Like NVIDIA’s The Way It’s Meant to Be Played program, AMD’s Gaming Evolved initiative focuses upon promoting PC game development by ensuring enhanced PC-exclusive features are included in certain titles.

Multi monitor support, DX11 implementation, advanced anti aliasing methods and other items all fall under these programs’ purview.  In many cases, Gaming Evolved and TWIMTBP have allowed AMD and NVIDIA to promote new technologies offered by their respective GPU architectures, positively (and in some cases negatively) affecting several big-name titles.  These tactics have come under scrutiny but there is no denying their impact upon the PC gaming landscape.

In the past, Gaming Evolved always seemed to play second fiddle to its well funded, popular and sometimes controversial competitor but if AMD has their way, that’s about to change. They’ve recently expanded the Gaming Evolved program in an effort to encompass additional titles and more developers.   And this time it actually seems to be attracting more attention from within the games industry.

Previously, AMD seemed to be playing second fiddle to NVIDIA when it came to directly supporting developers but that is quickly changing as more triple-A titles make their way towards the “red” team.  We’ve already seen games like Shogun 2: Total War, Dirt 3 and some others garner benefits from Gaming Evolved while Sniper Elite V2, Dirt Showdown and Nexuiz are just the latest additions.

However, the real push comes within the next few months where AMD is claiming ownership of many premier titles.  Sleeping Dogs, which may prove to be an instant GTA-like classic was just released and it incorporates several advanced DX11 features like SSAO and SuperSample AA.  This will be followed by other DX11 games like Medal of Honor: Warfighter (which uses DICE’s versatile Frostbite 2 engine), Hitman: Absolution, BioShock Infinite and the newest incarnation of Tomb Raider.  All of these will incorporate features which AMD helped implement.

While “sponsored” gaming titles may initially mean performance offsets favor one manufacturer’s GPUs over the other, if history is any indication, drivers adapt in quick fashion so everyone will eventually benefit from the advanced visuals these games bring to the table.  In addition, programs like TWIMTBP and Gaming Evolved do tend to help ensure DX11 implementation within games that may not have supported the API due to the console-centric focus in many parts of the development community. For end users buying the latest graphics technologies and the companies selling them, that’s extremely important.

If AMD can keep this momentum, everyone should have a much larger selection of DX11 games to choose from in the coming year.