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Call For Questions For DF Direct Weekly #161 (Patreon)

Published:
2024-05-02 09:16:26
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:
Q&A

Content

Hi everyone - another Thursday, another call for questions for another episode of DF Direct Weekly #161. We'll be discussing the collapse in gaming revenue for AMD, driven partially by a slowdown in consoles sales, as more rumours emerge of a more PC-like future for Xbox. We'll also be spending a good deal of time discussing Starfield's new performance options.

We'll also be rounding up the latest Switch 2 rumours and discussing their viability and we may well have a few more titbits on the PlayStation 5 Pro. Ray reconstruction coming to RTX Remix? Maybe we'll be talking about that too.

But of course, DF Direct Weekly isn't the show it is without your input, so please feel free to populate the 'webzone' beneath these words with your topic suggestions along with any and all questions you may have! Thanks in advance!

Files

Comments

alexrdavies

Your video showing ray tracing on steam deck was fascinating. It appears to be perfectly possible at lower resolutions - while challenging at high ones. If the DF team were designing console default settings or targets, and you could only have 1 mode - would you turn it on?

Wesk89

Hello dear DF team, if you had to choose between #stutterstruggle or FSR pixelation artifacts for the rest of your life. What would you choose and why? Cheers!

T

Rich often argues that dlss with 4k output is very unlikely on the Switch 2 based on his testing with multiplat games. However, how likely is it that we will see nintendo games targeting a 4k output (or something between 1440p and 4k) with dlss (ultra) performance on switch 2? Nintendo developed games are usually less demanding and often target the native res on the og switch.

Materia-listic

Has Rich ever thought about testing a handheld in docked mode with an external gpu to see if the console experience can be replicated there similar to his videos on the handhelds raw performance? Also welcome the panels take on if this can ever be competitive next to the switch as the hybrid of choice for gamers.

Ben Fisher

Coming back to last week. With games seemingly launching unfinished. Should the platform holders take more responsibility for the quality of the games and have a Sony seal of quality etc

goregutz

Hi DF team. First of all, I love Tom's hair. Secondly, If there was one graphical pet peeve that you could get rid off once in for all, what would it be? For me, it would be LOD pop ins/fade ins. Totally takes me out of the moment to see a low poly object snap into its high poly form or a low resolution shadow become high res as I draw near. Very immersion breaking. A close second would probably be clipping

Alex's Retro PC

Hi team, for the New Nintendo Super Switch XL, what do you think Nintendo’s strategy will be for a back compat plus program (if there is one at all)?

1040STF

Regarding a more PC-like future for Xbox, there's a topic I almost never hear of on Digital Foundry: Keyboard and Mouse support on consoles. Since this gen, it's pretty awesome: all Call of Duty have it, all NightDive remasters have it, Cyberpunk 2077 has it, ... but no Sony first party games have it to my knowledge, which is weird as accessibility features seem to be one of their priority. The most paradoxal situation is that ID Software never support K&M, but as Nightdive does, Doom 64, the only Doom created for a pad, is the only Doom game to support those on consoles. Anyway. I recently got a Razer Turret, which is a Mouse and Keyboard for couch gaming, labeled as "for Xbox" but that works fine with PC and PS5, and it's pretty awesome. Do you sometimes use M&K with consoles? Do you think we might see that support extended in the future to get consoles closer to PCs?

Abadaba-Pling Boink Wee Juhu

Is it easier or harder to run DF in slow news periods, compared to periods where a lot is happening?

Samson

Hey DF Team! With Microsoft rumored to be making their console more “PC-esque” do you see this having a positive affect on the quality of ports for traditional PCs? Does this mainly depend on whether Microsoft goes the Steam Machine route as opposed to the console being made up of the same hardware? Thank you!! Keep up the good work!

The Knight Who Says Ni!

Hey DF! Given Bethesda's recent track record of releasing buggy quality and performance mode patches on Series X, do you think we'll see similar issues with Starfield's latest patch, which offers similar modes to Fallout?

1040STF

On a side note, if you're interested to go deeper: - here's a list of games supporting M&K on Xbox : https://www.purexbox.com/guides/all-xbox-games-with-mouse-and-keyboard-support - on PS5 (not up to date I fear): https://www.trueachievements.com/keyboard-and-mouse-support/games - And here's the Sniper, from Brooks, which allows to use Mouse and Keyboards with any game. I've learned recently to my huge surprise that many teenagers ask their parents to buy them one so they can play Splatoon 3 online with mouse and keyboard, which gives them a serious advantage over the other players. That was unexpected. https://www.brookaccessory.com/sniper/index.php

Abadaba-Pling Boink Wee Juhu

Does my illustrious designation challenge the boundaries of your video interface's capabilities?

