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Early Access to DF Direct Weekly #200 Now Available (Patreon)

Published:
2025-02-08 19:47:33
Edited:
2025-02-10 08:45:39
Imported:
2026-06

Content

Through a combination of the passing of time and regularly turning up every week to do the same thing, DF Direct Weekly 'celebrates' its 200th edition! We reminisce over the creation of the show before moving onto the news at hand - Switch 2 pricing and some intriguing new Nintendo patents, along with our first look at the new Battlefield. Meanwhile, we're not particularly enthused with Monster Hunter Wilds performance, Star Wars Outlaws on PS5 Pro gets a PSSR upgrade and the RTX 5080's overclocking prowess plays havoc with the perception of RTX 4090/4080 Super performance differentials.

Just one more thing: if you're a newcomer to the DF Supporter Program and want to get the Direct as an early access podcast, please ignore any links on Patreon itself and use this one: https://open.acast.com/public/patreon/fanSubscribe/593963

Downloads: https://www.digitalfoundry.net/df-direct-weekly-200-switch-2-pricing-the-new-battlefield-monster-hunter-wilds-perf-concerns

Files

DF Direct Weekly #200! Switch 2 Pricing, The NEW Battlefield, Monster Hunter Wilds Perf Concerns!

Through a combination of the passing of time and regularly turning up every week to do the same thing, DF Direct Weekly 'celebrates' its 200th edition! We reminisce over the creation of the show before moving onto the news at hand - Switch 2 pricing and some intriguing new Nintendo patents, along with our first look at the new Battlefield. Meanwhile, we're not particularly enthused with Monster Hunter Wilds performance, Star Wars Outlaws on PS5 Pro gets a PSSR upgrade and the RTX 5080's overclocking prowess plays havoc with RTX 4090/4080 Super performance differentials. Join the DF Supporter Program for pristine video downloads, behind the scenes content, early access to new videos, early access to DF Direct Weekly and much, much more: https://bit.ly/3jEGjvx Subscribe for more Digital Foundry: http://bit.ly/DFSubscribe Find DF Direct Weekly as a podcast on your favourite podcast streaming service. 0:00:00 Introduction 0:02:07 News 1: DF Direct celebrates episode 200! 0:32:01 News 2: Nintendo sets Switch 2 price expectations 0:46:17 News 3: Next Battlefield shown in brief teaser 0:55:45 News 4: Monster Hunter Wilds beta, benchmark tested 1:09:05 News 5: RTX 5080 overclocking tested 1:26:52 News 6: Epic admits Unreal Engine has a #StutterStruggle problem 1:34:17 News 7: Star Wars Outlaws updated with new PSSR version 1:41:07 Supporter Q1: Could you test the 5090 with no AI features vs. the 5080 with all AI features? 1:47:23 Supporter Q2: Could DF establish a latency rating system? 1:54:41 Supporter Q3: Would increasing resolution and AA quality be enough for Nintendo Switch 2 games? 1:57:53 Supporter Q4: Is a Bloodborne remaster imminent? 2:03:32 Supporter Q5: Could 1080p actually be preferable to 4K for Switch 2 games?

Comments

Aaron Espinello

For the 300th special can we please have rich oil up in 8k with raytracing

BespokeEP

I want to see Rich stacked with 3D V-Cache

BespokeEP

Did everyone see the size of Rich’s mug? …ooh lala

RAVE_DAM0S

Congrats Digital Foundrymen 🍻 on the double centennial installment!

Perfect_Organism

“The setups basically the same, changed the lens, changed the camera”. Sounding like Triggers broom.

Bulbous_Bow

I understand on a personal level Rich and Alex being disinterested in the hardware industry. It’s obviously not as interesting as gaming itself is. Alex in particular is passionate about the state of the art and so cares presumably as little for mid range GPUs as he does consoles. And he does the best work in the business on these topics. However, with the exception of Oliver, it does feel like the panel is beginning to forget what it is to be a consumer of these products. It’s now become the norm for consumers to be lied to by Nvidia and Intel, and now with the 5080 Nvidia have actually gone out of their way to make the market worse by replacing a perfectly decent 4080 Super with the barely more powerful 5080… which, due to low stock, can only be purchased on eBay for north of £1,500. So practically overnight we’ve gone from £1,000 to £1,500 for the same class of hardware, while being gaslight by Nvidia that we should be grateful that it’s in fact so much more than a 4090 (what else are you going to put in your $10,000 entertainment centre?) That’s where the anger comes from. Perhaps you don’t want to have these discussions, but then… no one forced you to review or talk about hardware in the first place. It seems an odd position to take to devote so much time and resource to reviewing GPUs as you do, but then in the same breath act like you don’t care about the state of the industry and even condescend down to those that do “I don’t feel entitled to an Nvidia GPU” strikes me as an unnecessarily pejorative, not to mention empty counter argument. In your defence, you did read out the ‘interesting’ comment about the hobby becoming unaffordable. But the fact you regarded it as an interesting point it required a supporter to bring to your attention, as opposed to the complete blinding obvious does, as I say, suggest you’ve become too detached over the years to look at these things critically and genuinely from the consumer’s perspective. Apologies if this argument strikes you as being made in ‘bad faith’.

