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Well here are we again, my friends! As we work harder to get our projects done before the end of the week, the prospect of recording the next episode of DF Direct Weekly hoves into view. So, it's prep time and - as always - I'm here to ask you for your input into the show!

So, what's cooking? We'll be talking about AMD's announcement for the RX 9060 XT which - according to AMD at least - looks to be everything we wanted from the RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti. We'll also be including some discussion on the FSR Redstone initiative that looks to deliver the same kind of feature set for Radeon as that enjoyed by GeForce owners.

More? You want more? Well, CD Projekt Red has quote-unquote dropped about 35 minutes of Cyberpunk 2077 Switch 2 footage on its PR portal and we'll be taking a look at that. Sticking with Switch 2, we'll be mulling over the Nintendo interview that reveals that Mario Kart World begun development on Switch 1.

Doom: The Dark Ages' in-game PC performance stats working on Xbox Series consoles? We've tested it and it works, and we've put that through its paces in some of the game's most demanding areas.

All this and more will be in the next Direct, with Rich (ie me), Oliver and Tom Morgan at the mics. Alex and John aren't available this week. Deadline for questions is 8am BST! Many thanks, and with that, I invite you to occupy the empty space beneath this post.

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Comments

Jagster

Gents, maybe this is a more business or economics oriented question, but what do you think it'll take for nVidia to break and even begrudgingly start making choices that have their consumers in mind? People keep buying their products and yet it seems they've lost a lot of good will. Groups like Gamers Nexus are engaging in more in-depth investigations into their shady practices. The list probably goes on. It all feels disheartening and messy, just curious about your thoughts.

CrispyNougat

What upcoming digital foundry related things are you hyped for?

Question Generated By JensenGPT

Good morning, gents. Is the 9060 XT 16GB finally the PS5 Pro - equivalent PC GPU we've been waiting for? It should have very similar rasterization performance, almost identical ray tracing acceleration, and it supports machine learning. All of this could possibly apply to the 5060ti too, but it seems to make sense to use a Radeon GPU for this comparison considering who makes the APUs in the PS5 lineup.

Carlos Rodriguez

Given the current graphics card market do you think GeForce now is or will become viable? Currently using ultimate with a controller and struggling to notice it’s not running locally. Certainly a cheap way to upgrade my ageing 2060 super? Thoughts?

Marcus

Hiya foundrymen! In Nintendo’s recent Switch 2 comparison reels, the footage captured from the original Switch often looks noticeably washed-out and desaturated. Are they attempting to demonstrate an HDR-to-SDR colour-grading difference, or could another capture/encoding factor explain why the older titles appear so muted next to the Switch 2 clips?

Full House's John SteamOS

I know you had modded Switch 1's to do screen-capture from handheld mode, but how do you plan on doing capture on the Switch 2? The ol' camera-pointed-at-the-screen method again? Needs must, lads.

Having an AI-neurysm

Fast Fusion’s graphics modes have been detailed in a new interview — there’s 2 handheld modes and 4 docked modes (three of which target the same frame rate). Is it controversial to say some of these seem a bit redundant? Feels like we’re once again straying from the whole point of the console experience with so many modes muddying the waters Interview link: https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2025/05/exclusive-fast-fusion-will-contain-12-tracks-free-content-update-confirmed

Joseph Caruso

Hello DF crew! Could games on the Xbox360 and Playstation 3 have supported quality and performance modes? During the early years of these consoles' lifespans, I would argue that many users were not playing them on HD screens, and yet there were plenty of games that were not designed with SD content in mind. I distinctly remember the icons on the minimap in Fable 2 were indecipherable on my CRT but became readable once I got an HD TV. I also don't recall games back then running better when selecting lower resolutions on the systems. Should there have been Quality and Performance modes for HD and SD screens? Could that have even been possible?

Peter

AMD or Intel substantially eating into their market share. That.....or Steve from Gamers Nexus 😁

Pomps

Hey team! What are the OG switch games u hope get a performance boost or switch 2 edition? For me it's Xenoblade 2!

