CES 2025: Nividia ACE Omniverse has more pivots than a ballerina in Swan Lake. This train wreck won't revolutionize games, but it'll make you chuckle.
CES 2025: ACE & Omniverse are repackaged old news that won’t go away. Nvidia has shown different variations of repurposed Omniverse tech every 6 months for a few years now like clockwork. They are desperately trying to get any traction and general interest... anywhere. Now they have vaguely tacked 'gen' AI on in the last year and a half, and they hoped that no one noticed or tracked the history of just how artificial this artificial intelligence is. Well some of us have. Let’s dive into this mess together.
To build context we have to start with recent Nvidia history. ACE was part of Omniverse, like the mostly failed USD, remember USD? Back in 2022 USD (universal scene descriptor) was supposed to be the building blocks of the metaverse. And then people noticed that the Metaverse didn't exist. And USD fell inconsequentially into the background. USD was never going to be the building blocks for any metaverse because it was geometry focused. Game developers looked at USD’s origin out of Pixar, said “Sure. USD isn’t bad, it’s just a larger FBX.” And it was.
Meanwhile ACE (Avatar Cloud Engine) collects a variety of character model and animation focused tech odds and ends that had been shown going back to 2021. And these were all character rendering, animation, and physics focused. And now all of a sudden these bits of tech that only run as a Avatar Cloud Engine tech pipeline in Omniverse are being shown with Gen AI tacked on as an AI toolset to bring NPCs to life? Really? Seriously? This was all character modeling and animation for years and now it is going to do what exactly? There’s no strategy, no tactics, no navigation, no state maintenance, motivation, consistence, persistence, or memory or any kind. And now with Gen AI LLMs it is somehow useful to games? Please.
Just to underscore how kludgey this is, let us go back to the early history of Nvidia Omniverse. I first heard of Omniverse back in 2018. Omniverse was being prepped and developers were hearing about Omniverse in summer 2018 before its announcement in Spring 2019. I was in the early days of Nvidia Inception and we started hearing the details of Nvidia Omniverse, a cloud engine. I perked up. And then I was told about how Nvidia had an internal war between their game developers and their enterprise developers. And the enterprise developers won. This was a war for the direction of Omniverse. And so Omniverse was largely made useless for games. I saw this successively from 2018-2022. Omniverse was aimed at Digital Twins. Now that’s not awful, but the focus of enterprise over games was so severe that elements that could have helped games were never built.
There’s no client server architecture from multiplayer network games. There’s not even proper cloud architecture for multi-user. There are no binaries. There is no real client. There’s just the simulation running on the cloud. And you can have a window into watching it run. How exciting is that for a game? No binary. No device executable. No agency. It works for a digital twin. But players in a game sim expect user agency and player interactivity. Omniverse could either hold a simulation or digital twin on Nvidia GPU Cloud, or it could export geometry from them via an exporter USD that could only do geometry. No physics, no AI, no interactivity. And to be fair the cloud engine wasn’t really made for AI not game AI. It was made for large scale geometry and physics simulation or two way simulations (digital twins).
This physics sim lab made for enterprise digital twins that was actively hostile to games for the first few years of its existence, was gradually repurposed because Nvidia (Omniverse) could no longer ignore the game industry. And so post-metaverse nonsense, Nvidia tried to incorporate Omniverse into a game-focused push despite it being a Cloud Engine for Digital Twins. And to fix the massive shortcomings, compromises, and general kludge-ness of a cloud engine that didn’t understand game AI, Nvidia lazily added Gen AI LLMs as if dropping an LLM into a physics sim to do “talking and strategy stuff” would magically work and make for a game. How lazy is this? C'mon Nvidia, did you learn NOTHING from working with game companies for 40 years?! Imagine building custom complex game NPC, combatant, ally, or boss AI and then being told, "hey, we added an LLM, it’ll just take care of all that stuff, in whatever engine you have, magically." Yeah right. It can't even path correctly because there is no pathfinding yet they want to call this AI for games?
