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Call For Questions For DF Direct Weekly #187 (Patreon)

Published:
2024-10-31 09:29:02
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:
Q&A

Content

We begin this week's Call For Questions with some news. First thing this morning, a courier rolled up with a PlayStation 5 Pro sample unit. I was amused to see that similar to my PS5 sample back in 2020, the thin cardboard outer sleeve has indeed ripped in transport - haha! History repeats itself.

The extent to which we can or can't talk about this in DF Direct Weekly #187 cannot be disclosed but anything earthshattering will be in separate content. As for stuff we can definitely do, well, we are ensuring the content mix is varied - we'll be discussing the complete closure of Concord and Firewalk, we'll have hands-on impressions of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and we may well be sharing some initial thoughts on the Monster Hunter Wilds beta and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered on PC.

Things are somewhat up in the air, but do please feel free to raise any potential topic points and of course, feel free to pose your questions. At this point though, due to embargo restrictions, we probably won't be answering anything related to the PS5 Pro.

Files

Comments

Ryan Seymour

Ironic the PS5 Pro box doesn’t have an 8K logo on it despite the fact it actually does have some 8K content coming, unlike the launch PS5

Valon Fazlija

So when can we expect rewiew? Monday?

Macky Dee

Monster Hunter Wilds beta on performance mode on PS5 has possibly the worst image quality I’ve personally seen this gen - and it doesn’t even hit a smooth frame rate! I was very impressed with the Resi Engine did for the Resi games, but are Capcom really forcing the engine far beyond its limits with these large next gen open world games? Will try the PC beta to see if it’s an improvement, but based on Dragon’s Dogma 2 it may still have some limits…

39digits

Hello there to Rich and his underlings! EGX took place last weekend here in London and it was BAD (and not Power Glove bad). It looked to be a tiny shadow of its former self as it was relinquished to a corner at a comic-con. Not to get too rose-tinted but I look back fondly at the grandiose days at Earls Court Exhibition Centre where they managed to pull in all the big names and there were plenty of talks (even by such legends as Kojima-san and The Bioware Doctors). A 4-day ticket was a requirement. The last few years you could go to EGX and see everything within less than a day. I can't help but feel EGX is now a thing of the past. Insomnia is gone. Rezzed is gone. WASD should hopefully be back. What do you think needs to happen for the UK game conference scene to return to its former glory? Or are the days of such events truly a relic of the past? What do we replace it with to get that community spirit going again?

Abandoned Walnut

Greetings gents. CES in 2025 is shaping up to be pretty interesting. What are you most looking forward to seeing and why!?

HelenX

Hello ! Regarding the 'Only dog's can tell the difference' line of thought that I broadly agree with except that there are games run well and are obviously generational leaps. Alan Wake 2, Robocop(so even UE5 can perform well) and even Black Myth (though that has some wonky performance) and none of those games required hundreds of millions of dollarpounds to develop. Cyberpunk *did* need hundreds of millions but it still runs incredibly well in path-tracing mode on 40 series nvidia cards. So why do so many games release with 'only dogs can tell' visual upgrades *and* perform horribly *and* cost too much to be sustainable ? When I got the PS5 I thought "finally! a device that can run ps4 games properly" so this is hardly a new phenomenon. I wonder if developers are prioritising screenshots and bullet point feature list marketing above all other considerations when making these games.

Nikolai

Hello folks, 13 year YouTube subscriber here! Now that you’re back in the CPU game, can we get a deep dive into the CPU cost of RT effects in various games? This topic is not covered nearly enough on tech channels and is more important than many realise.

goregutz

Hi guys! I watched Jayz2cents's video and his tests showed that with 8200 CUDIMM RAM, quite a few games were getting around a 50 fps boost making them second only to the zen 3d chips. Productivity applications also got a massive boost. While faster RAM doest boost performance, the extent to which it does so with Arrow lake is unprecedented. What are your thoughts about this and should Intel have waited a couple of months for CUDIMM RAM sticks to become more widely available and then mandated them for this new platform? Seems better than the quagmire they find themselves in now.

