Explaining our RTX head-to-head, and where we missed the mark

Earlier today we published a pair of articles on PC Gamer designed to ignite a debate about the success or failure of real-time ray tracing in games. The two articles were designed to be read in conjunction with each other, and were positioned on the site with two opposing viewpoints on the next-gen graphics feature.

On one side we had a piece which held the view that the computationally intensive feature had done little for actual gaming, and on the other a counter-argument supporting it, explaining that the first generation of any nascent graphical advancement will always appear a niche effect… until it becomes utterly ubiquitous.

But we missed the mark with the original headlines, which we understand contained implications that we absolutely did not intend them to have. 

We were not trying to denigrate the hard work of the individuals who have put their heart and soul into pushing forward graphics technology in PC gaming over many years, or suggest anyone acted dishonestly in any way, and we sincerely apologise for any offense those titles have caused.

We have altered the headlines because of that, adding both viewpoints into each piece, and hope the articles will now be seen as intended - a head-to-head argument between passionate gamers, created around the end of the first generation of ray tracing capable GPUs, to frame its place in PC gaming and in the minds of the players. Just as we're about to enter a whole new era of graphics technology.