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Call For Questions For DF Direct Weekly #218 (Patreon)

Published:
2025-06-12 11:06:51
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:
Q&A

Content

Hi there... it's been a punishing week! We've decided to push back our full Switch 2 review until early to mid next week but rest assured, we've still got plenty of chunky #content en route to keep you occupied - like DF Direct Weekly #218 for starters.

I bought MindsEye on PS5 and Xbox consoles this morning, so the show kicks off with John's impressions on the PS5 version ahead of Tom's review. And yes, John's playthrough here may well form the basis of a return for the Patreon-exclusive "John vs" series. Other stuff in the show? Well, possibly a quick look at Stellar Blade on PC, along with reaction to Nintendo shifting 3.5m Switch 2 consoles in four days.

Truth is, news topics are thin on the ground, so feel free to suggest topics of your own and indeed to shower us with your questions in what might be a slightly larger Q+A section than usual! Thanks in advance for your inputs into the empty webzone "below".

Files

Comments

Special Agent Cooper

Hello folks, @John, regarding your Fast Fusion video: You pointed out both the artifacts caused by an unfortunately low base resolution as well as the amazing art direction and visual features like volumetric fog. What I did not get from your verdict is if you feel the tradeoff is justified. Do you wish they had gone for a lower visual target to then deliver higher base resolution? Cheers, Coop

Peter Karadimas

Hello Gents, if you had to pick one aspect of the switch 2 to get upgraded for a mid gen refresh which would it be? Screen quality, performance, battery life or integrated heartbeat sensor?

Kay Aseru

How do you feel about the Switch 2's screen in terms of motion clarity? I can't help but feel like something is seriously wrong by how blurry things look in motion

Swe downhill

With the switch 2 release behind us and the game card debate still happening, it got me thinking about game preservation. What are your thoughts about having Switch game cards where you could apply updates to the cards themselves instead of storing them on the device? Some games have day 1 patches and some have bugs preventing players to complete the main story if certain conditions are met. Storing the update/s (and even DLC to some degree) on cards would allow us to get back to a patched game decades later and still enjoy the best version of them. Thanks for everything you do!

Mario Rosa

Hey there, DF Team! I've been wondering for a while if developers lean on your work to identify both issues and causes of said issues in games. I don't mean to cast aspersions on developers, I'm sure many issues are caused more by lack of time and/or resources, but it is interesting how you guys are able to spot performance or image quality hiccups and then we'll usually see a patch release afterwards that attempt to address these issues. Now, that may be that these issues were already spotted and work had already commenced but I'm still curious if developers contact you for feedback. As an aside, thank you for the quality work that you do and for always being professional and honest. Among the gaming outlets that I follow, I hold you to higher esteem than pretty much everyone else in the industry.

minty-hippo

How do you think Nintendo would address a DS/3DS Nintendo Classics implementation on Switch 2? Would it go the route of PBP like some emulators support, or a less than ideal Game Share like streaming solution for one of the screens? I'd be curious how mouse mode could play into stylus play... Thanks foundrymen!

goregutz

Microsoft announced another update to direct XAgility SDK (1.717) last week, not too long after a previous update bringing in a slew of changes. Given their focus on the "full screen" windows experience, do you think they will pair that up with direct X improvements?

Thomas Martinez

Morning gents! Hope your foundry is well and digital. You all continue to provide great coverage of the recent games cons and it’s all greatly appreciated. With your experience with the switch 2, your love with the admirable deck, and what’s been revealed for the roadmap of windows/“xbox” handhelds, what’s your wishlist for a new Sony handheld? I know you all don’t understand the Portal, but Sonys handhelds have all been misunderstood but later praised. Do you all think Sonys unique relationship with AMD with Amethyst will give them an edge in this wildly saturated market? Thanks again, cheers!

muddy

Greetings! We keep constantly hearing about cancelled projects, layoffs, studio closures and other very unfortunate events like the damning article about how the last dragon age development went. This apocalypse in the industry has been going for a while now and it appears it's greatly affecting morale among the developers ranks. Not only that but it also appears the general masses are losing sensitivity to these tragedies. My questions are: when will this end? Or will it ever end? What would be necessary to achieve a more stable industry? Is this all due to the big gaming publishers conglomerates?

