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Call For Questions For DF Direct Weekly #168 (Patreon)

Published:
2024-06-20 18:17:01
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:
Q&A

Content

Hi everyone, apologies for the lateness of the post. It's been quite a day - getting the Nintendo/DF Direct sorted, continuing work on the ROG Ally X piece and trying to get any games whatsoever to work on the Surface Laptop with the Qualcomm X Elite! Not easy!

Still, here we are. In tomorrow's DF Direct, I'll be sharing my results on running Starfield with frame-rate unlocked on Xbox Series S at both standard visual settings and with resolution reduced to 720p! I'll also try to have something on the Surface Laptop, but far from being an out-of-the-box PC where older apps just work, clearly something has gone badly wrong here. I did get Control working once, mind you, and that is an Auto SR game so maybe I'll try that too.

Hopefully John will have found the time to have given the new PS2 and PSP emulators for PS4/5 a go, while we'll also be talking about Still Wakes The Deep on PC Game(s) Pass shipping without upscaling support. I remember a bunch of unhappy posts about this, so please share any reports you have of Game(s) Pass versions of PC ports missing features.

Beyond that, it is - of course - all about your questions! It'll be myself (Rich), John and Alex at the mics, if that makes any difference, so have at it in the comments box which is - inevitably - 'below'.

Files

Comments

Nolen

15 years ago, using low settings in PC gaming was considered graphical suicide: a last-resort option that destroyed the artistic vision of games for minor performance gains. With the rise of the Steam Deck however - and the Steam Hardware Survey showing people holding onto their GPUs for longer these days - I feel that more and more gamers are considering low settings as a meaningful option to increase performance with carefully curated cutbacks to the visuals. Do you have any insight into how developers craft these low presets to help games scale downwards? Why are these settings so much better today, compared to a decade ago? I've also noticed that modern ports can have low presets that feel very carefully considered, but may still opt to turn off zero-cost effects such as bloom, lens flares, basic depth of field, and anisotropic filtering. Why is this?

Jonny_5a

Wasn’t expecting much from Nintendo at this late stage in the cycle but that was a pretty good direct. Do you think we saw many cross-gen titles a la Breath of the Wild - Metroid Prime 4 looked likely - and does the Switch have a chance of breaking the PS2s sales record or will Jim Ryan move the goalposts again?

Dylan

If your PC can’t quite squeeze out 4k60 would you rather drop DLSS below quality or change the output resolution to 1800p?

Perfect_Organism

I know we’ve all been wondering it for a while, but do you have any insight to what the skincare routine looks like for the Switch? Asking because I would love to age as gracefully as that console and want to know the secrets, but the bags under my eyes make me look like I’m more in my Wii U era.

Bigmanupstairs

With the recent Nintendo Direct receiving a positive response due to exciting new titles from existing IPs and the re-release of older games like Marvel vs. Capcom, it highlights Nintendo’s effective strategy. Do you think Microsoft and Sony will reconsider their approach, given the unsustainable nature of 6+ year development cycles for AAA games? Additionally, might they find launching games simultaneously on PC and console insufficient for boosting sales and profit margins, and instead look towards more frequent game releases and leveraging their back catalog like Nintendo?

Leftisthominid

When will Will make his triumphant return back to DF Direct?

ConcreteLlama

The DF merch store is great but I'm just wondering when the Rich body pillow is going to be available?

Leftisthominid

When DF Indirect was conceived, did you consider putting an underscore in the name?

Leftisthominid

I am trying to make sense of the Xbox/GamePass release of Octopath Traveler 2. There's some weird graphics options going on there. They have a frame rate and resolution mode unlike the PS5 version, which is simply a native 2160p60. Do you all have any idea what is going on there?

jmv

I noticed Star Citizen has its own upscalar in the graphics settings as well as FSR. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on it!

