Following the controversial reveal of NVIDIA DLSS 5 at GTC 2026, we have heard all sorts of reactions from both sides of the argument.

However, in most cases, they were heavily skewed towards one side, either embracing or condemning the technology. Nobody really delved too much into what it would really take to make it viable from a game developer's standpoint. We've continued to reach out to various studios to gather their perspectives on this oft-neglected part of the DLSS 5 discourse.

Today, on the release date of their debut game (Samson: A Tyndalston Story, of which you can read our review here), we have a comment from Liquid Swords Tech Director Fredrik Lönn, who points out the practical issues that NVIDIA would have to resolve first. I know that Samson uses DLSS 4.5 and ray tracing. Did you look into the recent reveal of DLSS 5, and if so, what do you think of the technology? Fredrik Lönn: We did look at the reveal, but DLSS 5 is not something we considered for Samson.

Also, it does not seem like it is production-ready just yet as we launch our game. For Samson, we have already authored and animated detailed facial models for our characters, and we do want them to look like how we made them in the game. If we were to use something like DLSS 5, we would ideally like to integrate it into the character production pipeline, so we have artistic control of the process. The big win in the future, besides quality, for Neural Rendering and DLSS 5 would be in saving production time.

But for that to happen, we would need to support all users, and very few people have access to the hardware required for DLSS 5. If we were to use something like that in the future, we would need support across all platforms we are targeting for the game. In my op-ed on the DLSS 5 reveal, I had already called for tighter integration into the game development pipeline to improve artistic control on the developer's side.

Right now, the tech only takes into account a game's color and motion vectors, with developers only able to tweak intensity, color grading, and masking. Fully implementing it into engines like Unreal (which powers Samson: A Tyndalston Story, as well as so many other triple-A games) could satisfy that request. However, the other demand - making it available on all platforms - seems highly unrealistic. Not only would it be counterproductive to NVIDIA's obvious desire to push consumers to purchase GeForce hardware, but it's also likely unfeasible on a purely hardware level, at least for the time being.

The GTC 2026 DLSS 5 demo ran on two GeForce RTX 5090 graphics cards; NVIDIA said they're confident they will be able to make it run on just one, but even so, that's way beyond the level of performance of platforms like PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S and X, and even PlayStation 5 Pro. If that's really what most developers want before adding the technology, DLSS 5 may be doomed from the start.

However, others may not be so strict in their demands. For more info on NVIDIA's new DLSS, check out our new roundup page. About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015.

He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech.

His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games. Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.