TheJediExile

Hey DF Team, a lot of rumors have gone around about AMD’s Strix Point & Strix Halo APU’s. With CU counts of 16 and 40. This seems to reflect a trend with AMD, being one step behind but two steps around Nvidia. Never beating Nvidia but tip toeing deeper into their territory with all in one solutions and iterative advances through a war of attrition. Imagine what a PS5 style CPU could do for Laptops. Do you think these new powerful APU’s will bring about a paradigm shift in Laptop gaming and enterprise business?

Tamerator

Hello DF gentlemen, Unreal Engine 5.4 promises a new overhauled shader compilation system that is more performant. Do you think that shader compilation stutters could come to an end on PC with these engine updates and Alex can finally claim victory in his mission?

Vasyl Baran

Why in some games (e.g. Resident Evil 2) the game feels "snappier" and more responsive when V-sync is enabled but in some games - enabling V-sync does the opposite (it adds more lag/delay)

Wilbert

Hey gents! With backwards compatibility being the new normal with console generations, why aren't game developers future proofing graphical mode options e.g. giving quality / performance presets with no frame rate cap? What would be, in your opinion, the graphical modes that all console games should include? Thank you!

Monad With A View

Would the team welcome a future in which consoles come in two models (a) a low spec cheap version that can run some games locally but will stream more complex ones via subscription and (b) a high spec version (or just accredited device specification) which can run anything locally and costs mad amounts of money?

DaJaCo (Dan)

This week there has been talk from prominent leakers surrounding RDNA4 - To quote: "RDNA3 RT was based on RDNA2 with some improvements. RDNA4 RT looks completely different." There is speculation that this might mean lower level hardware acceleration; similar to Intel and Nvidia. PS5 Pro is supposed to be borrowing elements of RDNA 4, does this add up with it's purported 300 TOPS?

AdorablyAllPhysical

Hey DF team! Had a question on my mind for a while... since the beginning, developers have been creating art around the limitations of the hardware they program for-- to great effect. Do you think with where we're at right now developers should be arting around the limitations of upscaling specifically? Every time I see certain choices made with a characters hair or things like camera sway in games that are console bound that the developers know will be upscaled with FSR (or even checkerboarding) I wonder if they should have been making different choices with the art with that in mind from the very beginning.

DaJaCo (Dan)

Chinese Accessory manufacturer Mobapad has this week described the switch 2 hardware design as "a conservative hardware evolution". Apparently the new Joy-Cons are attached in a horizontal (rather than vertical sliding) motion, and employ a magnetic locking system. The screen will be 8 inches and 1080p, and the dock will have a "damping bracket" that allows it to be adjusted to different angles (not sure what benefit this is). There have also been fresh rumours from MLID that the console will hit around 4 TF in docked mode - but be clocked much much lower in portable mode. Is this console finally coming into view? What are your thoughts on these latest rumoured details?

StefanSt

That’s the reason why instead of fomo when a game is released, I have now fear of playing games too early. I just recently finished Assassin’s Creed Origins and Death Stranding because I consider them „finished“. Next up is Cyberpunk. Haven’t touched Starfield, Fallout 4, No Man’s Sky and many others.

StefanSt

Big exception: Nintendo games

lbb12

Hello DF Team! Upon reviewing footage of Metro Exodus with PhysX features: hairworks & tesselation enabled on PC, I questioned whether PS5 or Xbox consoles had any of these but can't find concrete answers. I personally prefer playing a ver. of a game looking it's best as my platform of choice for it. This was the case for the Batman Arkham Trilogy of games on PC with an NVIDIA card *just* for the PhysX stuff b/c without it, the game looks WAY less immersive (ex. fight with Scarecrow in Asylum, Ra's Al Ghul level in City, lots of effects in Knight). I was hoping by the time a game like Metro Exodus and NVIDIA's open sourcing PhysX awhile ago (as well as continual extinction of dev support for it) that an AMD GPU user/based console would allow the use of its features by now, or am I wrong? Will we ever see a PhysX enhanced title run with those features turned ON for AMD someday (patched-in/updated to run)? I sincerely appreciate your input 😄👍

KillerFugu

Hi Team hope all are well. I was playing Helldivers recently and noticed the Steam concurrent players was almost 2/3 of the ingame total players with crossplay, and now there's been the report that in the US over half of the sales have been on PC. Surely this has got to be one of the biggest signs to publishers the importance of multiplat and day and date ports vs exclusivity and delayed ports? With rising development costs this seems like the easiest way to recoup more money from a project.