The AI for analytics cloud engine that doesn’t do game AI at all, will magically acquire game AI from 'gen' AI. And since that cloud engine has always been hostile to games, this new tacked on tech are Cloud APIs. Imagine that Azure completely bypassed the last 10 years of useful Game Cloud AI tech and just said, please only use Open AI for games and ignore our entire tech stack built to support Xbox and Azure. That’s what you’d get with Nvidia ACE. A bunch of recently Gen AI stuff repurposed from generic LLMs and marketed as a solution to a cloud engine built to be hostile to games and then popped onto that weird engine and made into Cloud APis with monthly recurring costs that only an MMO or Games as a Service (GaaS) will be able to cover. Great for Games. Nice work building R&D for massively single player cloud connected story RPGs that will cost $20 a month. Way to know your audience.
And then a bunch of AI social media influencers who know nothing of the history of the last decade of Nvidia tech and decisions who mostly have also never built a game, or engine, or pipeline, or backend, will share videos from YouTube that nobody cares about the next day. And none of it will change anything in games, because it is all experiments to showcase R&D. And that is Nvidia ACE, USD, and Omniverse. Tech built for Digital Twins until Nvidia decided that Digital Twins weren’t sexy enough to show off at CES, GDC and GTC. So every 6-12 months this tech pivots again. It is smoke & mirrors with new partners at every conference. And Nvidia ACE will change nothing in games. Sadly. What a waste.
And to be clear. I like Nvidia. I've used their hardware since 1995. I was excited about the launch of CUDA. I was pushing stuff to their GPUs on Cloud in 2009. Nvidia has historically better driver support for both developers and players than ATI/AMD. Yeah I still call them ATI/ AMD, because I go back to the days of ATI, 3DFX, nVidia, S3, Matrox, & PowerVR, among others. There's a lot to love with Nvidia. I'm not yet convinced that Omniverse or USD or ACE are lasting or useful to games.
You see if one starts with a tech that is expressly trying NOT to work with Games, and then tacks on trendy non-gaming tech because of a fad or bubble, it doens;'t fix everything. Two wrongs don't make a right. Now Nvidia could have gone off like Sony or Microsoft and learned what games needed. But no, they ignored NPC learning, they ignored world persistence, they ignored pathfinding, they ignored narrative structure, they ignored teh nuances of tactics vs strategy in combat, they ignored character motivation and intentionality either within a world or within a story, they ignored ecosystems and ecologies. Nvidia ignored anything that makes for good SIMULATION AI in games.
Nvidia ignored: Populous, Creatures, DungeonKeeper, Goldeneye 007, SimCity, The Sims, SimAnt, Thief 1-2, Grand Theft Auto 3-5, Counterstrike, Halo 1-3, Half-Life 1-2, Full Spectrum Warrior, Star Wars: Republic Commando, Spore, F.E.A.R., BioShock & Infinite, Starcraft 2, Left 4 Dead 1-2, STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, Clear Sky, Facade, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor/War, Alien Isolation, No Man's Sky, Read Dead Redemption 2. And that's just a few of the stellar games they totally ignored with Omniverse and ACE.
Here's a question. If NVidia Omniverse and ACE WITH 'gen' AI are so good, why aren't they collectively used in Nvidia Robotics? Or maybe they need more precision and accuracy and less hallucination and bugs? Just like Games. Nvidia Omniverse was never built for games. It actively ignored 30 years of network multiuser technology. It is entirely missing navigation, network, interactivity, states, motives, persistence, consistence, or any support for player agency. ACE tools and tech where made for virtual assistants and metaverse avatars. When that didn't pan out they were repurposed to games. And now they expect us to take their R&D tech demos seriously? No thanks. Nvidia, if you want to bring something useful to games, don't give us smoke and mirrors tech demos. Start by running a multiuser cloud simulation with network CLIENT-SERVER tech, and put people INTO the sim and not looking at it via a virtual window. Learn to build effing binaries, execs, client apps, like every game developer you work with. Or just stay in the Gen AI bubble, until that bursts.
