What exactly is involved when a publisher decides to partner with AMD for a game? An increasing number of titles have been doing it, and many have noted this seems to result in those games only featuring AMD’s FSR upscaling tech (rather than NVIDIA’s DLSS) at launch. It was true with Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and will also be the case with Starfield. That said, it’s just been revealed Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will have FSR and DLSS despite being an AMD partner game. So, what’s the deal here?
Well, in a new interview with The Verge, AMD gaming head Frank Azor clarifies what’s actually going on. According to Azor, if Bethesda wants to add DLSS to Starfield, they have “AMD’s full support”. Ah, but that isn’t the end of the story.
While AMD doesn’t demand that partners exclude DLSS from their games at launch, it seems they do politely request it. AMD pays publishers to bundle their games with their graphics cards (Starfield, Avatar, and more are launching with Ryzen and Radeon bundles) and asks them to put FSR first as part of the deal.
“Money absolutely exchanges hands. When we do bundles, we ask them -- ‘Are you willing to prioritize FSR?’ If they ask us for DLSS support, we always tell them yes.”
Okay, so there’s initially an option to still support DLSS, but once a publisher agrees to go FSR-exclusive, is that locked in? Again, it seems the answer is no, as Azor reiterates that “if and when Bethesda wants to put DLSS into [Starfield]” they’ll fully support it.
So, there you go – AMD isn’t above schmoozing publishers to have games launch with only FSR, but they aren’t locking them into exclusive contracts. To some degree, launching with only FSR may just be a case of priorities in some cases, as FSR is more useful for console development, which is an area where upscaling is increasingly needed.
Starfield launches on PC and Xbox Series X/S on September 6, with an early-access launch on September 1. What do you think about AMD’s approach? Personally, while more upscaling options are always preferable, it’s hard to get too terribly upset with AMD if they’re not actually forcing publishers’ hands.
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