Leftisthominid

If Richard Leadbetter from 2026 came through a time warp and told you that the Alex Battaglia was regularly playing games on the Switch 2 for his own personal entertainment and not just for work (but had no way of showing proof or telling you the Switch 2's real name) and then went back to his own time, would you believe him?

Eric Benoit

Who is going to cover Just Dance 2025 for the Switch?

Leftisthominid

In the past, on a previous DF Direct Q&A section, you all recommended the Steam Deck over the ROG Ally. Given the existence of the ROG Ally X, in the here and now, would you stand by that recommendation (i.e., Steam Deck OLED over ROG Ally X)?

Leftisthominid

Why wasn't Will invited to the special Nintendo Direct episode of DF Direct?

CodeMalfunction

What are your thoughts on the Metroid Prime 4 trailer and do you think it’s possible it will get a visual upgrade on the Switch 2?

FrametimeSommelier

Hi DF Crew. No gaming/hardware question today. BUT....are you guys watching Euro 2024? And if so, who you guys think will win the bloody thing? The tournament is in Paul's and Alex's home turf and I am curious if it is getting any of your attention. It's kinda distracting me away from gaming right now. But don't worry, I will still have time for DF Direct.

bizzytrax

Hey DF! Do you think PC handheld gaming is still in its early stages as we've only had one generation of steamdeck? If Xbox released a handheld, would it compete more with the Steam Deck or the Switch 2? Also, do you think Nintendo is paying attention to the PC handheld market and being influenced by it? (I think it would be cool if they brought back some native game streaming features from a NVidia GPU to a switch...)

Pol Kallamata

Since the Switch successor is not expected to launch until Q1 2025 at the earliest, it's looking like Nintendo will have stuck to the same hardware for a full 8 years (possibly longer). Do you expect other console makers to also stretch out their current generations longer than they have in the past? Could the PS5 be out for 8 or 9 years before the PS6 releases? What factors may lengthen or shorten the duration of this current cycle?

hatsune mike

Hi DF team, Apple has been trying to make inroads into gaming lately, especially with the new M4 processor. Do you think this could promote ARM game development across the industry, possibly leading to more efficient ARM gaming handhelds?

alexrdavies

If the DF crew made a game together, who would do what?

1040STF

I'm seriously planning on coming back to PC gaming after 21 years without any PC, since Warcraft 3 actually. So my question might be the one from a total noob.
 As I travel often, I'm thinking of getting a gaming laptop, the Razer Blade 16" tempting me more and more with its 4080 GPU and its glorious 240Hz Oled display. But it seems from recent news that the PC laptop market is getting shaken up with the arrival of ARM Qualcomm CPUs. Is it possible that some laptops in the future will feature such a CPU coupled with another GPU, like a Nvidia one? Or will it be as on Mac, where Apple's M chip seems to do everything?
 In other words: should I wait a little before buying any PC gaming laptop, to see what's happening?

Rekesh Vekariya

Couple of quick things - Probably good to note that The Chinese Room are going to patch in DLSS support but other games missing DLSS included Ascent, Remnant 2 (got patched), Palworld. - You can't download PC Games via the MS Store on the Elite X devices, you need to try and move it across (that works for Apps) - Witcher 3 works on ARM via emulator and AutoSR kicks in

tod weitzel

Now that Marvel vs Capcom 2 has been freed, what is the next title that should be pardoned from licensing jail?

Ednamode

What are your thoughts on the leaks suggest that the next switch will have a 1080p screen during portable play as I have to admit, Im just as concerned with this detail as the 8nm node prediction. While this might have been necessary given the larger screen size, I still think 720p would have been the better decision. Even with DLSS, 1080p poses a great challenge in terms of dlss tensor cores cost and the strain on the relatively meager memory bandwidth.

Ali Antiasing

Hi DF. In what ways would you wish Asobo to enrich the upcoming flight simulator 2024? Do you expect any new ground breaking additions to the sim that could match the current features? Thank you for many years of hard work that allows us to appreciate games that much more.