A Timeline of Nvida's Omniverse Indecision and Pivots
It is definitely a tool for digital twins, or gaming, or enterprise, or digital assistants, or customer service, or telepresence, or chatbots, or the industrial metaverse, or the creator metaverse, or jjust any schmetaverse, or virtual windows for the Apple Vision Pro, or clumsy NPC tools for Games as a Service, or something, anything, just please use it. And don't think about how it has 5-8 years (depending on how you count it) of bad decisions aimed at every use case but games.
"NVIDIA ACE is a suite of digital human technologies that bring game characters and digital assistants to life with generative AI. For: Customer Service, Gaming, Telepresence, & Virtual Facilities."
Isn't that what games always wanted? to be grouped with customer service, telepresence, virtual assistants and facilities management? Can't you think of all the useful tech that would be shared? And we love it when they call it "gaming", like gambling, which is also called "gaming". Thanks Nvidia for not getting the GAME industry (not gaming) on any level except when selling consumer GPUs, and supporting them with rock solid drivers. ;)
Now as you read thru this timeline don't worry. Nvidia will be ready too pivot Omniverse again, and again, and again. Whatever the bubble, Nvidia will have new uses cases that they haven't built much custom tehc for but they will be ready to debut repurposed and tacked on tech at new conferences.
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March 18, 2019:
Nvidia: "NVIDIA Unveils Omniverse — Open, Interactive 3D Design Collaboration Platform for Multi-Tool Workflows. NVIDIA Omniverse enables teams to interactively work together to create and render scenes using industry-standard 2D and 3D software."
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October 5, 2020:
Nvidia: "NVIDIA Announces Omniverse Open Beta, Letting Designers Collaborate in Real Time — from Home or Around the World"
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April 12, 2021:
Nvidia: "NVIDIA Launches Omniverse Design Collaboration and Simulation Platform for Enterprises. Leading Computer Makers Launch Workstations and NVIDIA-Certified Systems for Omniverse"
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March 22, 2022:
Nvidia: "NVIDIA Announces Omniverse Cloud to Connect Tens of Millions of Designers and Creators"
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August 9, 2022:
Nvidia: "NVIDIA and Partners Build Out Universal Scene Description to Accelerate Industrial Metaverse and Next Wave of AI"
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August 9, 2022
Virtual Assistants and Digital Humans on Pace to Ace Turing Test With New NVIDIA Omniverse Avatar Cloud Engine. Omniverse ACE Offers Developers of Games, Chatbots, Digital Twins, Virtual Worlds a Suite of Cloud-Native AI Models to Build and Deploy Interactive Avatars
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September 20, 2022
NVIDIA Launches Omniverse Cloud Services for Building and Operating Industrial Metaverse Applications
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September 20, 2022
Recommended by LinkedIn
Nvidia Omniverse ACE enables fast deployment of metaverse avatars
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Jan 09, 2023
Develop Intelligent Virtual Assistants with NVIDIA Omniverse ACE Early Access
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May 28, 2023
NVIDIA ACE for Games Sparks Life Into Virtual Characters With Generative AI. Custom Model Foundry Produces AI Models That Run in Cloud and PC
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January 8, 2024
NVIDIA and Developers Pioneer Lifelike Digital Characters for Games and Applications With NVIDIA Avatar Cloud Engine. NVIDIA ACE Microservices Debut With Generative AI Models That Will Change How People Interact With Digital Avatars
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June 2, 2024
NVIDIA Releases Digital Human Microservices, Paving Way for Future of Generative AI Avatars
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January 06, 2025
NVIDIA Redefines Game AI With ACE Autonomous Game Characters
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January 06, 2025
The Verge: "Nvidia’s AI NPCs are no longer chatbots — they’re your new PUBG teammate/ PUBG is getting AI teammates powered by Nvidia technology."
This is AI that wasn't built for Games, Game Developers or the Game Industry. And that's okay. But don't bullshit us after the fact while pivoting repeatedly.