1040STF

Switch 2 is just around the corner. To sum it up, what are your hopes and concerns that need to be adressed when you'll get the console in your hands?

Taggen86

Have you any more insights into what switch 2 is doing with dlss based on the recent footage? Why is IQ so questionable in cyberpunk and hogwarts? Are they rendering some parts of the pipeline in extremely low resolution resulting in low output IQ (to save on performance)?

andre surles

So if the kids don't want big consoles in the future... will Steam OS, PlayStation OS etc. become the only differentiator?

Jonathan Hamilton

Does any of the Cyberpunk press material confirm Jason Schreier's post about the game running at 40 fps docked in its performance mode?

ConcreteLlama

Hello DF crew! Hope you're all having a wonderful day. I fired up Doom The Dark Ages before watching Alex's video and was surprised to find I could just whack everything up to Ultra Nightmare without any issues. Then it was pointed out to me that Alex said anything above high on some settings is likely reserved for path tracing. How do you think they'll handle this? Will they update everyone's config when they patch it in? If not, I bet a bunch of people will get a nasty suprise one day when they fire it up, run out of vram and their PC catches fire. I feel like these settings probably shouldn't have existed until they were implemented.

what does dog need with a starship?

hello bespoke gentlemen! it’s nearly two weeks until the switch 2 chariots roll in a new generation and there is already talk of a switch 2 pro! i don’t know about you all but it seems a hard sell to me; the oled was a needed and welcomed improvement all-round but the switch 2 by all accounts has a fantastic screen and build quality so what could they possibly do for a “pro” switch 2? what do you gents reckon they’d need to do to make such an idea worth it?? it seems crazy to me but look forward to your insight!

André

Rich, I love when you share memories from back when you worked in magazines, with all the experience and “insider knowledge” that you bring. My question is, what are some mistakes you see these gaming companies making today that you look and think “I’ve seen this before and I know where it’ll lead[better]” . Thanks, cheers!

Taggen86

Do you think that it is likely that nintendo will unlock more performance for switch 2 devs in the future like they did with switch 1 (where handheld clocks were boosted significantly from 307 mhz to 460 mhz).

Phillip H.

Hello DF people! New (and grateful) member here, Should Nintendo complement the Switch 2 with a home-only variant? It’s a logical evolution: "Switch 2 Home" would leverage the full-core Orin GPU configuration, paired with faster 128-bit RAM for more bandwidth and a bespoke 4/5 nm process that pushes sustained clocks significantly higher. Crucially, 4K DLSS-capable. At $349 (with Pro Controller), it offers compelling value when the hybrid's price is unlikely to drop this generation. Developers benefit from a unified, scalable architecture that’s simpler than Series S/X. Think of Switch 2 Home as a super-docked mode: more powerful, affordable, and purpose-built.

Spodlude

Hey team DF, regular commenter on, and owner of a 9070xt here, I see you're looking at the 9060 series this week. AMD desperately need to iron out a few issues: 1. FSR 4 has to be whitelisted in the driver, frustrating if a game supports 3.1 but AMD haven't given it the thumbs up yet. 2. Gamepass games are still terrible at being seen by adrenaline, so even if the game supports it, you can count on the gamepass version not supporting it! 3. The number of new releases supporting FSR4 is pitiful, they desperately need to do more to improve uptake here. Thoughts gents?

VeryProfessionalDodo

One thing I've wondered for a while. Have you had games cross that invisible threshold where they stop being games and just become canned benchmarks? Another maybe adjacent question, but are there games you use in regular benchmark runs that you enjoyed to completion?

Pol Kallamata

When comparing the 9th generation of consoles to the 8th generation the two most transformational technologies would be the introduction of SSD storage and hardware ray-tracing. What technology, either present in the PC space or emerging, do you see as defining the 10th generation experience?

Spodlude

Hi gents, I think CDPR have earned a lot of goodwill from switch 2 enthusiasts regarding the file on cartridge nature of cyberpunk 2077 for switch 2 over a game key card. Personally, I won't be purchasing any game key cards as to me if defeats the point of owning physical copies. John, will you personally be buying any game key card titles?