Ben Fisher

Yeah very very true. I've slowly become a patientgamer too. Runs better, hardwares newer, better updates. It's a sad state when early access are more polished than AAA

ThaiCheesus

Hey DF Team! I just saw the new performance options for Starfield, and I love the flexibility. While most other console games will forever make players decide between quality and performance, the Starfield approach allows players to get better performance today by lowering settings while also allowing the game to live up to its full potential (high visual setting plus high frame rates) on inevitably more powerful future consoles. Could this be part of what is meant by making games “forward compatible”?

zephyr

Hi DF team! In a recent interview Todd Howard stated Bethesda's trying to “increase our output” with regards Elder Scrolls and Fallout. Why hasn’t this been done already? Surely it would have behooved Microsoft to have given them a dump truck of money so they could have been developing these games alongside Starfield. Is it simply not possible these days for a studio to be developing multiple AAA games in parallel?

VeryProfessionalDodo

Hey DF Team! Now that the PS5 Pro discourse has maybe died down a bit, there's a big question that hasn't been addressed, and it's not just a PS5 Pro problem, but a PS6 problem as well. The PS5 Pro price hasn't been announced, but how can I justify spending likely more than 650 dollars on a piece of hardware that will run Just Cause 3 or Batman Arkham Knight at 1080p30? How will Sony ensure that PlayStation remains "the best way to play", when I can get smoother frame times from a 400 dollar handheld? Does Sony have no way to force higher resolution and/or frame rate, even if behind a user setting? A PS5 that can run all PS4 games at 2x resolution, and 2x frame rate, and all PS4 Pro games at 2x frame rate sounds like a hell of a machine. Gravity Rush 2 at 4K60? Bloodborne at 4K60? PAW PATROL AT 4K 120??!?! Now that's a console worth buying!

VeryProfessionalDodo

At this point, I'm convinced that if I could build a PC with the PS5 APU, I wouldn't need to upgrade in a long time. Just a shame to see the PS5 underutilized, I would like to have some control over the settings a la PC

Zero

Hi DF Crew! With all the talk of the Switch 2 and PS5 Pro, I wanted to ask about the continued gaming industry trend of improving how games look, rather than what they can "do"? I just finished playing Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and while it has a gorgeous world, the phrase "pretty diorama" popped into my head more than once; You can only interact with the world how the developers want you to, only climb where they want, and it makes the world feel "fake" and dead compared to something like Tears of the Kingdom, where due to the physics system, the world feels if you can imagine it, you can see it done. Because of that, Tears in some ways feels more "next-gen" than any of the graphics-heavy experiences Sony and others have put out on PS5 This certainly doesn't need to be an either-or situation, but I feel we aren't seeing as much innovation in the interactivity category as time goes on. Love to hear your thoughts and keep up the stellar work!

Gordon Lin

These nvidia chips have 2 parts to them. The half that does DLSS i think runs in the bits that do ray tracing. The switch 2 has smaller ray tracing silicon. Because of that, reconstruction to much higher multipliers will have a high millisecond cost. Even if Nintendo's own games are less demanding, the time cost of upscaling alone up to 4k i think is above 16.67ms anyway. Probably edging on 33. 33.

Gordon Lin

Hey everyone! If you were handed the reins of architecture design for the Super Switch 2 esquire, what feature(s) would you love to have? External GPU built into every dock? Hybrid handheld mode where you get higher power ceilings and increased performance on the handheld mode when plugged in? VRR? VPN built in? Auto check book balancing? Filling out your taxes?

I love the Habs

Hi guys, if the switch 2 is just a beefier switch, it’s hard to imagine it’ll have the same success as the original. It’ll need great software yes, but I don’t think the average consumer cares about 60fps or resolutions for the most part, so it’ll be entirely dependent on games. If you needed to add a gimmick to it that would make it stand out, what would it be? My choice is dual screens. That was my favourite aspect of the DS/3DS era and I miss it quite a lot. Though I admit this would be very impractical since using it docked would require a Wii U like controller and increase costs and all that not fun stuff.