Peter

Good day DF chaps! With news of the Rog Ally X, I had a couple of questions. 1. As this now carries Xbox branding, and with the play anywhere message being the latest marketing buzzword, is it possible that Xbox mandate that it's own in house developers target the Rog Ally as a baseline? If so, this would introduce a much lower than Series S floor for developers and I imagine have a detrimental impact on game scope 2. Do you think we could see the windows "lite" being touted for the new pc handhelds make it's way to desktop PC's? As always, thanks for the continually great content and have a wonderful week!

David Einhorn

With The Witcher 4 tech demo being as much about Epic and Unreal 5.6 as CD Projekt Red's next game, showing off what we previously thought impossible on current gen consoles. Will this present a relatively lost cost & low effort opportunity for earlier Unreal 5 titles to be quote unquote remastered? P.S.: Rich: if you look up 'fest' in the Oxford English Dictionary you'll find that it is a German borrowed word that made it into English in the 1840s. So it is not a recent quote unquote drop.

AMH

Please no pointless questions. It’s pretty obvious the integrated heartbeat sensor is crucial for the Switch 2s success. I’m sure Rich agrees.

Abandoned Walnut

Greetings Gents! Conscious this is most likely an utterly implausible outcome, but with Microsoft recently putting a great deal of effort into improving their gaming software both for handheld devices and, hopefully for pc gamers, do you think there is any chance they would eventually provide series s/x users with the option to install the software on their devices instead of the current operating system, thus turning the xbox hardware instantly into something more akin to a pc, with access to things like steam and even windows itself?

PixlPeeper

Hi DF ! MsBetweenDisplayChange, the basis of modern frametime measurement, is supposed to be an accurate metric of what the user sees on screen. Yet, with G-Sync + V-Sync on, using FrameView or CapFrameX, it is easy to find MsBetweenDisplayChange values that go beyond the max refresh rate of the monitor, sometimes by amounts that can not possibly be margin of error. What's the link, then, between MsBetweenDisplayChange and what the user really sees on screen ?

Wez OOSH! (WOOSH)

Hello DF gents. It seems us horror game fans are eating good the tail end of this year with silent Hill F and then Resident evil: Requiem in February. So I have 2 questions, feel free to answer any. 1. My first question is, what other horror game franchises would you like to see a sequel or a reboot from? 2. My second question, with gears of war coming to PlayStation in August, is it fair to expect something back from PlayStation? I personally don't think they will, it just seems very backhanded that Microsoft is porting Xbox exclusives to PlayStation (for money obviously) and yet the only 2 PlayStation exclusive that are heading to Xbox is FF16 and FF7 intigrade which aren't first party games, it'd be awesome to see the last of us 1&2, infamous and even Gran Turismo head to Xbox and not just PC. Have a nice day

1040STF

Speaking of underpowered gaming machine launch, we celebrated last week the 40th anniversary of the Atari ST! 🥳 First of all, a short anecdote: I chose that nickname a few years ago when joining DF's Discord as I thought it was a nice and sweet nod to my first computer ever, which gave me so many fund childhood gaming memories. But thanks to you and Discord members since 4 years, I've been presented to the fact that games on Atari ST sucked hard on performance. The avalanche of proofs that were thrown to me spreaded away the fog of my memories and now I remember clearly how I was fighting against those games instead of enjoying them while other kids who played on other machines experienced real joy. Thanks folks. Who needs sweet childhood memories anyway. Jokes aside, I still cherish that machine. And I'm glad it's still alive for some people, sound creators for exemple who still think Atari ST rules in that field. Did you know for exemple that Fatboy Slim composed all his albums using an Atari ST? Secondly, well, what are your memories of this machine? Did you got one? Used one? Payed therapy for a friend who owned one? I would be happy to hear your anecdotes on that machine if you have some.