Spodlude

If mariokart world was on switch 1, what would be the frame rate of game chat?

VeryProfessionalDodo

A bit of a meta-question, but do you feel that the DF audience / your comment section are a good depiction of the broader gaming community? I think the Steam Deck is a very interesting example of how skewed public sentiment: it's fantastic hardware, has glowing reviews and very strong word-of-mouth, but sales numbers always felt underwhelming facing all the good press. Inversely, GPUs that are trashed in reviews still sell out sometimes in minutes, despite ridiculous pricing. Adjacent question, but throughout your careers, do you have other historical examples where you felt a big disconnect between public sentiment and reality?

WhiteWolf

Maybe we could touch on that topic that has enraged our favourite hardware reviewers across the pond?.

Osvaldo Doederlein

Essential issue this week given GN's "scorched earth" approach caused frequent viewer pushback to many reviewers that just covered MFG. Also HUB's video on this issue specifically named DF as an early example of a similar, if less severe problem.

AGSMA

Hi DF. News of Ubisoft Milan hiring people to work on "a prestigious AAA title for the Rayman brand" raises a lot of red flags. Them toying with fans of the series' hopes and dreams is one thing, but adding the "AAA" buzzword to the Rayman franchise feels detached. That being said, Ubisoft Milan has proved to be the one studio that makes games that stand out from the company's library over the past decade, so I have some skeptical optimism about this "AAA Rayman game", even if I don't associate Rayman with state of the art technology. Thoughts?

DyeHardX86

Hello After last week's Non-Story of The Xbox on ARM that you succinctly debunked and the rumors continue of a Steam/Epic Store integration with the Xbox App Store and GeForce Now being added as well I wanted to ask you what you think will be Microsofts monetization strategy going into next gen? It seems hardware may be sold for profit but what about sales from 3rd party stores? I feel like we still aren't getting the big picture when it comes to Microsofts Play Anywhere initiatives. Thanks

DyeHardX86

I feel you'll be passing up MANY 3rd party games eschewing game key cards or are you not averse to buying those same games digitally?

Spodlude

I think I'll buy them digitally instead unless the game price is significantly lower. I just don't want to support this tactic, I didn't buy doom on ps5 disc for the same reason.

Snorlax cat

Do you see AMD red stone in line with mark cerny’s comments on pssr future versions frame gen and reconstruction ?

Nate D’Angelo

Hello DF Team hope all is well with you fine gentleman !! I wanted to pick your brains on the current state of the “gaming culture”. With this generation I believe being the tipping point of gaming becoming more of a “luxury hobby/status symbol” than a thing nerds do in between D&D sessions (we are all guilty of this). Anyway with Nintendos announcement of the 80-“will charge what we want” dollar game and Microsoft following up with there price increases, and GTA6/Borderlands 4 possibly having an 80-“will do what we want” dollar price tag. I feel that gaming is used more as a form of showing off “status” especially on social media platforms and short form content platforms. Do you think the average consumer will be priced out of gaming in the next few years ? With rising costs of components and in my opinion over inflated video game development budgets I don’t for see a world where prices settle back down, I feel they’ll keep going up. I couldn’t imagine being a kid again and a new game and that game costing just a few hundred dollars less than the system I bought to play it on. Thanks gents for all your covrage cheers !!

VeryProfessionalDodo

Hi DF, who am I to say what's high priority, but I think you can put your Switch 2 content on hold. Cookie Clicker has just released to all current-gen systems, and it's begging a full technical deep-dive. When can we expect a 35+ minute breakdown from John?

Someguyperson

Hey! I'm in Europe this week "on holiday" in Copenhagen this weekend and then I'm in Barcelona next week. Anyone want to meet up?