Gordon Lin

Budget and resource allocation.... And rendering. TotK is Nintendo, and there's a philosophical acceptance of their decision of prioritizing gameplay innovation and experimentation over cutting edge rendering techniques. Plus their art department is second to none and can make elegant simple designs that become timeless. There are so many polygons dedicated to Cloud's hair just to make the lighting look right... Which gets lost anyway when it has to be upscaled to meet performance budgets... That TotK has that much simulation on a CPU of 2016 tablet vintage is astounding, and immediately impossible the moment any UHD 4K modern middleware rendering solution gets implemented. Yes, with enough halo-product hardware, you can do it but devs are not designing around what $5k desktops are able to do with 60+ rendering mods from Nexus mods can do.

SmoothSegue

What’s DF’s take on Managed Democracy? For or Against?

Snorlax cat

where do you stand on Starfield performance mode? do you think it will be a 50-60 experience or it will drop a lot? where does that leave the ps5 pro version?

Zero

Good insights! Don't misunderstand, I totally get why Sony (for example) isn't doing it! My question was more philosophical in nature; *Why* have most gaming companies opted for the 4K UHD approach instead of leaning more into crazy art direction and playing up interactivity? And what does that mean for gaming as the costs of the 4K UHD keep going up for the industry and consumers.

Adam Holmberg

Hi DF, I was watching some Star Wars Dark Forces Remastered gameplay and noticed one of the guns being party shiny in it's design and simply wondered; would it be possible to have ray traced reflections applied to a sprite-like object in a game of this style or maybe a Build Engine title? Would it be possible to have a small pixelated gamorrean reflected on a Blaster in that style of game or would it all have to be faked and real 3D under it all?

DaJaCo (Dan)

Sex Sells - or rather; flashy visuals do. They are eye catching and attention grabbing; and are intrinsically valued as a display of technical prowess. I could see a shift back in this direction once more of the rendering systems become automated. For instance, once games have fully path traced reflections, lighting, shadows, and translucency - and lots of AI generated geometry, artwork and textures - the workload focus will shift away from visuals as it will no longer be a differentiating factor. Gameplay, story, level design will ultimately return to prominence when the technology has solved an ever reducing set of problems. And then we'll move to 8K! PS - despite being a total graphics whore, the more I play TOTK, the more I realise: Nintendo are right.

DaJaCo (Dan)

There were some early rumours that their gimmick would be a camera and improved augmented reality features - wouldn't be a massive surprise given what they did on 3DS.

RAVE_DAM0S

Hola Gents and good day to you! With the "direction of travel" being that Xbox is continuing its journey to merge Xbox and PC, could that have an impact on developer priorities. See, given the consoles sales lead enjoyed by PlayStation, developes prioritize its platform. Its API. You mentioned as much last week. Makes sense! By combining PC development with Xbox development, could that change the dynamics so that more of the features available on Xbox can better manifest (e.g. the "Savoir" of Xbox Series, Sampler Feedback Streaming!) Or will Xbox (even with merging its development environment with PC) find itself relegated to the 'second' or possible even the 'third' platform for game development. To say thank you for the fantastic coverage weekly! would be an understatement. Know this, we love the coverage and the "bespoke merch". Hey! Any chance we could get merch in a color other than white or black! best.

Leftisthominid

A while back, you did a video comparing streaming quality on xCloud and PS Plus. I was wondering if you had any plans to do a comparison of in-home streaming on these devices. Late last year, I used to the Backbone with my Galaxy S22 Ultra to stream from my Xbox. I was only doing an NG+ of Persona 5R this way, but I did not notice any major issues. I am curious if either machine is better at in-home streaming. (My Xbox and PS5 are hardwired into my network).

Leftisthominid

When will we see Will once again on DF Direct? I enjoy seeing all the random tech boxes in his background and trying to guess what they are.

Leftisthominid

If Richard Leadbetter from 2029 came through a time warp and told you that Intel ARC had overtaken AMD in discrete GPU marketshare (but had no way of showing proof) and then went back to his own time, would you believe him?

Leftisthominid

If the PS5 Pro is coming out this year, the Ampere Switch is coming out next year, and the "Xbox Series Y" (non-iterative) is coming out in 2025/2026, what is the status of the console wars (particularly between Sony and Microsoft). Both seem to believe in generations but are following their own bespoke clocks.