Johan Dijkstra

Hello DF gents! Have been loving your work for years and enjoy all the content you produce even though I'm only a console gamer and have been that for almost my entire life. My question, or rather observation as an older gamer (45 this week), is this: A lot is being said about increasing development costs, sustainability of the current gaming model, games not recouping their budgets, and only a couple of 'forever games' hoarding all the money because, like John said in a previous Direct: there are a lot of players but mostly they are only playing one or two games and that is where all their time and money is going. Am I wrong in my observation that developers and publishers essentially shot themselves in the foot here? If we didn't have these type of games where everybody tries to reach for the golden goose, gamers would still be buying a lot of different (types of) games like I did when I was younger. In such a case, wouldn't that be better for the entire gaming industry? It would make it easier for smaller developers to produce (smaller) games and not everything would have to be quadruple-A quality. It would also be easier to recoup development costs as money would be more evenly distributed between everybody instead of just a few company's. I for one am saddened that those types of games are going the way of the dodo although personally speaking I guess I'm halfway there. Cheers and keep up the good work!

Thomas Martinez

I’m hoping and praying that Concord put the final kick in the a$$ to publishers thinking that their live service game just might be the one. It’s like they thought that if they just spent even more money and made the games even bigger, they’d some how avoid going the way of Anthem or Avengers. I thought for sure Suicide Squad would be the last but Concord better have sealed the deal. I’m not saying it doesn’t work but the market is just too saturated! Fortnite, COD, Roblox, GTA, even mmos like ff14 and wow, what gamers are left to dump cash into battle passes and mtx? Publishers keep wanting to strike gold but the price will never pay out. It’s too late, time to move on.

Saskira

Howdy DF. Since Halloween is upon us. I’m wondering if the gang had any favourite horror games to play and potentially recommend either from a technical standpoint or just scary fun? I recently found the time to play Condemned, which was a blast. All the best.

scud

Hey chaps, I have a weird theory. Since XBox hasn't been able to hit the same market share this gen as Playstation, I'm assuming that they're going to try and beat Sony to the next gen by at least a year to recapture the same launch conditions as the 360 era. But more than that, I'm wondering if they're building a long term strategy around that idea, extending the gap each gen until we have a situation where XBox and Playstation are permanently offset, and there is a substantially more powerful console every 3 years or so, it just alternates between it being a Playstation or an XBox. Games would be permanently cross-gen, and if you always want the most powerful console, then you will inevitably end up owning both a Playstation and an XBox. XBox could effectively get closer to 50% market share, not necessarily within any given year, but averaged over any 6 year period. It might be even more viable with more games abandoning console exclusivity and a potentially PC-like XBox being able to play the PC versions of Playstation games. XBox could also be counting on a potential handheld's unique offering to still maintain good market share even when they're in their underpowered 3 year periods. What do you reckon? Too out there?

Question Generated By JensenGPT

Much of the focus with PS5 Pro is the increased GPU, and many are pointing out that it has the same CPU cores so we should expect roughly the same CPU performance. However, PS5 Pro gets a memory speed boost over base PS5, and Ryzen responds very well to faster RAM usually. Do you think we'll see any improvements in CPU performance, or is it different with GDDR RAM since it's fairly high-latency?

Perfect_Organism

If Oliver graces the panel, I'd be curious to hear his thoughts and expectations about PT Cyberpunk coming to the Mac.

(Don’t be a) Richard

Have you found any quality of life improvements with the PS5 Pro that haven’t been discussed in depth? Was hoping they’d support their Link audio standard without needing a dongle, for example.

Perfect_Organism

If Alex graces the panel: A hypothetical for Alex - you’re trapped on a deserted island that happens to have high speed internet and a PS5. To play games, you can either use the PS5 or use GeForce Now. Which one are you picking? Some caveats, you don’t have access to your PC library on GeForce now because unfortunately you hit your head as you were washed ashore and can’t remember your passwords, and this island falls in a specific territory that means you have the same range of games to choose from on both platforms (i.e RTS games on PS5, and all of Sony exclusives on PC). You will never escape this island so there is no incentive to buy games on PC to play later on your own hardware (v sorry about all this, it sounds very traumatic).