Skyrimfest 26 FPS Edition

Do you foresee Switch 2 suffering from cross-gen titles holding it back from its full potential, given how many original Switch units will be in gamer's hands? Also, how realistic is it to expect Nintendo to adopt more complex art styles and gameplay mechanics for a more powerful system when they are so used to working with relatively weak hardware?

Revolution21X

With the talk of physical media and how many games are shipped with download codes or out of date builds on disc, it made wonder why not ship the disc later. Have a case with a code on shelves that people can buy and download the game right away, that then registers them for a disc that is shipped when the game is in a more complete or polished state. I know the logistics and cost are probably the reasons, but any thoughts. It is a bit of a bummer that when I really like an album by a band I can buy the cd or vinyl of it, but there is no equivalent for new games other than a rare few that are in good shape on the disc. An idea I always wanted to do myself, but do not have the resources and/or connections for was a history of game engines. With all the developers moving to unreal, it would be cool to hear how the engines of the past came to be, what features were added over time, what games used them and how they work under the hood a bit. I always loved Alex's Crysis video because of how he explained why it ran how it did in that they thought CPU's were going to get faster and not more cores. Any chance Alex/John would be interested in delving into their favorite game engines of the past. Alex's experience with Bioshock really hit home, as still being in school at that time I could not afford a new video card with the right shader model and had to also play it with a mod that turned a bunch of it black, I have no idea how I got through the Arcadia Glen section as it was basically a black screen.

Perfect_Organism

I dunno if I’m qualified to answer but DLSS performance looks solid to my eye? My eye typically being on a couch, I should add.

Wicca

Hi, it seems like the main speculation regarding the MVC collection not being released on Xbox is due to technical limitations of Capcom's MT Framework in supporting Xbox Series X|S. However, considering that MT Framework supported Xbox One, and with the Xbox Series' backward compatibility feature, this collection could theoretically be released for Xbox as well, right? So, couldn’t this be more of a management-level decision by Xbox not wanting games from the previous generation on their current-gen consoles? What are your thoughts?

yogi

Do you think we'll see nintendo use 40fps mode on the switch successor?

trayracer

Ooo yes would love to hear the replies to this one.

Snorlax cat

No questions. Just to thank rich for going on record on IGN with the Metroid 4 switch 2 controversy. Also somebody fainted during the Metroid 4 trailer, best wishes for him and his family

Rich

Low settings have always been a tool in the toolbox for PC Gaming, indeed pro esports games going back to the Quake-era had many players not only choosing lowest settings, but even using console settings to lower fidelity to ugly extremes for max performance.

Rich

Obviously depends on the display, not all LCD panels can easily reduce resolution arbitrarily like some CRTs could. Even many OLED displays don't have perfect scaling, so you take an image quality hit running at a resolution other than an exact multiple of the native resolution of the display. That's part of the benefit of DLSS, upscaling to the native of the display rather than changing the resolution directly...

Rich

The most recent tests on ARM laptops running windows are disappointing, the performance of an ARM based Windows PC was always going to be LOWER than x86, but the battery life improvement is not proving to be as dramatic as with Apple's M chips. That said I've been gaming on Nvidia GPU laptops all my life, I love my i9 4090 laptop. You rarely run modern games on these without being plugged in anyway, so the ARM PC revolution was never likely to be relevant for AAA PC Gaming regardless. The performance of an actual laptop RTX GPU should blow any integrated AI GPU out of the water anyway, just like it does now with comparing most RTX Laptops to an Apple M3 right now, the only advantage of Apple AI laptops now is the large amount of VRAM (ie for Local LLMs).

LittleMac

Was Metroid Prime 4 running on Switch 2?

