It's also not the only port of its stature, you can play thousands of old games for free on DOS Zone, including GTA Vice City , and Quake III is also available as a standalone browser project. Copyrighted IP is the only hurdle for retro revivals like these since the talent from the developers, and the grunt from the hardware, is otherwise abundant. If Valve doesn't make Half-Life 3, the fans might as well milk the original games as much as possible
Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News , or add us as a preferred source , to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.
Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he\u2019s not working, you\u2019ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-25/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Hassam Nasir Social Links Navigation Contributing Writer Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.
alrighty_then I get the feeling this trend continues and today's modern games will someday be playable on future toasters, refrigerators, phones, browsers, etc. Because why not? Reply
usertests I tried it on Intel UHD 630 graphics a few days ago. It ran reasonably well, but hanged up a couple of times and ended up crashing for good in the plaza era. It had much better performance than that weird browser FPS demo that Tom's did an article on a couple months back. alrighty_then said: I get the feeling this trend continues and today's modern games will someday be playable on future toasters, refrigerators, phones, browsers, etc. Because why not? WebGL 2 is being superseded by the newer WebGPU which should have wide browser support by now. If the performance and stability is significantly better, it could become trivial to run a newer tier of old games in web browsers. I have never looked into the smart fridges, but it's clear that Samsung's "Family Hub" refrigerators are integrating a substantial Tizen (Android alternative) tablet into the door, seeing it as a way to replace calendars, photos, etc. that you would hang on a fridge, but also to play videos or use a web browser (for recipes, or anything else). And these are including quad-core Exynos/MediaTek SoCs and 2-4 GB of RAM (based on AI pulling up some reviews, since these are pretty much undocumented). So it appears that the $3,000+ fridges have at least budget tablet specs that can run the Half-Life 2 browser port already. If the budget tablets of 5-10 years from now are packing Xbox Series S-like specs, they may be able to play current gen games. I think copyright takedowns and large download sizes could curtail many of these from being played directly in the web browser though. Reply
Thunder64 usertests said: I have never looked into the smart fridges, but it's clear that Samsung's "Family Hub" refrigerators are integrating a substantial Tizen (Android alternative) tablet into the door, seeing it as a way to replace calendars, photos, etc. that you would hang on a fridge, but also to play videos or use a web browser (for recipes, or anything else). Aren't they putting ads on those tablets? SO you walk to/by your fridge and it shows you an ad? No thanks. Reply
usertests Thunder64 said: Aren't they putting ads on those tablets? SO you walk to/by your fridge and it shows you an ad? No thanks. When I was looking into it, I saw that Louis Rossmann's FULU Foundation put out a bounty for disabling the ads, that was withdrawn after Samsung added an option to disable it themselves. https://bounties.fulu.org/bounties/samsung-familyhub-refrigeratorshttps://consumerrights.wiki/w/Samsung_ads_in_refrigerators Reply
USAFRet alrighty_then said: I get the feeling this trend continues and today's modern games will someday be playable on future toasters, refrigerators, phones, browsers, etc. Because why not? This is not a weird thing. HL2 came out 20+ years ago. Playable on 20+ year old hardware. A current 'phone' would crush a PC from 2004. Fast forward to 2045. What commodity hardware would crush a medium grade PC from 2026? Reply
usertests USAFRet said: Fast forward to 2045. What commodity hardware would crush a medium grade PC from 2026? I agree with you. Hardware progress and die shrinking is slowing down, but emulation/browser overhead could be less than you might expect (see the recently adopted WebGPU which offers more direct GPU access than WebGL 2.0). Current flagship phones can already kind of play recent x86 games at lower resolutions. IMEC's latest roadmaps are now forecasting "2DFETs" (an evolution of CFETs, which are an evolution of GAAFETs) on "sub-A2" nodes by 2046. It's likely that we could see a 10x efficiency improvement within 20 years (the equivalent of seven node shrinks that improve efficiency by ~28% each, the nodes being labeled by IMEC as A14/A10/A7/A5/A3/A2/sub-A2). Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/you-can-now-play-half-life-2-right-inside-your-browser-at-over-100-fps-with-save-states-and-console-support-ingenious-port-recreates-the-entire-game-campaign-using-webgl-2#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com/subscription
- Turtle Beach KP7 Review: The accessory that does everything
- Startup unveils 3D-printed nuclear reactor module to power AI data centers —touted as ‘the world’s first subcritical, solid-state, factory-built thorium nuclear
- Windows guru uses 19th-century Stirling Engine tech for auxiliary cooling on AMD Threadripper 3970X system — waste heat energy spins the $40 engine's flywheel
- NVIDIA Powers Over 400 of the World’s 500 Fastest Supercomputers
- Meta data center water discharges suspended after contaminating the city's reclamation water supply with bacterium — system offline for months for cleaning, clo
Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.