Someguyperson

Regarding the 8 GB 9060 & 5060 cards: although you guys don't want to hear it, I think the trend of lower end cards still having 8 GB of VRAM will continue for several years to come. It's simply a matter of cost and if the cost difference is $50+, manufacturers will have to cut the RAM down to get cards that cost as little as possible. I think this feels particularly bad because we don't have multiple RAM options for an Nvidia GPU since the 1000 series came out. Before, some cards would come with 1 GB, 2 GB or 4 GB of memory and it was up to the customer to decide what was right for them. Do you think the solution is to just let OEMs install as much RAM on a card as they like again? P.S. Do you remember when some GPUs would actually come with no memory installed and they would only use system RAM? I wouldn't want that to come back, but I'm sure some AI users would love a 64 GB 5060 Ti.

Someguyperson

Have you guys been shaken down by Nvidia for your graphs not comparing multi-frame gen framerates vs. other cards without multi-frame gen like Steve from Gamers Nexus has? Nvidia clearly stepped out of line threatening him and I'm wondering if Nvidia threatened you guys for anything as well.

Kaveh PG

I've been gaming at Native 4K on my 4080 and it got me thinking… couldn't the One X already do this? The Series X was twice as powerful, and it sacrificed image quality for sub par Ray Tracing? Alex was right, I think the 4080 is the perfect balance for a PS6, but how much is being left on the table for Raster, even this generation? Could we see the fabled optimization bring HW RT to Raster frame rates?

Someguyperson

"The answer to all your questions is money" - Don Ohlmeyer. They'll change their time when it starts costing them money.

Someguyperson

How easy/difficult is it to hack in FSR4? I would hope it's relatively trivial. AMD absolutely needs to have a hack feature like that in their driver now that Nvidia will let you change the version of DLSS you want in the driver.

Someguyperson

It's going to be AI performance & better ray tracing. Nvidia basically put out a plan at CES this year for the future of rendering and it all depends on those 2 features.

Someguyperson

It has to do with inflation more than anything else. The total amount of inflation from 2007-2020 is the same as the 2020-2025 timespan. The average annual inflation rate was near 1.5% for years & years, but dow it's closer to 4.5%/year. You simply can't eat that additional cost every year anymore.

Spodlude

Yes this would be awesome, at the moment I'm stuck with optiscaler which has some mixed results with different engines etc

RedgraveFlame

Will you guys ever cover another retro E3 conference? It's always a blast to hear your perspectives on these old conferences to the point where if I feel the need to relive one of the ones you've already covered I just watch the DF commentary versions instead. Personally would love some 6th gen conference love

antonioni

I’m about to purchase a Sony Inzone M10S and wondering, have any of you have tried the Blur Busters CRT Beam Simulator shader at 480hz? Any thoughts on that?

CrispyNougat

With the switch 1 you could use any old USB C powered USB C to HDMI adapter to connect to your TV. With the Switch 2 dock having fans to cool the switch in docked mode, will it be possible to use the same style of third party adapter to connect to a TV with perhaps the switch 2 running in handheld mode to keep temps down?

TheAdam

Hello DF Team. After we all agreed last week that ray tracing is no longer a new element in the world of graphics, what will the next big step be? Will we finally see the next leap in physics engines? I'm still thinking about that sad wall in Cyberpunk...or will there finally be a leap in animations of different layers of clothing or armor, better collision models, etc. I'm curious to hear your wishes and hopes. Thanks for all the great content and passion.

ConcreteLlama

Hello again Foundrymen (I say "again" because I asked another question and it feels weird not to but uh.. anyway..). I just finished Split Fiction with my wife and my mind has been left positively boggled by the final level. Boggled! It's absolutely bananas what they achieved and how they managed to get it to work so seamlessly. I was wondering if you'd ever consider covering it independently. Is it quite common for you to be unable to show the most technically impressive parts of a game in a review because it's right at the end and would generally be considered a massive spoiler? Yours boggledly, ConcreteLlama.

Taggen86

Do you share my worry regarding the switch 2 handheld experience for third party games? No press assets available. Nada. What are they hiding? For me switch has always been a handheld console primarily.

tod weitzel

Were you able to hear John trashing his Japanese hotel room like Van Halen when he saw "Xbox Retro Games powered by Antstream?"