Arathir

Regarding the Still Wakes the Deep missing upscaling methods on Game Pass, I remember seeing a steam discussion thread that listed articles mentioning other games where the Steam/Epic and Game Pass version were different. I believe it is this discussion thread (it also contains explanations from devs - post #2, #47 and I think the list of articles is #113) : https://steamcommunity.com/app/1622910/discussions/0/6234751708920749809/?ctp=4#c6234751708921440114 To quote the devs' message from the link: "To add more information, we have some technical limitations due to the difference between how the Game Pass and Steam / Epic Store versions are built. Unfortunately this means that other upscaling options aren't available in the Game Pass version. The PS5, Xbox X|S, and WinGDK (PC Game Pass) versions all have the same options. While we added extra upscaling options to the Steam and Epic Store versions. Adding them to WinGDK would require a custom coded solution. Thank you for your feedback. We are a small team and we want to help as many people play on a wide range of hardware so we will let everyone know if it's possible for us to create an update to add this feature in the future."

Xbox Ally Has Gone ROGue!

Howdy fellas! Has DF taken a look into the 3 new PS+ Premium PS2 games yet? Since this is the first time Sony has dropped "new" PS2 titles into the service, I wonder if they have figured out a better emulation layer and thus we could expect more PS2 games drop on the service, or getting standalone releases! Keep up the good work.

MarcusAuralius

The recently announced Marvel vs. Capcom collection was notably NOT announced for Xbox. Do you believe this is a harbinger for future releases ie: publishers not bothering with the cost of an Xbox port for certain titles? And if so, what does that mean for the viability of Xbox as a platform moving forward?

MGsubbie

What's the worst rage quit you have ever experienced? Mine was the FFX chocobo race, being hit by a bird 2m in front of the finish, ending at 00:00:06.

Diecou

Greetings DF! Assuming a Switch 2 release on the first half of 2025 and given the amount of games that Nintendo announced on this direct, even going as far as to 2025 with Metroid Prime 4 (which might be a launch title): do you think there are still unannounced 1st party games that will make it to the Switch 2 launch window? Which ones would you expect to see?

Alex's Retro PC

Gents, I have a simple question: "wherefore art thou, desktop RTX 4050?" Why do you think we have not yet seen a -50 or -50 Ti desktop SKU this generation? Is it too late now, or do you think there's still a chance it could come out?

Nolen

I see! Although in hindsight maybe I phrased my question wrong. I was thinking more along the lines of "How do developers draw the line between what's acceptable low settings and what's going too far"

Critically Wild

With Xbox seemingly phasing into an 'it's about Microsoft revenue, not brand protection' approach — which makes sense given the need to recoup the King Actizzard acquisition costs in the face of sputtering console sales — do you think we're likely to see further pragmatic decision-making akin to the release of Diablo IV on Steam? Personally, I think Game Pass would be growing if it was native to Steam's ecosystem; they have many Game Pass PC games on there, and we already know Steam supports 'access via subscription' infrastructure — and existing Microsoft titles on Steam already allow Microsoft account connection without opening other game launchers. One way to quickly boost subscriptions, revenue and access the Steam Deck install base. Do I hold in my mortal mind a nugget of purest green? Or is it more of a splat?

Jake Schoermer

Greetings DF! Given that the Asus ROG Ally X uses the same SoC as the original model and the Legion Go (amongst others) does the 24GB of RAM over 16 GB in those models make much performance difference, especially with a unified memory pool shared between the GPU and CPU? I have a Legion Go (having returned my ROG Ally after finding it effectively DoA - often not booting) and have had to tweak the memory allocation for some titles (which requires a reboot and changing BIOS settings on the Legion Go). Ratchet and Clank A Rift Apart needed 12GB of system memory to even start but that left only 4GB for the GPU, so I can see that extra memory being very handy for some titles as 4GB is a bit limited in 2024 even at the lower settings used on a handheld pc when running triple-a titles.