Karsten Silz

How do you judge the PS5 Pro price? To me, Sony only loses if somebody who doesn't have a PS5 gets angry at the price and buys an Xbox or a PC. If they buy a PS5 or a PS5 Pro instead, Sony wins. And if somebody has a PS5 and buys a PS5 Pro, then Sony wins twice: They sell a PS5 Pro, and somebody else gets a cheaper PS5.

Tamerator

Hi DF friends, last week you answered a question about the scarcity of innovation / risk taking in the current gaming industry. While that might be true for AAA games that now cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce, I would argue that the current indie gaming scene is more innovative than ever with many indie developers releasing quality gaming experiences with novel concepts on PC, switch, and VR. Curious to hear your thoughts about the indie gaming scene. Thank you for your amazing content.

Alexander Zyryanov

Hello DF. Why do developers keep using software lumen on consoles instead of hardware lumen? Shouldn’t hardware acceleration make things better and more performant than running the same algorithm on a general-purpose CPU? Thanks.

Carlos Rodriguez

What are everyone thoughts on the streaming landscape currently including geforce now

Nolasco

Evening my DF Compadres With the upcoming title Kingdom come Deliverance 2 that seems will be CPU heavy Is there a way for the Ps5 pro to work around that theoretically with a stronger GPU? Thank you for your time and hard work.

Tyrus1235

Hello to all the fine folk at Digital Foundry! I would like to know if any of you have tested Dragon Age: The Veilguard on a Steam Deck. It is supposedly "Steam Deck Verified", but such a graphically demanding game seems like it ought to be "too big for the Deck", no? As always, thanks for your wonderful content!

andre surles

Should Rich dress up as Matrix for Halloween?

Doughy

Hello DF! I was wondering about PSSR and how it will mature into the future. Do you gents think that they will advertise versioning and add features similar to DLSS 1, 2, 3.1 etc or have they just dropped a PlayStation upscaling solution and that’s it for the remainder of generation?

Graczdari

Hello to the entire Digital Foundry team. I have two questions, pick the one that is perhaps more interesting. The first concerns the possible specification of the Playstation 6. Is it possible in your opinion that SONY will follow in the footsteps of Nintendo Switch in creating a hybrid console, with the difference that the DOCK will also function as an eGPU based on Thunderbolt or some proprietary solution of this type? I got the idea when rumors surfaced about two chips allegedly being designed for SONY. Second question, probably more to Alexa. I've seen a lot of games with RT/PT, and I'm of the opinion that the best quality/performance experience comes from solutions like what was used in Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition. The other option that seems almost costless compared to what is offered is a solution used by Crytek called SVOGI. Shouldn't such solutions be explored more, especially on consoles, which always have limited capabilities, especially in the RT/PT topic with AMD hardware? Lumen seemed to be a solution, but the end of the day, however, looks like a much heavier solution than those mentioned above.

Never Ready Eddie

Greetings Foundrymen. So lots of talk about how the PS5 Pro can clean up image quality and sharpen textures etc, but will we see proper high frame rate games from it? By that I mean at or near REAL 120 FPS, not just VRR of around 60+ FPS in a 120Hz container. I know its a bit niche as many are happy with 60 FPS max, but as I am sure John can attest after experiencing his old LG CX's 120Hz BFI, that CRT level image clarity on OLED remains ever distant without a push to higher FPS. Shout out to Nightdive Studios and their 120 FPS remasters of late!

minty-hippo

@Oliver Foundry: what’re your thoughts on the M4 lineup of Macs? Especially with the M4 Mac Mini at $599 with 16gb of RAM, it might be a fun video to see the performance of it running native games as well as those via Crossover/Whisky. Curious to see how the base M4 stacks up against the M1 Max (and other Apple chips) considering the value proposition of this lil ‘puter!

Lord of Cinder

Hey Guys, please let me know if the PS5 Pro has coil whine 😭

Rich

Let's not miss the forest for the trees, people obviously LIKE the forever games, and they don't earn that title without fresh content. It's not like a game like Fortnite is still coasting on the same content it was released with - these games get tons of additional publisher-funded and user-made expanded content all the time, including from smaller third party developers!

Liar of Partinel

Good afternoon DF crew! With PSSR being the best upscaling we've seen run on an AMD GPU, how long do you think it will be before it (or something functionally identical) comes to the desktop side of AMD?

