Nvidia Shows Off Graphical Prowess at E3

LOS ANGELES–Tucked away in the JW Marriott hotel, a short walk from the E3 convention floor, Nvidia held an "Editors' Day" designed to showcase the power of its GeForce GPU line.

Over the course of the two-hour event, Nvidia and its partners (which included representatives from Epic, Gearbox, and other studios) took the stage to expound upon Nvidia's technologies and how that tech is designed to "move gaming forward."

GeForce Works was one of the first topics discussed. GeForce Works are libraries that developers can utilize to give their game worlds improved hair physics, facial animations, clothing movement, fog effects, and environmental destruction. Nvidia touted its technologies as the reason why it's a leader in the discrete GPU space, claiming a very solid 66 percent of the market.

Nvidia's PhysX, a proprietary physics engine, was another strong talking point. Steve Sinclair, creative director at Digital Extremes, humorously stated that applying the effects was as simple as "copy and paste...and you're set."

Nvidia revealed five upcoming games that will use its technology: Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, The Witcher 3, Watch Dogs, Batman: Arkham Origins, and Splinter Cell: Blacklist. Those titles will appear on a variety of platforms including the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows PC.

An Nvidia rep stated that although the PC will likely continue to eclipse the console's raw power, gamers could potentially see more day-and-date releases as consoles become more PC-like (and thus requiring less effort to port to PC).

Meanwhile, back in New York, PCMag got some hands-on time with Nvidia's Shield gaming device, which is coming out at the end of this month. Check out our first impressions and video of the gadget in action.

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