SAN FRANCISCO, April 9, 2026, 07:04 (PDT)
Nvidia’s rollout of DLSS 5 hit fresh resistance after Liquid Swords tech director Fredrik Lönn said the feature was not ready for production and would need deeper integration and far broader hardware support before studios could rely on it. He said the studio did not consider DLSS 5 for “Samson.” 1
The comments matter because Nvidia has pitched DLSS 5 as its next big step in game graphics when it arrives this fall. Instead, the launch window has already drawn a developer warning, sharp skepticism in a reader poll and a third-party copyright claim that briefly blocked Nvidia’s own trailer in Italy. 2
DLSS, short for Deep Learning Super Sampling, began in 2018 as an AI tool that reconstructs higher-resolution images and later added frame generation to lift performance. Nvidia says DLSS 5 goes further, using color and motion data from each frame to add photoreal lighting and materials in real time, and Chief Executive Jensen Huang has called it the “GPT moment for graphics.” 2
Lönn said DLSS 5 was “not production-ready just yet” for Samson and that any future use would need to be built into the character production pipeline so developers kept “artistic control of the process.” He also said very few users currently have the hardware required and that support would need to stretch across all targeted platforms. 1
Hardware is part of the issue. In a forum FAQ, Nvidia said the early GTC preview ran on two GeForce RTX 5090 cards, with one card rendering the game and the other running the DLSS 5 model. 3
In a PC Gamer reader poll published Tuesday, 71% of respondents said they could not be convinced to turn DLSS 5 on, while 37% said they would never use it regardless of how good it looked. Another 10% said they were already convinced, and 9% said they would use it in some games. 4
Earlier this week, YouTube blocked Nvidia’s March 16 DLSS 5 reveal trailer in Italy after La7, an Italian TV channel that had reportedly used the footage in a segment, sent claims against videos using the same clips. PC Gamer later reported that La7 released the claim and the trailer became viewable again in Italy. 5
Under YouTube’s rules, Content ID automatically scans uploaded videos against reference files supplied by rights holders and can block a match, monetize it or track it, including on a country-by-country basis. YouTube says copyright owners that repeatedly make erroneous Content ID claims can lose access to the system. 6
Nvidia still has big game partners lined up. The company says DLSS 5 will be supported by publishers and developers including Bethesda, CAPCOM, Ubisoft, Tencent, NetEase and Warner Bros. Games. Bethesda’s Todd Howard said the tool could let “artistic style and detail shine through,” while CAPCOM’s Jun Takeuchi called it “another important step” for visual fidelity. 2
The contest also runs against rival image-boosting tools from AMD and Intel. AMD says its FSR features require developer integration and are available in select games, while Intel says XeSS includes a cross-vendor implementation that can run on any GPU supporting Shader Model 6.4 or above. 7
Still, early backlash may not settle the question. Nvidia says DLSS has been integrated in more than 750 games since 2018 and plans to ship DLSS 5 this fall, but the mixed early reaction suggests the company still has to prove it can ease hardware demands and give developers enough control over how games look. 2