7SAN

Hi DF Gents, I’m a huge fan of the Uncharted franchise. Theoretically, what would PS5 Pro's “Boost Mode” do to the Nathan Drake Collection (1-3 PS4 Games) and the Legacy of Thieves Collection (4 & Lost Legacy PS5 Games)?

Tyrone

Greetings! Why do we not have any official specs for the PS5 Pro? The teraflops, cpu frequencies, number of compute units? Is Sony intentionally hiding the specs or is it an oversight? I find it odd since even closed platform like iPhones still provide specs even if they're not the primary selling point

Bespoke To Soon

Beautiful Men of DF, with it becoming increasingly difficult to gain meaningful graphical upgrades as the years roll by (and don't they roll by) I would love to have seen more physics based gameplay emerge. I dream of a Far Cry style game where, rather than storm a base guns a-blazing, I could divert a river to flood a base, start a fire, create an avalanche, demolish a building etc. I know we have had a few titles that offer similar options at some level but I feel there is much more to be explored. Is this a pipe dream? Would the required CPU grunt required to accommodate this be too great? Can you bring me the Jade Monkey by the next full moon!!??

I love the Habs

Hi guys, hope you're all doing well! I know Alex has spoken about how he feels the future console generations will be very iterative, like phones, where improvements are incremental due to costs and smaller technical leaps. Going further than that, is there a future where consoles are modular? What I mean is that sort of like a PC but to a much less complicated degree, instead of needing to buy the entire unit again, you can just upgrade the APU or SSD (which you currently can do) or whatever. I know this wouldn't happen for a few generations since this is confusing as hell for the average consumer, but do you guys see a future where this actually makes sense? This keeps costs down and they can control what motherboard handles what piece of kit. So the PS10 motherboard can handle three different type of APUs and you can pick which APU you want it to have or if you want to upgrade next year to the best one, you can do it without buying an entire unit again. Or is it by the time this is feasible, all gaming will be on the cloud anyways? Cheers!

Julian Shniter

Happy Halloween gents! I wanted to ask, what on earth is wrong with monster hunter wilds!. The quality mode is unlocked without proper VRR, and the performance mode looks worse than ff7 rebirth, does this indicate a CPU limited game to you?

Shadow the Edgehog

Initial thoughts on the RDR1 port? It's running 110-144 with max settings 4K DLAA on an 4080/5800x3d.

Zero

Good day, Gents! I've been thinking about John's thoughts about the next generation of gamers, and their attachments to these platform-esque games (Fortnite, Roblox, etc.). As we consider the future of gaming, do you think we'll ever see a day where, like Lego Fortnite and Rocket Racing, the next Naughty Dog-style title will be released *inside* Fortnite? As game makers feel the pressure around limited audience reach for traditional single-player titles, perhaps this is how they get eyes on their games for a generation that won't look anywhere other than Fortnite/Roblox/whatever comes next. Thanks for the consideration and good luck with the next few busy months!

yogi

With the n64 decompilation projects, is there even a point to a device like the analogue 3d?

Auro

In a recent video regarding Halo's shift to Unreal there was a discussion about how moving to Unreal was a great move for Halo Studios. I agree, but a lot of the reasoning that was listed could apply to the majority of game studios. While I love seeing games made in engines that aren't unreal, especially given the problems in unreal at the moment, would we be seeing higher quality games if studios did not commit part of their resources to in-house engine development?

(Don’t be a) Richard

Do you think there’s any correlation between the issues experienced with Unreal Engine titles and what has been a focus over many years now by Epic Games solely on Fortnite, so far as their game catalog is concerned. Does pumping resources into a Battle Royale skew the internal use of the engine in such a way that’s maybe not comparable to the development of other games third parties are producing. No doubt Unreal Engine is a big deal for Epic, but with concerns persisting it does make me wonder whether we’d have seen greater strides if Epic themselves were doing something that wasn’t Fortnite, say titles like Gears or Unreal, that maybe are more comparable to what other third parties are developing.

Kevin Cormier

I want to know the first game every member tries on the ps5 pro, and why.