Perfect_Organism

Holy shit, I fucking love Cookie Clicker, thanks for this. I lost so much time at uni not doing any work to that damn game.

Samuel Gao

Segment Revenue (FY 2025) % of Total Revenue Data Center $115.19b 88.27% Business Gaming $11.35b 8.7% Consumer Pro Visualization $1.88b 1.44% Business Automotive $1.69b 1.3% Business OEM & Other $389m 0.3% Mixed Total $130.5 billion 100% They can drop gaming all together, and they'll still be super rich.

Skyrimfest 26 FPS Edition

Would you ever consider doing a 'backwards' GPU review, where instead of comparing the max FPS various GPUs achieve at standard settings and resolution, you adjust the settings and resolution for each GPU to achieve a fixed FPS number (e.g. 60). I think this reflects how people in fact use game settings and it would be interesting to see what you actually give up in visual fidelity across the range of GPUs to achieve the desired frame rate.

Alan

Hi Chaps, With rumors abound that Red Dead Redemption 2 is coming to Switch 2, is there a danger that Switch 2 could become a dumping ground for last-gen games? As good as RDR2 and CP2077 etc. are, what about "new" games? Perhaps Switch 2 could be the go-to system for smaller indie games. And with Switch 2 coverage taking over for now, are there any smaller/indie games you want to shout out? (I am currently enjoying The Precinct).

DaJaCo (Dan)

No need for 5nm, they could just double the housing size and put a bigger cooler in there for less money.. no handheld space or power constraints!

Samuel Gao

Hello distinguished gentlemen of the gaming/tech industry! Thanks again for covering my question last week — that genuinely meant a lot! Here’s a follow-up: Assuming Sony sticks with x86 and the PS6 ships with an APU featuring a potential Ryzen 7700-class CPU and a GPU in the RX 9060/9070 range (perhaps with Redstone-enabled FSR), paired with 16GB of GDDR7 and a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD (since PCIe 5.0 still isn’t meaningfully utilized in games) — how does that deliver a true generational leap? The PS5 already supports ray tracing, HDMI 2.1, ultra-fast SSDs, and upscaling. Wouldn’t PS6 titles mostly feel like cross-gen experiences, just with higher frame rates or improved resolution? And finally — what’s your take on SteamOS, especially once NVIDIA driver support matures, as a potential disruptor in the high-end console space?

DaJaCo (Dan)

Happy Half-Fortnight Lads. I noticed this week that AMD have shown more FSR features as part of their FSR "Redstone" announcements - seemingly coming in the 2nd half of this year. Which (if any) of these features seem possible for PS5 Pro, and could the Redstone roadmap go some way to explaining the extended lead time before we see the next major version of PSSR?

VeryProfessionalDodo

Spoiler alert though, a friend of mine actually bought it for PS5 and he said it was actually terrible to the point of ordering a refund. The input method was very frustrating, trophies are bugged, and there are even performance problems (?)

Phillip H.

4/5 nm makes sense for a few reasons. 1) It allow the console to have even higher CPU/GPU clock speeds. It's important to eke out as much power as possible from the max spec Orin -to ensure proper 4K DLSS -to allow a more significant performance leap over the hybrid. -future proofs the console and allows it to better compete against competition such as Series S 2) The 4/5 nm process will be cheaper in the future. Also the entire Switch 2 console family will move to the process at some point anyway

BespokeEP

With AMD once again highlighting that these new ML technologies were only made possible thanks to Project Amethyst, what do you think the chances of a version of Redstone also being apart of the big PSSR update early next year? They could call it PISSER Kidney stone! It kind of reminds me of the PS4Professional rapid pack math situation. Have at it esteemed gentleman!!!

BespokeEP

Why would PS6 that launches in either 2027, or 2028 use pretty much the same specs as the PS5Pro? PSSR likely is “Redstone enabled” on the PS5Pro. lol

BespokeEP

How do we know this is really Someguyperson and not SomeguyAI?