Leftisthominid

How are you all doing and what are you all currently playing for fun (specifically not work)? Any games that you consider next-level-stuff?

Tony Escobar

Hi all! Thanks for always producing the highest quality content. What do you make of Square Enix’s ‘Content Abandonment Losses’ statement? And how do you think it will impact future projects such as the third installment of the FFVII trilogy? Keep up the amazing work, and kudos on the new FFXIV video with Marc ‘Try4ce’ Duddleson!

Eric Benoit

Given the terrible news about Roll7, I also have been seeing articles on social media indicating the top game on every platform is Fortnite. Is single player gaming development being sacrificed on the Altar of MMO? Is the goal of projected growth on Wall St harming the gaming industry in the long run? I understand bills have to be paid and profits are necessary for a business to survive but closing studios and narrowing your focus to one type of genre seems to lead to stagnation and long term decline.

Perfect_Organism

I know the game itself isn’t everyone’s fav bae, but Fortnite manages huge releases, on multiple platforms, at regular cadences. And these seem to be largely bug free and performant releases (I could be wrong here, I don’t really hang around in the Fortnite circles, contrary to the rumours). Any insight into how they - or other AAA live service teams - manage this feat?

Yannick Ex

Hi DF, with the popularity of the Steam Deck / SteamOS and even having some developers like Nixxes that try (but don't always succeed) to have their games run correctly on that platform, why most games on PC are still only targeting DirectX? If we take Horizon Forbidden West for instance, that has been developed for PS4/PS5 and by conclusion using Vulkan, the PC port still is only running on DirectX12. If we take Unreal / Unity games, it should be easy to create an output directly to Vulkan. Am I correct to assume that targeting Vulkan would provide a boost in performance when running on the Steam Deck / Linux? It's still too rare to see games with both choices on Steam (I have Hades in mind, but I know there are others).

DaJaCo (Dan)

I would also add that JRPGs have never been especially interactive, they are largely narrative and menu based - in fact, I'd say rebirth is probably one of the most interactive Final Fantasy games (when compared to previous titles in the series). I do remember as a child playing console final fantasy games and being confused as to why I couldn't explore and interact with all the environments like I could in other games. A better example of this criticism might be how the crysis series has actually gotten worse in terms of interactivity and destruction.

Zero

Yeah there were a lot of examples, I chose Rebirth specifically because while it's got this large world to run in, you can only move through it how they want you to. They have specific marked points to climb vs Zelda's climb anything approach. Another Western example could be the Last of Us games. Last of Us 2 has these awesome rope physics that they do very little with overall during the game.

Maelstrom

One of the key arguments for 60 fps (or high) in games is improved responsiveness. But what's to stop the developers from running a 30 fps game's internal logic and controller input polling at "60 fps" internally, or even "120 fps"? Not that the games are actually running this fast, but the internal logic is, even if things are not being fully rendered 120 times per second. It sounds like a nice, simple way to improve latency and end user experience without as much overhead as rendering the game at 120 fps. So, why not?

Levander Davis

Hello, DF! I feel like the discourse around PC gaming has lost its roots. Too many assume that the entry point is a brand new $1,000+ machine. What was the first device YOU fell in love with PC games on? My mom bought a Gateway PC for work in 1998 with integrated ATI graphics and I lost hours playing Warcraft 2 on it.

Hobobench

Hello gents, curious about your thoughts on the Switch 2 rumors involving the magnetic joy con? From my experience, magnets tend to cause problems around electronics and especially screens, do you see this as being feasible and/or a realistic solution?

Leftisthominid

This is an important question and a follow-up to a question you answered last week. I am trying to understand the position of the ROG Ally within the Republic of Gamers. Is the Ally part of the Republic, or merely an ally to it? For example, the UK, a constitutional monarchy, is an ally to republics, such as the US. What are you thoughts on the Ally's citizenship within the ROG?

LosCV29

Hey, Team! I travel to South America often. Console penetration is abysmal down there. The barrier to entry is HUGE. The consoles cost a fortune and internet is really slow and coverage is patchy so streaming isn't really an option. It seems like AAA gaming has reached maturity and really is not growing at healthy rates anymore in developed nations. Gaming companies have seemingly exhasted every option at generating extra revenue with things like early access, DLC, cosmetics, etc. It seems like the only real way to grow this industry is by increasing the user base in developing nations. We see mobile gaming exploding because everyone already has a cell phone. Will something similar need to happen with console gaming for it to grow? I can see Windows on ARM or these upcoming APUs being cheap enough to lower the barrier for entry. My question: In order for gaming to truly reach the worldwide masses, does the expensive console need to die? If a person will always need an expensive machine, this industry will certainly stagnate, no?

