Intel hires game developers ahead of GPU Arc launch



[ad_1]

Why is this important: This week, Intel announced a series of high-profile hires to help it take its first steps into PC gaming hardware. They include technical and game development managers from companies like Electronic Arts and AMD. Intel will need this experience to maintain a smooth relationship with game developers and users.

Twitter accounts associated with Intel made the advertisement Thursday. All will work in “games and graphics”, which means Arc Alchemist graphics cards from Intel. GPUs are expected to launch at the end of this year or sometime next year. The company is already showing it’s serious about getting into gaming, showing off its image reconstruction methods and even a mascot.

Intel’s new vice president and general manager of gaming and graphics workload engineering is André Bremer, a gaming industry veteran for over 20 years. At Amazon, Bremer was a director for Amazon Web Services Game Tech, and later worked as an engineering manager for Prime Gaming, according to his LinkedIn profile. Before that, Bremer had a long history of leading development and engineering software at companies such as Zynga, EA, and LucasArts.

Intel has hired Michael Heilemann as the new Senior Director of Tools and Technology for Game Developers. Heilemann was CTO at EA and Head of Content at Sony Computer Entertainment America. Prior to that, he had a game development career stretching back to the 90s at companies like Vivendi, Dreamworks Interactive, and Malibu Interactive.

Intel has also hired Steve Bell as the senior director of game developer relations. According to Tom’s Hardware, Bell worked for 13 years at Intel competitor AMD in the same position.

Finally, Intel hired Ritche Corpus as vice president and general manager of gaming ecosystem business development and developer relations. Corpus spent 15 years at AMD as global head of games and professional software. Prior to that he worked at companies like PC Gaming Alliance and Logitech.

Simply building good graphics cards isn’t the whole battle in the PC gaming graphics space. The two current competitors here, Nvidia and AMD, are also frequently compared based on the quality of their drivers. They work closely with game developers to ensure peak performance on their hardware, often helping sponsor large releases with specialist technologies like Deep Learning Super Sampling from Nvidia or FidelityFX Super Resolution from AMD. Intel’s new hires will likely attempt to ensure a similar level of cooperation with developers as well as the implementation of its XeSS technology.



[ad_2]

Source link