Someguyperson

Masahiro Sakurai came out with a video this week about the role marketing research plays in the game development process. (His YouTube channel is fantastic if you haven't seen it before) While talking about market researchers, he mentions how they identify trends and push development in the same direction that other successful companies have gone, at the cost of making original concepts & ideas. Do you guys feel that with how much money games are costing, management is putting more of a game's direction on marketing research instead of the developer's ideas to justify the massive expense in making these games? Do you think games like Concord went over like a lead balloon because of these market researchers? What other reasons do you think we have all these unappealing games with massive budgets?

Someguyperson

The 4070 Ti should have been the 4070 and the other products lower down the stack should have had their numbers bumped down, but Nvidia wanted to charge a lot more for this generation, so the current 4060 is actually the desktop 4050 (which also explains why it's not a great performer).

Someguyperson

I think Switch devs have been clamoring for better hardware for years now, so I think devs are ready to drop the Switch like a hot potato as soon as it comes out.

Someguyperson

Supposedly the memory chips that will be used with the Switch are faster than everyone expected at first, so we might actually have a normal level of memory bandwidth on Switch 2. Tensor processing isn't great, but I think it's still on par with the Series S, so it's not bad at all overall.

Someguyperson

If you're looking at a 4080+ in a laptop, the ARM options are not really competitive at all. The ARM chips are competing mostly at 5-15 watts and are quite good there, while you're probably looking at 75-150 watts just for the GPU, so just go with the beefy laptop.

monkfruit ninja

Hey DF crew! Love all that you do! This one is for John. In one of your recent DF retro videos about Gran Turismo and some history of racing games (excellent btw) you showed a brief clip of Rage Racer not Ridge. Rage Racer solidified my love of the franchise from the weight and feel of the vehicles to stopping in the middle of the road to stare at the waterfall. And the music! So memorable, so good! I have watched your ridge racer videos multiple times but don't recall you spending much time talking about rage. Can we please get a video or just your thoughts on that particular game? Thank you and keep up the fine work everyone!

Perfect_Organism

I sooooooo hope the portable screen allows for this.

digitalfoundry

Lower the DLSS quality first, I think. The issue with 1800p is that persistent 2D elements like the HUD will always present a little blurrier.

digitalfoundry

No, because the underscore is reserved for developers only.

digitalfoundry

No, this one's covered in the DF Nintendo Direct special we just put up :)

Anxiously Chrono Triggered

Hi DF crew! With ROG Ally X on the Horizon do you think it’s an ultimate option for retro games emulation on the go? While I love my SD OLED, it struggles with newer systems (not gonna mention names as Big N lawyers are always listening). ROG Ally X has better specs and now with a decent battery and being able to play retro games with software BFI (120 to 60Hz) it sounds awesome! Not gonna Switch (hehe) my SD OLED for ROG Ally X, but if someone’s looking for a handheld that is great for emulation and GamePass - it looks like it’s the best option. Would you agree?

Anxiously Chrono Triggered

Hello there, DF Crew! What’s the least advanced graphics-wise game you played recently that you had the most fun with? Or even - if there are any games that have quite noticeable performance issues that you were ok to ignore because you had so much fun playing? You know, PS3/X360-era kind of fun ;)

Samson

Hey DF Brethren! So has anyone had the time to notice that Elden Ring is running significantly better on PC after the release of the Shadow of The Erdtree DLC. There is still some minor traversal stutter but from what I can tell it's way better. Like 90% better. I say this because for the past week I have been playing in preparation for the DLC and I instantly noticed an improvement after installing it. I know the schedule is stacked for the team but do you plan on verifying this? Cheers!