Xbox Ally Has Gone ROGue!

Will Palworld ever get a 50 hz in 60 container True PAL Experience mode, or even a 5/6 game speed Retro PAL Experience mode? If so will DF take a look at it?

Octolimar

Hello DF! This channel is focused on highlighting the, well, highlights of tech, but where do you think some studios could/should improve? Obvious examples include Bethesda's clunky old engine, Fromsoftware's poor shadows and PC featureset, and Koei Tecmo's consistent poor graphical fidelity with unreasonably demanding hardware requirements. This isn't to insult the devs, but rather just to point out some potentially low hanging fruit that you feel could be an easy way for these developers to get their foot in the door for "next-gen" graphics.

Octolimar

Dragon's Dogma 2's path tracing is yet another example of path tracing in a AAA modern title (unofficially) following Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk 2077. How is the tech shaping up? It's incredible how far rendering capabilities have progressed in the last couple years, but is there a future where path tracing is the norm? Or is it an extreme feature for extreme gamers with uber powerful PCs to play a select few games that target high end hardware.

Octolimar

Hello DF team! A question regarding the differences between raytracing and path tracing; what IS the difference? Assuming you have the full featureset of raytraced reflections, AO, GI, and shadows, how/why does path tracing offer superior visual results when it is fundamentally accomplishing the same goal using the same techniques? My understanding is that path tracing is just "full raytracing" where all lighting is done with raytraced methods, so where does the difference arise?

yogi

do you think switch 2 games will support 40fps or will be locked to 30/60fps? 40fps works very well with xbox/ps5, but we don't see it in every game since it's only really available with 120hz screens. One possible way I think this could work is the switch 2 targetting 30fps in handheld mode, but 40fps in docked. I don't think they'd go for 40fps in handheld but could 45fps be viable with a 90hz screen like the steam deck oled's?

Retro Sean

With regard to the reports that AMD's graphics and gaming (read: console related) sales are down, my question is, what did they expect? As the owner of three Radeon cards from the 6000 series in my household, I have nothing affordable to upgrade to. The 7800XT is the same as a 6800XT and the now trio of 7900 cards are too expensive and not good enough for the price! What does AMD need to do (aside from replacing FSR with something actually as good as DLSS) to succeed?

TSGames

Hi Df! After watching Richs handheld roundup video I was curious why these devices are still quite a bit slower than series s. How come? The z1 extreme is quite a bit faster than the 3600x and the gpu, at least in theoretical terms, should have more power than the series s one. Might there be some optimization left on the table regarding drivers or directx apis? Or is it just not really possible to compare since gpu and cpu are constantly fighting for the tdp? Thanks for your thoughts!

Gluten-Free Potato Glutton

Now that Bethesda has officially announced 40fps and 60fps patch for Starfield on Series X, can we stop making excuses for games that don't ship with a performance mode (primarily Xbox games) and blaming everything on console cpu? Poor Zen 2 has erroneously been used as a scapegoat and deserves an apology! It is now apparent that the likely reason for no 60fps mode on release was because of the Series S and related Microsoft policies. Let's call it how we see it, gentlemen.

Simplex

Apologies if that was already covered - any thought on the upcoming Pimax Crystal Light, and on Meta Horizon OS/opening the ecosystem to OEMs, question mark. Sending good vibes to the whole DF team, three exclamation marks.

Crashsune

Who would win in a fight, the ROG Republic of Gamers or the Lenovo Legion?! Is this a sign that Cyberpunk 2077 style Corpo wars are now real and have already begun??

tod weitzel

Any thoughts on the end of the z80?

Container7

In your opinion(s), are there any experiences that are best on a 'vanilla' PS4 vs on a 'vanilla' PS5?

Kaveh Ghorbati

(Please credit as Local Bookstore) If OLED screens are lit per pixel, would sub native resolution reduce the quality of the "OLED" effect?