BespokeEP

If Microsoft sells the next gen Xbox for profit, it will get wiped out of existence by PS6 which will most definitely be sold at an initial loss. Phil Spencer once mentioned that Series X|S were sold at a $100-200 loss. At the start of this gen a Series X likely costs MS $700 from production to retail, and PS5 was profitable within 9 months, so let’s say PS5 cost Sony $475 from production to retail. So if we use that difference to predict what next gen offerings will cost, it doesn’t look good for ms

Horselle

Hi DF, what does the team think about Doom the Dark Ages been able to run on a ROG Ally X with Steam OS and not on Windows? What does Xbox need to do to turn this around and how does it impact this is an Xbox if it’s not on windows?

Horselle

Hi DF team, did you hear that Xbox might be working on an Xbox emulator for windows, is this a solution to carrying digital library forward? Could it signal that the traditional console experience is coming to an end? I guess PlayStation will follow suit at some stage what are your thoughts?

digitalfoundry

That's going to be very tricky owing to the VRR nature of the screen.

DaJaCo (Dan)

I think you're expectations are off. The Raster performance is likely to be more than double that of PS5 -Pro with big advances in other areas: 30 ~ 40 Teraflops GPU (2 - 3x PS5 Pro raster, 3 - 4x PS5 Raster) 24 GB ~ 32GB GDDR7 (1.5 ~ 2x Memory capacity and bandwidth) 1TB Nvme circa 14,000 MT/s ( 2x SSD transfer speeds) Zen 5 CPU (there will be a very big architectural leap in CPU) I would also expect it to lean very heavily on it's TOPS performance in order to deliver a console optimized version of the latest version (and future versions of FSR), which delivers mult-frame gen on console, and all the redstone features and later.. also will go even heavier on RT.. perhaps with some path tracing on console (PS5 Pro is already 3 ~ 4x more capable for RT than the base console.. PS6 could easily be more than 10x performant for RT than PS5). I think it will punch above its weight because of how heavily it leans on machine learning, RT, A.I upscaling, Ray Regeneration, Multi-Frame Gen, Some degree of Path Tracing.. and the big CPU upgrade allowing much more simulation / NPCs etc.

Blackthorn0001

Hi DF supremos, my switch 2 preorder is in, but I’ll be retaining my OG switch for family use. I’ve not seen this query else where yet weirdly. Can they share the same new dock? Is the new dock backwardly compatible?

Poteven

Bonjour DF team, when do you think we'll see FSR 4 on RDNA 2, 3, 3.5(current handheld iGPU)? If not, when do you think we'll see RDNA 4/UDNA iGPU for FSR 4 on handheld/laptop SoC? I think FSR 4/RDNA 4/UDNA availability will mark a jump point for a Steam Deck 2, Sony and Microsoft next gen consoles.

CrispyNougat

Perhaps a better way to ask this question is if you use a dock other than the official switch 2 dock, does the switch 2 still enter docked mode?

Colby Buckets

I doubt they'll answer this because even if they told NVidia no, they would just make the relationship worse by taking it public

RAVE_DAM0S

Hey DF Dudes, As we roll into the long weekend in the US and UK, it's a prime time for gaming marathons! I've also been thinking more about AMD's newest APUs. My curiosity about AMD's latest APUs keeps growing. Partly due to their application to handhelds and the clues they offer about gen-10 gaming. At the same time, Im tempted to switch to PC without breaking the bank. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Are there any plans to include the AMD Strix Halo APU in future PC game reviews? Enjoy the extra time off, and be well, gents!

Someguyperson

I think Rich absolutely would. He's an actual journalist (one of the few remaining at this point) and I think Rich would tackle this head on, as he does with most everything. Being open & honest is what constitutes your credibility and that's what Rich does.

Someguyperson

Well, the only way is to meet in person and see if I'm made of flesh & bone, metal & circuitry, or just an ethereal AI solution.

Samuel Gao

Yeah that console will be out in 2027/28. It just won’t be called PlayStation 6. It’ll be called SteamOS and it will be created by you!