Anxiously Chrono Triggered

Hi DF crew! With the latest Dragon Age not only delivering a great PC experience but also a console version where FSR2 looks decent even in the performance mode, it would be great if they could share with other devs what they have done to achieve that, don’t you think? And as always - great coverage on the game by both Alex and Oliver. Keep up with the great work and ignore all that immature behaviour that some people show by posting pointless negative comments on YT. Cheers!

Johan Dijkstra

Sure you're right in that regard. And I'm not saying gamers don't have to like those types of games. But it was a more hypothetical situation I was sketching: if those kind of games didn't exist, wouldn't we have the problems the industry is now facing? There are only so many gamers out there playing games. If i.e. half of those players only play 1 or 2 games, even when they constantly getting updated with new content, they are not playing and buying other games. Only the company making that game profits and has the power to invest in new games. But they won't because their forever game is raking in all the money. And meanwhile, other companies are trying to stay afloat. I'm not saying it's a bad business model, because surely it is, but only for the few companies that have the success.

Abhi

Will Xbox start off next gen at a disadvantage when ps6 can tap into ps5 pro modes, especially ones with uncapped frame rate options, while next gen Xbox is likely stuck to XSX code path? Additionally, isn’t it the case where we see unlocked frame rate options less often on Xbox due to how VRR works?

Blackthorn0001

Morning DF crew! With PS5 Pro games utilising PSSR running on dedicated AI hardware, what sort of benefit could we anticipate from the release of resources previously utilised by FSR (or a studios own upscaler solution)? I don’t recall seeing this aspect mentioned elsewhere where wrt PS5 Pro.

Someguyperson

What do you guys make of the outrage against Dragon Age? It seems really odd that a group of people are so dedicated to review bombing a game that it smells a bit fishy to me. Do you guys just ignore the outrage of children & (possible) corporate espionage? Regardless of what the comments say, I think you guys are doing a great job.

Someguyperson

Do you think Nintendo execs are nervous about the Switch 2 because Sony and a huge amount of the industry went after live service games and Nintendo wanted to stay the course and keep making Nintendo games? I think history (just 2 years from now) will show just how right Nintendo has been and just how fraudulent the rest of the industry has been in trying to chase "forever games" instead of just making good games on a reasonable budget.

Someguyperson

Do you think the Concord story has finally hammered in the last nail in the coffin? Do you think Concord will rise from the dead as another game with the same assets? Will the ghosts of this horrific development continue to haunt the industry? Who you gonna call? Digital Foundry?

Someguyperson

Happy Halloween! I hope you guys gave out full sized candy bars to the trick-or-treaters this year.

DaJaCo (Dan)

This week gentleman, my question has two PS5 PROfessional parts: 1- Does PSSR (upscale), + FSR (frame gen) seem like a good idea? 2- Can anyone explain why the top panels from the slim do not fit the PRO (only the lower ones)..they look the same size but the clips dont line up apparently..?

Someguyperson

About 10 months ago I proclaimed that Monster Hunter Wilds would obliterate CPUs. Has that come to pass?

Xbox Ally Has Gone ROGue!

Hello fellas! This one is for John mostly, has he checked out the newly released meta quest 3s? It’s a lot cheaper compared to 3 but loses John’s favorite meta 3 feature, pancake lens. Would that be a deal breaker? The $200 price difference is pretty substantial after all.

Kaveh Ghorbati

Hey guys, I recently blew out my car speakers, is there anything that's "bad" for graphics cards or processors to render?

Athanasius19

The one question that is on everyone’s mind. Does Elden Ring run at a locked 60fps on ps5 pro? LOL

Thomas Trala

Hey DF Team! Do you guys think this year is the worst in recent memory for layoffs, companies closing and games coming out in an incomplete state? I can't remember a year like this before in video gaming history where there's been so much turmoil and negative press going on.

Leftisthominid

Can we pour one out for Leadbetter's Prophecy? As it seems, the PS5 disc drive is out of stock most places other than PS Direct. I've had one sitting one in my living room since Richard uttered his prophecy and I am looking forward to attaching it to my PS5 Pro next Friday.

Someguyperson

Furmark has historically caused some serious issues so my so that vendors now limit performance when running Furmark so the cards don't melt themselves.