NVIDIA LEGAL TIMELINE 2024 LAWSUITS
Meanwhile the Generative AI being stacked on top of Omniverse definitely won't be a problem for game creators despite lawsuits for patent infringement, copyright infringement, & trademark infringement.
(*move along, nothing to see here, definitely no liability for using tools tainted by patent, copyright, and trademark infringement)
December 11, 2024
Class-action lawsuit against microchip company Nvidia to proceed, Supreme Court says
November 05, 2024
Nvidia Moves to Ax YouTube Video Creator's AI-Training Lawsuit
September 16, 2024
Nvidia Tech Violates AI Computing Patents, Texas Lawsuit Says
September 5, 2024
Nvidia, Microsoft hit with patent lawsuit over AI computing technology
September 05, 2024
Nvidia, Microsoft Hit with Patent Lawsuit Over AI Computing Technology
August 16, 2024
Nvidia, OpenAI face YouTube creator lawsuits for using online videos
A video creator alleges that the companies scraped his videos, and millions of others, without permission to help train their generative AI learning models.
July 08, 2024
Massive Chip Maker Nvidia Named in Generative AI Copyright Lawsuit. A lawsuit was filed against Nvidia for using a dataset that contained copyrighted materials to train its Megatron large language model.
May 03, 2024
Nvidia and Databricks sued for alleged copyright infringement in AI model development
Nvidia Corporation and Databricks Inc. face class-action lawsuits alleging copyright infringement in the creation of their artificial intelligence models
April 08, 2024
Nvidia hit with trademark lawsuit over 'Modulus' AI software
March 13, 2024
Authors Sue NVIDIA Over NeMo AI’s Copying Of Copyrighted Works
March 11, 2024
Nvidia is sued by authors over AI use of copyrighted works
And for good measure:
Generative AI Lawsuits Timeline: Legal Cases vs. OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic, Nvidia, Perplexity, Intel and More
January 9, 2025 by Joe Panettieri
CEO & Founder at Symbol Zero // Microsoft Regional Director
3moRichard Browne Chris Melissinos shawn layden Don McGowan Maria M. Amy Yeung Raphael van Lierop Shannon Loftis (she/her) Ben Kvalo Johan Cedmar-Brandstedt Pascal Hetzscholdt Jim Amos John Woodworth Purnima Gauthron Keren Flavell John Moore Nicholas Olsen Ethan Tan Manny Ko Ethan Tan Michael Timothy Doyle Veda Cruz, Esq., MBA Florian Schwarzer Helen Burnill Charles Metze III Saji Johnson Sarah Thomson Julie Saslow Schroeder, J.D., L.L.M.(Actively searching) Helen Yu Kelvin Low Dr. Jeffrey Funk
CEO & Founder at Symbol Zero // Microsoft Regional Director
3moThomas L. 🎮 apologies, Nvidia was crazy and stupid enough to integrate gen AI as AI solutions all through their ACE pipeline. I didn't believe they would be that monumentally insane from a legal perspective nor that they would misunderstand game engine tech so badly. The notion of having gen AI do NPC decision-making without it understanding states is terrifyingly stupid. The fact that gen AI can't do pathfinding and yet gen AI is supposed to activate an ally is laughably bad. The idea of it not knowing nor being able to track mission or quest logic or even player stats and states and yet trying to get it to hallucinate meaningful interaction beyond a 3 minute youtube demo, is baffling. There's no memory for anything in gameplay yet Gen AI will boldly march in, know nothing and make random decisions. Jesus ACE is a fustercluck. So yes, I apologize. I thought Nvidia would build new real AI (ML/RL/DL) tech SOMEWHERE is this cloud pipeline and not output hot garbage. I was wrong. ACE is the laziest execution of pretend to be game code masquerading as anything useful that NVidia has ever put out. But hey, its probably great for virtual assistants for those who want 3D assistant locally on a $1000 or higher RTX GPU.
CEO and Founder, Midwestern | $350M+ Raised by Clients | 3 Exits | Founder Advocate
3moBalancing enterprise and gaming is tough. Real innovation often comes from focusing on one area deeply.