Chrom

Hi Team DF, As a gamer, I'm happy to see that exclusivity is becoming less of a less of a thing. And games are going to be on as many platforms as they can be. This way, more people can enjoy it, and we're less restricted in how we want to play our games. After seeing Microsoft putting their games now also on Playstation, I'm more and more thinking the entire concept of game ownership should change as well. Not buy one game on one platform, but buy one game period. The platform shouldn't matter! I mean, why do we have to buy again and again the same game when they're always the exact same thing on each platform. It makes sense to me that I buy a game on one platform and then redeem it on others. I would like to buy a game on my Xbox and play it on my Steam deck (For example). Do you think Microsoft in particular would push this? It only seems advantageous to them. And now that they're so large as a publishers, they should have some clout in making it happen.

AfreemTheDream

I sometimes stay up at night and wonder: if Microsoft wasn't such a rich company wouldn't they just be another SEGA? Their best-selling console (X360) sold less units than Sony's worst-selling console (PS Triple), and in the current gen Sony is thrashing MS by double. How could anyone think that MS has a "bright" future in the console space when their past has actually been quite shoddy?

Mr Codders

Hello Gents! I have a great question for Rich! In your most recent handheld gaming video you mentioned about allocating VRAM for the GPU. However, I don't see this as nessasary and it might even hurt performance. If VRAM spills over to system memory it is still the same physical memory as it was previously accessing. Allocating memory to the GPU might decrease performance as there will be overall less memory for the CPU to use. What are your thoughts?

Alan

Hi Team! Regarding last week's question about the Republic of Gamers, if there was such a place, what would our leaders (Emperor Richard and his two viceroys) top three laws be? PS. Would I be able to become a citizen of this idyllic utopia?

Ben W

Infamous leaker Moore's Law is Dead claims that he's heard the Switch 2 will run at close to 4 teraflops in docked mode. Is this realistic? If so, how much better performance would this deliver above what you tested in your Switch 2 RTX 2050 video last year? Could we see DLLS quality mode at 4K become a possibility?

Julian Shniter

Hi DF, I wanted to get your take on the news that take two is shutting down Roll7 and Intercept Games. As a long time Kerbal Space Program fan, I am particularly heartbroken by the news of Intercept Games. KSP 2 may have been very bare bones as Take Two forced it out early, but I felt it's potential to be extremely strong. Now I feel as if i have been robbed based on promises that are never going to be fulfilled. Do you think these companies should be obligated to make it easy for us to reverse engineer the games that they kill? I have more faith that modders would do this game justice instead of Take Two Interactive. Cheers

John Crowley

Lads and Geeza, it's sad to say but Xbox as a purpose built at home console will come to an end sooner rather than later. People have built digital libraries for 2 generations now and they won't forgo that worth and switch from PS to Xbox. Do you think Steam is the only viable platform the could manufacture a console and compete with Sony? Leverage people existing libraries, use Valves already great compatibility layer and boom, you have a console people can plug in to a TV and play with games they already own. Thoughts?

Rich

An Ampere GPU could make a profound difference over a Maxwell for many things beyond graphics, even at 15w. The only question is wether or not developers take advantage of it. My guess is third party developers will love the next Switch more than the current one.

Rich

According to the Steam Hardware Survey, more than 50% of PC Gamers have GPUs that can handle pathtracing - at least at 1080p. That number has been rapidly growing over the past year. There are more concurrent Steam users every month than Series X/S and PS5 total sold to date combined. If path tracing is the future, the hardware for it is already here, and literally getting more mainstream every day.

Rich

The essence of being a platform based publisher is the cut of revenues from sales on the platform. Valve, Sony, Nintendo, Apple, Meta, Google et al take their cut from sales on their respective platforms. Windows isn't in this paradigm, but Xbox certainly is.

ZephyrXero

What do you think would be an interesting new feature console manufacturers could add to their controllers to enhance interaction with games? Beyond adaptive triggers and enhancements to rumble feedback, it seems not much has changed about gamepads in the past decade or so. Have controllers peaked?

digitalfoundry

No, the console versions did not have those features - nor did they have tessellation.

digitalfoundry

We'll have some #content looking at this very soon!