Leftisthominid

What are your thoughts on Xenoblade Chronicles X? Before the PS5 Pro deluge comes in, have you had a chance to analyze the trailer?

Leftisthominid

How is Will doing? Will Will be helping with the PS5 testing? Perhaps you can give him his first pixel counting assignment ever?

Bulbous_Bow

No question from me. Just want to express my anticipation for the mooted and undoubtedly red-hot Rich on PS5 Pro unboxing #content. Sounds #bespoke 🥵

Someguyperson

I wish it was just that easy, but right now you need to manually run decompilation tools to generate an .elf file that is required to map out the register values and things like that when you actually try to compile with the N64 decompilation method. It's an unsolved problem since everyone doesn't have IDA Pro installed on their PC. The Analogue 3D is an easy plug & play solution that runs all your physical carts and you don't need a Master's degree in Computer Science to get the thing to work.

Horselle

Hi DF - if I were to make the switch from console to pc gaming, is there a form factor that works for the living room? The second part is if I wanted the pc to last the length of a console generation what kind of example specs should I have and could I get it for under 1500 euro if starting in 2020 when the PS 5 release. Third should I follow the upgrade cycle of the console as well? If I got a RTX2070 in 2020 would it still have a good performance level for the 8 years before the next upgrade cycle? I don’t think there is a clear cut answer but I would like your thoughts on it. Or would it be better to just get a sub for gforce now instead?

Chhem

Hi, With Capcom announcing over 50% of their games having sold on PC this year, what are possible changes or trends you think will result from this? I know Alex has been vocal about day and date releases, but could more publishers shift to a more PC focused approach? Looking forward to hearing your opinions. Thanks

Mr Bespoke

Hi DF! Any thoughts on the scam the sham that is the Super Sega FPGA that's been going on recently? Haven't heard much been talked about this on the channel and thought if you guys had any opinions on the matter. Thanks and keep the great work!

Dr Delectable

Hey team! I saw John was added to the contributor list for the EGM Compendium that is currently blowing up on Kickstarter. Would any of you be willing to share some of your memories of EGM (or just gaming magazines in general) and, if John is able to, let us know what his possible contributions might be to the EGM Compendium? Thanks!!

Joseph Caruso

Hey DF crew, how did you react to the shadow drop of the Nintendo Music mobile app this week? It has some very interesting quality of life features, but as usual with Nintendo there's a monkey's paw evil twist with a tiny selection of titles, with soundtracks including lots of deep cuts but also strange omissions, and no credits included. [P.S. Speaking of a lack of credits, I feel compelled to mention that the term "shadow drop" was originally created by Easy Allies, and is now a common term. Shout out!]

Never Ready Eddie

Hi DF-Men (like X-men but better). Does John miss his LG CX specifically for its 120Hz BFI? I just discovered this on my C1 and have used it for a number of PC games I can run at 120Hz locked...OH BOY, how can you ever walk away from that level of motion clarity on an OLED, even for a few more nits? Damn you LG for dropping this killer feature!

DarkRod99

Hi DF in the Dragon Age: The Vanguard review we saw that the consoles goes as low as 404p in performance mode.. I was thinking that didn't happen last generation.. the PS4, managed to run games at locked 1080p without problems. What is the reason of games this gen not managing to stick in one target resolution.. is it because of all these new technologies are putting an unforeseen strain in the consoles or is because resolution doesn't matter these days. (imo, it does when your game is sub 720p and it's up scaling to a higher resolution using FSR2 in a 4K TV, so much blurryness)

Communist Mister Rogers

I recently upgraded my ps2 with the digital hdmi kit from PixelFX but I'm a little overwhelmed by the options. Do you guys have any suggestions on how I should go about CRT filters? What's a Shadow Mask/Aperture Grill Mask? Which type of Mask is the best, should I enable Scanlines?

Octolimar

Why do you think interlaced/checkerboard rendering has all but disappeared from modern games? Capcom, Guerilla, and Fromsoft prove that it can be quite effective at resolving near native image quality. I haven't seen any games that make use of reconstruction on top of single axis resolution scaling of any kind, but I would assume it could produce a quite competent image. What gives? Where has the checkerboarding gone?

