The Genshin Impact update has made the game nearly unplayable on Pixel 10
Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro smartphone users have encountered serious issues after the latest Genshin Impact update. The game has become nearly unplayable, even on the lowest graphics settings.
What exactly is happening:
The game developer simply removed support for the graphics core used in Pixel 10. The change log on the game’s website clearly states that devices with PowerVR graphics processors are no longer supported. Although the game still runs on Pixel 10, numerous comments on X and Reddit claim that the frame rate has dropped to 15–20 FPS, making gameplay choppy and uncomfortable. Issues arise even in the game menu, not to mention battle scenes. There were no such problems in previous versions of the game - Pixel 10 handled Genshin Impact on medium or high settings.
Pixel 9 was not affected by these changes; smartphones in this line are still capable of running the game at medium graphics settings and playing with a comfortable frame rate.
What is PowerVR
The British company VideoLogic was founded way back in 1985. Initially, it dealt with the production of specialized graphics accelerators for industrial computers and gaming consoles. In 1999, the company was renamed Imagination Technologies and began producing PowerVR video chips for IBM-compatible personal computers. Unable to compete with Nvidia and ATI, the company shifted its focus to the embedded graphics market in the late 2000s.
Imagination Technologies saw its greatest success in the early 2010s when its architecture began to be used by Apple as it started developing its own A-series processors. Besides Apple, PowerVR graphic chips were used in many processors from Mediatek, Texas Instruments, Intel (used in Atom series processors), Unisoc (Spreadtrum), and others. By that time, PowerVR had become the best chips in the industry, with which Adreno graphics did not always compete equally. But in 2017, Apple announced that it was exiting Imagination Technologies and would develop the chip’s graphics core independently. This news alone caused the company’s stock to plummet by 70%. Over the course of a year, the company sold off assets and in November was bought by the government-owned Canyon Bridge Capital Partners. By 2020, nearly all processor manufacturers had abandoned its solutions. The last chips containing PowerVR graphics solutions were released in 2023.
After these graphics solutions stopped being developed, their drivers also ceased to evolve. Over time, new graphics drivers began to have compatibility issues with these chips, so when a new Tensor G5 processor was unexpectedly released in 2025, some games showed terrible performance even compared to mid-range competitors. The issue lay not only in the older architecture but also in the lack of driver-level support.
Genshin Impact is quite demanding on graphical performance. The game developer miHoYo did not announce the reason for its decision. Perhaps the company’s support was overwhelmed with complaints about the game’s poor performance on Pixel 10, and the developer simply completely removed its support, or perhaps during the development of new functionality in the engine, they had to abandon outdated incompatible chips — it’s unclear. Google is a significant player in the smartphone market, but its controversial choice of graphics core does not seem to be universally supported. Perhaps public outcry will restore some level of support for this graphics core in Genshin Impact, but overall the situation is indicative.
Source: www.notebookcheck.net