ZephyrXero

They are both ray tracing technically. But generally when people talk about the 2, they really mean hybrid raster + ray traced effects vs a fully ray traced scene from end to end. The thing that makes it path tracing is instead of drawing triangles then using them to shoot rays out of for a certain texture that is then applied in traditional means, is that for each pixel rendered a ray is cast from the virtual camera to then determine what it's going to first bounce off of and be included in the render. It's kind of like ray tracing backwards through the scene. Now raster games will also use a ray casting technique to do triangle culling sometimes, but it's generally at a lower resolution than rendered and used in a different way, with no bounces. If you're really curious, Disney/Pixar has a great intro to (non-realtime) path tracing video on their YouTube channel

Chrom

I feel MS is letting go of platforms as we know it, and turning consoles into just one of many distribution channel where the purpose being, getting their games anywhere and on anything. And if you drive principal to the end, why would a consumer need to buy their games multiple times and why can't they just play it anywhere? MS wouldn't be able to control other platforms, but if all games can be redeemed on the Xbox hardware/Windows at least. That would drive people back to their service as it becomes a multifunctional thing. Right now I'm playing Persona 3 Reload on my PC and my Xbox. Would be awesome if I could also take it mobile. Steam does something similar, you buy a game from another store and you can redeem it on your Steam account without Valve getting any 30% cut.

VeryProfessionalDodo

What I wouldn't give for a well designed Steam Machine with good power efficiency and a power profile similar to the PS5

VeryProfessionalDodo

Not DF, but I would argue that no, it doesn't detract from the "OLED" effect. The screen is lit per pixel, but you normally have regions of pixels that are black (or close to it). Sub native resolutions still produce the same amount of black regions, just that the borders around those regions might be more or less defined. Even if the image is a dark gray, it's still more attractive in an OLED compared to a normal LCD because you don't have potential backlight issues as well.

John Crowley

It really is a dream machine. Truly backward compatible and without silly windows bloat.

lbb12

Thanks for the reply, this made my day! I am still curious about the inclusion of such exclusive PhysX features making their way to AMD/console versions of games (ex. the Batman Arkham series), as despite having an RX 5700 XT in my PC, I still keep a GTX 1060 around to play that game with PhysX enabled and it's annoying to have to swap :/ That, plus enhanced versions of games are lost to time... kind of like when 3DFx had exclusive versions of games (ex. MechWarrior 2 Titanium Trilogy) :D

David Ruppelt

Laudetur sacratissimi imperatoris Richardi! As latency and stutter are often brought up as the main issues of Frame Generation, what are your thoughts on using frame reprojection on the current frame right before displaying it, or „Post-Render Warp with Late Input Sampling“ as Nvidia calls it? Have you read the almost a year old Blur Busters article „Frame Generation Essentials: Interpolation, Extrapolation, and Reprojection“? It paints a future, where the game is reprojected to the refresh rate of 1000Hz displays, increasing motion clarity while decreasing jitter and input latency. How likely is this to actually happen, and within the claimed timeframe of „well before the end of this decade“? My understanding is, that this would require hardware support on the GPU and the engines will need some time to adopt it, not to mention the required displays and display interfaces to transport and display 1000Hz (a hypothetical DisplayPort UHBR40 for 10Bit 1440p@1000Hz).

RAVE_DAM0S

Id like to continue the imagination of a real Republic of Gaming where Rich is the emperor. And by my measure, I would be the guy who'd shout HERE, HERE in support of his politics. Long live the emperor! In this utopia, where would annihilating Shadder Compilation Stuttor be on your platform?

Kipters

Hi DF Crew! Pc requirements for Hellblade II just "dropped", with no indication about expected framerates for each configuration. Not really a question, just expressing my disappointment. Long live Emperor Richard!

INGENUK

Hi lads. It seems that no one's really that concerned about video game preservation. (present company excluded) It amazes me, coming from a retro collecting background and more recently, instead of waiting for a PS5 pro / PS6 or new XBOX, becoming PC gamer, that there doesn't seem to be a practical way to insure your catalog / collection for the future. It seems even more expensive to buy all the latest games and enjoy the cutting edge, but with the added risk of not knowing if they'll even be playable in the 10 years time. I feel it's time for a radical solution! Not quite sure what it is, of if anyone cares? Currently working and thinking about a way to back things up and preserve. Hoping the industry might end up offering a solution at some point. Any thoughts on this? Where do you see physical media in 10 years? Is your Digital collection safe? Thanks for all the hard work. Big Love

Leonardo

Dear DFrs. Recently I've been watching some streamers using eye tracking technology. I'd find extremely amusing to watch something like a first look into a game or trailer while watching what you watch. That is it! Cheers!