Peter

The Series X has a small amount of ML hardware (just shy of 100 tops). Could this theoretically be used for image upscaling to provide a better result than FSR or is it not enough to work in a meaningful capacity?

Bulbous_Bow

Is it safe to assume that PS5 Pro owners will overwhelmingly own 120hz TVs capable of VRR? I appreciate the same can’t necessarily be said for the base machine given it’s marketed to all. But this is an enthusiast machine at £700, so I imagine most who buy it will have a TV at least as up to date as my LG C9… on that basis could #Bespoke #Professional 40fps modes taking advantage of PSSR, FSSR 3 frame gen and already improved ray tracing capabilities and numbers of CUs lead to some truly full fat ray tracing spectacles?

The Knight Who Says Ni!

Here's a cleaned-up version: --- Gents! Earlier this generation, Digital Foundry suggested that a mid-generation refresh might not be necessary. Now that Sony has released the PS5 Professional, do you still feel the same way? And do you think Microsoft might be regretting their choice not to release a Series S/X Elite Ultra Max Edition?

Alan

Hi DF Team, Apparently Concord cost $400 million! that's a huge write off for Sony and they have now closed Firewalk (I hope some of the developers are able to move to Sucker Punch that are in the same area), where does this leave Sony and their live service ambitions, Bungie is in a shambles and Marathon doesn't really seem that appealing (imo), it must be close to $5 billion combined cost for Firewalk/Concord and Bungie/Marathon (and tech) but has this spending spree just been a waste of money?

dark_bt

Hello DF! Some next gen theory crafting for you - if Xbox moves towards a more PC-like model, do you think that would mean the end of new Xbox-native game development as well, i.e. would the PC version of a game be what is used on the new Xbox instead?

PotatoGamer

Hi DF gents, not a completely current question but maybe coming up when looking into PS5 Pro: Can you tell me what Raytraced Ambient Occlusion in Hogwarts Legacy on PC actually does? It has a heavy performance impact on my 6800XT but I cannot for the life of me figure out what changes in the actual picture. All the egregious screen space AO artifacts on the edges of building interiors remain even with it turned on. Cheers!

Seras

Good evening gentlemen. I noted in your excellent video on Bazzite the excellent pre shader compilation function. Surley both Microsoft and Valve can easily implement this in Steam and/or Windows? Perhaps an oportunity for Epic to win some goodwil?

Hordita Y Churro

Hello DFriends! Hope you are well. Question for John: We saw you have VR headsets, many retro consoles, current gen consoles, CRTs (maybe all of them lol) but do you have or are you interested in having a Racing Sim? I know you like cars, but never heard you talking about them, it is really a rabbit hole. I would love content from DF about this!

WeegieBoo

Hi DF Team! Due to new Californian law, Steam now displays a banner during checkout to make it clear that you are buying a license and do not own the software. My question to the team is on your thoughts of the current state of games ownership/preservation within the context of PC gaming? PC is an open platform, but what if services like GOG, BattleNet or Steam ever disappeared? All the talk of losing digital games access seems to be focused on the consoles. I find it hard not to completely dismiss the notion out of hand given stories like The Crew shutdown, and knowing that GOG is much smaller than Steam. And while many games on Steam are DRM free (though that info is frequently not on the applicable store pages) there are many others that are not (e.g. using Denuvo, or requiring an external account like for PSN) Thanks for your thoughts!

Anxiously Chrono Triggered

Hi DF crew! COD:Black Ops 6 seems to be quite a success with one of the best single player campaigns in franchise in years. And for most part ot looks really good too. I’m just disappointed it doesn’t use any RT. Why do you think some studios abandon ray tracing in their newer releases even if they already had it in some older games? It’s not like fewer people have RT capable cards. Cheers!

Ednamode

Cyberpunk is coming to mac and in the same sentence they mentioned path tracing? Do we know how performant apple silicon's rt silicon is for pt?

RL

Hey DF, while we've all heard about the PS5 pro's GPU clock speed there's something about it that bugs me. It's my understanding that AMD's RDNA 3 architecture allows for the clocks on the shaders and the front end of the GPU to be decoupled. So with the shaders leaked speed being about 2.18-2.35 GHz, what do the TMUs and ROPs run at. If they're any amount faster doesn't that change things a bit? Thanks in advance!

