet the New Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max
- Nitro Blaze handhelds and AI-powered laptops highlight Acer's CES 2025 lineup