Someguyperson

I would say it's completely disingenuous to use eBay pricing instead of MSRP pricing. Just because scalpers were selling PS5s for $1000+ in the pandemic doesn't mean that the MSRP is suddenly $1000+ at that point in time. There's clearly a supply constraint somewhere and there are lots of theories as to why that is (as I pointed out in my comment that the guys read). These prices are only temporary and the cheaper cards are coming out in a couple weeks anyway, so this is just a bunch of people complaining about the price of luxury components. I'm completely there with the guys in that you don't need a XX80 or XX90 class GPU to play games. There will be a $750 card and a $500 card coming out and if those are too expensive, Intel has a great deal with their B580 card. If anything, I would say it's a toxic online community that is the problem. Denigrating people who don't spend $1000+ on a GPU is stupid and misguided at best. As I mentioned in my comment the other week, I'm using a 5800x3D and a 2060 Super in my PC and I can play games just fine, although I definitely need a GPU upgrade because I have a 4k 120 Hz monitor, which again, nobody needs. You can game on a 1080p or 1440p screen just fine. Live within your means and don't listen to a bunch of people online spending too much money on hardware to feel validated.

VeryProfessionalDodo

@bulbous_bow Although I don't necessarily agree with some of the points (namely the lack of anger towards a product), I now see the problem differently thanks to your counter-argument. I still dislike the anger sentiment mostly because at this point I'm frankly annoyed at the rage circle-jerking that platforms boost because it drives up engagement. It's a tricky line to balance, being angry because of the way it shapes an industry vs being angry because it systematically drives more clicks, and therefore revenue. However, great points about how this impacts the general perception of the hobby, and I too agree that outside of Intel, the mid-range market has been abandoned, leaving the entry-level consumer to dust with their 2060 / 3060. I'm even more annoyed that it's done to not cannibalize sales, when they're perfectly comfortable nuking the high-end market's value proposition by just raising prices. Thank you for the comment, I always love a thoughtful counter-argument that's more than just the usual "rage-bait".

VeryProfessionalDodo

@someguyperson, counter-argument, the MSRP price is indeed irrelevant because I've never seen in the last 4 or 5 years cards at MSRP, in official retailers. The PS5 situation is actually a perfect counter-point. Nobody could find it in stock, but when they could, the console itself was priced at MSRP. For reference, I live in Portugal, this might not be an issue in other countries. But here official retailers have been scalping the consumers hard. It also feels particularly crappy when the retailers are scalping products that Nvidia especially have made to be less interesting in the lower tiers. I mean, a 4070 having 12gb made the card a lot less usable in some scenarios, but I couldn't justify climbing the price ladder even higher, when even the 4070 was already being quite a lot higher than MSRP here. This specific issue is a larger, more complex economics topic, and I'm not trying to say just "Nvidia bad". Just that the point of using real life pricing in official retailers is fair.

Bulbous_Bow

@VeryProfessionalDodo This is exactly my point, thank you. When Nvidia are restricting supply (all reports are of retailers receiving very few cards worldwide) and allowing AIBs to charge in some cases over 50% of MSRP it’s not disingenuous in the least to look at eBay or other second hand markets. They’re literally the only place you can buy a 4080 or 5080 since the latter launched. I’m talking entirely from the perspective of the consumer, my point being that this is has got lost within DF (Oliver aside)’s discourse in this topic. So that perspective is necessarily one of: what was the cost of the widget before, and what is it now?

Bulbous_Bow

My main reply is below, but just wanted to clarify the point about anger because I can see how you interpreted my original comment that way but it wasn’t intended. I’m not admonishing Rich for not being angry. He has his style and in general I’m an admirer of it. What I took against was his (in my opinion) aloof attitude towards the situation and even condescension towards the audience with the ‘I don’t feel entitled to an Nvidia GPU’ line. Compare Hardware Unbox’s recent podcast on the subject. They’re not banging their fists on the table, but they’re honestly and journalistically holding Nvidia to account as best they can.

Bulbous_Bow

@SomeGuyPerson I replied to most of these points further down the thread in response to VeryProfessionalDodo but I do feel we need to stop giving credit to manufacturers where it isn’t due and taking their MSRPs at face value when the supply isn’t there. Not to be flippant, but this isn’t during Covid when production lines were shut down and everyone was locked in their homes with nothing else to do but play video games (plus the crypto mining boom). Nvidia and Intel are making a choice to restrict supply. If you want proof, the PS5 Pro is in plentiful supply and is manufactured on the same TSMC 4nm process. Because Sony have an interest in selling their stock at MSRP to get people in the eco system. Whereas Nvidia have an interest in selling high margin AI chips to enterprise and a few high margin cards via AIBs (check the 5090 AIB MSRPs, then ask yourself if the FEs will ever be in stock again). The bottom line is, before Nvidia stopped shipping 40 series cards, it was possible to get an 80 Super class card at under £1,000. Now it’s £1,500 for an uplift in performance that would barely be worth the TI moniker in previous generations. That’s what the consumer has to pay in reality as a direct result of Nvidia’s actions, so that’s what I’m going by. Call it disingenuous if you like.