Salman

Hello DF Crew, what's up with the MHW beta's image quality in the framerate mode (ps5)? I thought RE engine had decent checkerboard rendering (relatively at least) Speaking of which, why don't more devs use their own reconstruction methods, like guerilla? Or even something like what Bioware did with FSR2 in dragon age? Thanks

Newnoobontheblock

G’day mates! With the more powerful hardware of the ps5 pro, is there any way the ps portal might benefit from that uplift in performance? Love from down under!

pixel peep

Hey DFers! I know this strays from your usual wheelhouse, but I'm curious if you have thoughts about the online hate campaign targeting Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and how your content gets consumed by angry capital-G Gamers. I saw Alex's tweet about the response to his Veilguard video, and I got the impression he didn't love seeing his review get pulled into an inane culture war. Thanks...slash, apologies in advance if your answers make the internet mad.

sero

Good morrow, noble foundry of the digital! As the PS5 Pro heralds our console generation's midpoint, pray tell: which graphics technologies did you expect would rule our realm by now, yet remain scarce? And which have flourished beyond your earliest prophecies? Eagerly awaiting your wisdom.

Dort

Yo! With the Monster Hunter Wilds beta out now, are yall a bit worried about the incoming performance woes that may plague this otherwise promising game? I think it’s safe to say there will be some degree of instability at launch. Is there any chance they will be able to get performance stable, or is the frame rate bound to be running Wild(s)?

AfreemTheDream

Greetings, Foundrymen! Do you think Sony could've mitigated the price shock of the PS5 Professional by either including the disc drive or including the Dual sense Edge controller (or both?)? Cheers!

HelenX

Wouldn't that have added about $150 to the hardware cost. That wouldn't have left much money for improved rendering hardware at all. Assuming that it kept to the $700 base price.

digitalfoundry

So one computational cost (FSR) is replaced by another (PSSR). There's little in the way of freed up resources if resolution is the same.

AfreemTheDream

Realistically those parts have existed for a while and are probably not super expensive to produce on Sony's part. I think either one of them included would've helped alleviate the pain. Also: how cool would it have been to get the "professional" controller with the PS5 Professional?

Peter

I have it as 97 tops?

Andrei Luca

Hi DF, Ps5 pro is going to be a great living room machine paired with a VRR 120hz TV. Will you be getting the ps5 pro before the 7th of November?

Valon Fazlija

They already have cant u see the picture but the rewiew embargo is 6th of November so need to wait

gamerlikesanie

Hello DF! The recently published article from Variety (PlayStation CEOs Hideaki Nishino and Hermen Hulst Reveal How New Two-Business Strategy Impacts Studio, Console Plans (EXCLUSIVE)) has the following quote: "Nishino: I just wanted to say that the Pro is not a next gen. It is still in the PS5 generation. PS5 Pro will do everything what PS5 does. So it’s a consumer choice. If they see a need for more visuality, they will get it. So we wanted to provide an option for the consumer within the generation, that’s what we’re doing." Why does there continue to be unhealthy discourse regarding the PS5 Pro purpose/intent, price, etc. when you simply don't have to buy it. No one is forcing anyone to go out there and spend money for it. Such negativity is so exhausting. Personally I am looking forward to picking mine up next week.

Peter Karadimas

How well does DLSS work at sub 1080p resolutions like we might expect on the switch? Is it viable to do something like 1080p with DLSS performance mode, or will image quality suffer too much

Napoleon Blownapart

Can you simply put an SSD from a base PS5 and put it in the Pro without having to format it? I have everything I want to try on the Pro already downloaded to my SSD! Thanks guys! (Also hope you look at Avatar: FoP!)

David Lamb

Yes you can! I was wondering the same thing and it is actually in the official Sony documentation now if you dig into their docs on moving data from one PS5 to another.

Peter

Yes you are indeed correct! Not enough for an image upscaler

Valon Fazlija

Yeah it's I think enough for Auto HDR

Valon Fazlija

So when is exactly the direct 🤔 tomorrow?

DaJaCo (Dan)

Agree, the build cost of the drive is likely a lot less than people think. Part of me wonders whether Sony is doing it as a sort of market research (besides pure financial gain).