Piotr Bakiewicz

Hey DF crew! I recently built a new SFC PC and started hooking it up to my LG G3 in the living room and I'm amazed with the HDR and 120hz framerate that results. In my desktop setup, since I work in design, I use a monitor built with design in mind (4K/60, 100% sRGB, etc.) And let's be honest, it's not an ideal match for gaming. I'm actually finding it hard to go back to this monitor now after using the G3 and doing anything on it. Do you have any tips (apart from buying a 42" C3) on what PC monitors are worth buying that will bring me closer to the image quality and movement of the G3? Thanks and keep up the good work!

omega tom hanks

Howdy fellas. Can someone explain why new UE5 titles keep shipping with only software lumen available? I've just been playing (the brilliant) still wakes the deep, and noticed the telltale signs of software lumen in their reflective surfaces. There is no option to utilize hardware lumen at all, as was the case in other recent UE5 titles like fort solis. Is there a good reason why these devs don't offer hardware lumen to those with systems capable of powering it? Thanks!

Daniel M

With the flood gates opened for Sony games on Nintendo hardware, could we potentially see Bloodborne on Switch 2? Could we expect 30 or 60 FPS? What about PS2 titles; if Sony’s new PS2 emulator could run on PS4, could it also run on Switch 2?

Helvetica Bold

Hey Guys, do you think Microsoft owned studios developing PS5 games will support the PS5 Pro? For example, do you expect the Black Ops 6 to take advantage of the new hardware?

Mr Bespoke

Thats if Mr Leadbetter lets him out of the Crazy Frog dungeon.

Mr Bespoke

Hi Alex, do you any tips and/or tricks to getting old PC games working on newer hardware? I'd dusted of a couple of pre to early 2000s games such as Nakatomi Plaza, Halo 2 and Sega rally 2 just to name a few and had no such luck in getting them to work even throught using the Windows compat modes or finding community mod paches. Any help or sage advice would highly be appreciated, Thanks and keep up the grast work.

lbb12

Hello Rich and DF Team! At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I don't know anyone else who can answer this question more reliably than you guys, so that is why I won't give up in my question being answered... 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)? Maybe a 'PhysX wrapper' (remember 3DFx Glide Wrappers for non-3DFx card owners?) As mentioned previously, the Batman Arkham series of games are a great example of a title that just seems lacking without the PhysX features, but complete with it (lookup 'Zogrim' on Youtube for best examples). I sincerely appreciate your input 😄

lbb12

GOG.com? If they don't have those games yet, I'd just wait since they're the *best* option for older games to run. Take Fallout 3 on Steam for example. Valve doesn't give any beans about getting it to run on anything past WindowsXP without issues, but GOG's version *actually* fixed it to run on modern OS & hardware without ANY issues.

Treefinngers

Hey guys! John's Perfect Dark breakdown was a fun watch! But I'm curious if anyone else noticed there seems to me no Blood particles or decals? I'm an N64 PD super fan! I first played it in Summer 2000. It was very bloody! In shootouts the environment would get covered in decals, and enemies even got hit wounds! Best analogy I can make is- imagine if the Doom 2016 reboot took out blood & gore! Wouldn't that be super weird? These are hyper-violent shooters! I'm worried now PD may lose its identity as a mature and wacky shooter! You rescue Elvis the Alien! End up on a Spaceship in the original! What are your thoughts? Do you think they've taken PD in a different direction? Less wacky/less Mature? Thanks as always for my favorite weekly show! Cheers! (or Prost! For Alex 🥨🍻🇩🇪)

VioletVulptex

I’ve noticed in a couple games lately (Deep Rock Galactic and Hellblade 2) there’s been an option for DLSS frame gen to be turned “off”, “on” or “auto”. What’s the difference between “on” and “auto”? Is there any situation where you’d recommend one vs the other?

LittleMac

Well, I didn’t know that.

False Toaster

Has DF ever reached out to FromSoftware on why Elden Ring (or a lot of their previous titles) are so horrendously optimized and why they never seem to want to patch or fix them? I would've assumed with the new DLC but it's been completely ignored! It's surely not a resource issue as they are very much successful.. So what exactly is the problem and why is the industry rewarding them for ignoring it? Also thanks DF you've guys forever ruined how I view games. Incase you haven't noticed.

1040STF

Thanks for the answers guys!