Google’s Pixel 10 series just effectively lost access to the popular game Genshin Impact, as a loss of support for Tensor G5’s GPU has led to the game being largely unplayable on the new phones.
Update 10/7: Google, in a statement to 9to5Google, says that Genshin Impact has in fact not removed GPU support for the Pixel 10, and that Google has partnered with miHoYo, the game’s developer, for Pixel 10. The company’s statement follows:
Genshin Impact has not removed Pixel 10 GPU support. We partnered closely with miHoYo over the past year for Pixel 10.
We’ve asked for additional details around the performance issues that have been seen and will update this article if Google provides more context.
Genshin Impact is a hugely popular mobile game, but also a very demanding one in terms of its graphics. The game has over 100 million downloads on Android alone.
But, for Pixel 10 owners, the game is effectively no longer available.
In its release notes shared in August for an update that rolled out more recently, Genshin Impact raised its minimum requirements to report support for all devices using a PowerVR GPU, which includes the Pixel 10 series. Google switched from Mali GPUs in prior Samsung-made Tensor chips to a PowerVR GPU in its new TSMC chip. Genshin Impact first announced the change about a year ago.
It seems that, at this point, the game is completely unplayable for Pixel 10 owners, as clearly demonstrated on videos shared to Reddit and Twitter/X (seemingly be the same person), though some users seem to still be able to play the game. When the game is broken, the Pixel’s software as a whole seems to have a ton of display issues.
In the aforementioned release notes for the Genshin Impact update that removed PowerVR GPU support, it was noted that:
Devices below the minimum specifications may still launch the game, but may experience performance issues including frame rate drops, instability, or crashes during gameplay.
That’s certainly what we seem to be seeing on the Pixel 10 series, and explains why the game works for some users, but doesn’t for others, as performance may vary depending on where in the game you are. But, with this in mind, it’s very likely that future updates will only amplify the problem.
PowerVR GPUs are not particularly common anymore. Apple, in the past, used PowerVR GPUs, but it’s been a while since that was the case. Aside from the Pixel 10 series, this GPU setup is really only found in a handful of budget Android phones, mostly using MediaTek chips.
As mentioned, prior Pixel phones are not affected by this change either.
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