Nixxes Software hasn’t been able to bring Insomniac Games’ Spider-Man to PC to perfection, as all we’ve seen so far is how problematic Peter Parker and Miles Morales’ adventure is.

So far, Nixxes Software has mostly done a good job porting Sony games from PlayStation to PC. The ‘blue’ in-house studio specializes in PC ports, and with Marvel’s Spider-Man, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, Horizon Forbidden West and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, we’ve seen that the team can get the job done (and Nixxes was previously behind the port of the Tomb Raider reboot trilogy).

So what’s wrong with the PC port of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2? The use of a technology called DirectStorage. It’s a Microsoft API that’s used to reduce processor load while moving hundreds of compressed files from the SSD in your PC to the VRAM on your video card. But instead of doing this one at a time, in a queue, DirectStorage multitasks the CPU to make more efficient use of system memory. The only catch is that Nixxes has already made good use of this technology in several Sony ports!

Confirmed. DirectStorage in Spider-Man 2 uses GPU decompression, and as @Sebasti66855537 shows, it degrades performance when leaving it enabled. https://t.co/3wCrR1b3gy pic.twitter.com/kUnoCE5uNv

— Compusemble (@compusemble) February 2, 2025

But there is a significant difference. So far we have only seen one DirectStorage feature in one port, and only on higher graphics settings (Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart). It’s GPU decompression. In most games, assets are stored in compressed form so that they can be downloaded quickly and take up less space on the SSD, but in order for the GPU to use them, they need to be (usually) compressed by the CPU. DirectStorage, on the other hand, can do the compression using our graphics card via GDeflate.

If our GPU has extra power, it can do this, but if it’s not powerful enough, it’s going to overload the GPU even more. That’s why Nixxes didn’t use this technology in Ghost of Tsushima, and why it’s odd that Nixxes would use it in a game with a larger open world and fast pacing that uses ray tracing. Turning off GDeflate would be a disadvantage for those playing on weaker CPUs, because where the processor is already overloaded, it would struggle even more, causing the frame rate to plummet.

Maybe Nixxes are working on too many PC ports at the same time?

Source: PCGamer