
From a programming and visuals standpoint: Ray tracing was always sought after, and it is peak graphical fidelity. It makes visuals better, and (shader) programming easier, more physics-based. It’s not just differentiation, the industry has been dreaming of realtime ray-tracing for 30 years. With slow, continuous movement in that direction.

While I definitely don’t know everything about Epic Games, but my (quick) googling suggests that they do almost no DRM (or just piggy-back on steam, which is minimal DRM). The individual developers are responsible for DRM. Is this not true?
In general, iI feel it is quite a moot point regarding iOS , where Epic wouldnt need to do any DRM, because iOS is locked down to hell…
I doubt it. This thing was in the pipeline for decades. It wasn’t just nvidia doing the thing because moore’s law. Everybody was interested and excited, while the moore’s law was alive and well. Literally can’t find better quality, but intel was pushing tech demos such as this.
The actual push for adoption and walled garden of NV RTX is… honestly, just business as usual. Nvidia did exact same with PhysX. Once they have the technological edge, they push hard to pump their ecosystem. They always played evil.