AMH

Tate mode is the answer. Nintendo just should make their own flip grip. People have done this unofficially on switch 1 with Nintendo DS emulation.

bibfortuna

Hi DF crew! Will we ever get a DF retro styled video for LOST PLANET: EXTREME CONDITION, question mark. Having just replayed it on PC, the visuals hold up to a frankly gobsmacking degree. Is an RE engine remake in order? Can a man dream? Doesn’t Capcom want my money??

Skyrimfest 26 FPS Edition

Switch 2 is a somewhat hefty beast and a Switch 1 sized 'lite' version seems appealing. How would you feel about it taking stuff from the Switch 1 parts bin to keep costs down? Personally I would take a 720p OLED over a 1080p LCD at 7 inches. On the software side it would mean games would have to account for 720p, but how hard can that be? You can already choose 720p as the output resolution in docked mode, so it could still 'just work' for games that don't target it as an output resolution.

Question Generated By JensenGPT

How does the image quality compare in No Man's Sky on Switch 2 compared to PS5 Pro? I know this sounds like an extremely unfair comparison, but running both side-by-side, it looks to me like Switch 2 has less image breakup and more stability than PS5 Pro.

Jonathan Hamilton

I just picked up PSVR2 and can scarcely believe there is no version of Skyrim VR for it. With no announcement of yet another version for the Switch 2, is it possible we've reached the end of Skyrim ports?

Skyrimfest 26 FPS Edition

I thought RTX Neural Shaders sounded like one of the coolest bits of tech Nvidia announced at CES. I saw that it was added to the DX12 SDK preview and can now use tensor cores. Am I right to be excited by this tech (the demo looked amazing) and is neural rendering going to be the next ray-tracing?

Question Generated By JensenGPT

Both. PS5 Pro has a way higher input resolution so it has more detail, but it also has a lot more aliasing and breakup VS Switch 2. Don't forget Switch 2 uses DLSS while PS5 Pro uses PSSR which is nowhere near as good.

Skyrimfest 26 FPS Edition

If everything is an Xbox, is nothing an Xbox? A bit zen, but reducing Xbox to a brand slapped on a Windows 11 skin, plus a logo on a button doesn't quite add up to a platform. The Xbox Ally seems nice and all, but is it more eulogy than rebirth?

zephyr

Hi DF team! If you guys were given the opportunity to put on your own showcase, what would you want the format to be? Ideally you’d want to present as many games as possible while still allowing each one the opportunity to stand out, earning the perfect DFcon 1

HarryB

How do John’s findings re: DLSS on Fast Fusion (going from sub 720 to 4K in what appears to be well under 16ms but causing a lot of artefacting) inform your view of how DLSS could/should be used on Switch 2?

CrispyNougat

Do you guys have separate accounts on PSN/Xbox/Steam for your DF work gaming and personal gaming?

Dissecta

So is Mindseye as good as LINCHDOM BATTLEMAGE and Biomutant?

Eric Benoit

Hello DF Crew, I was wondering if John is the Switch 2 with his Retrotink 4k. I watched MVG's video on the Switch 2 showing Bayoneta 3 playing much smoother on the new hardware but it's resolution still is at 480p, so it's a bit blurry. Would using the Tink to output at higher resolution according to your monitor resolve this? Oh yeah, Richard, did you ever get a Retrotink 4k?

CrispyNougat

I hate that MS is doing this. I want them to compete in the gaming space, but this "everything is an Xbox" seems to be just another way to sell their cloud services, which is one of their biggest money makers. I don't like where they are trying to take gaming.

(Don’t be a) Richard

So after some time with the Switch 2, what has left you a bit wanting, and are they addressable in a mid life refresh? Personally I’d like to see a bump to battery life, VRR in docked play and an OLED, possibly with a bit more in the way of HDR capability. I think all those are achievable. When it comes to battery, while ideally achieved in a die shrink alone, I’d even be happy to trade 1080p for 720p and add a few grams or mm to the device. 2 hours portable Mario Kart feels like a big step backwards from my OLED Switch. Anything else that’d be nice to see improved from a hardware or software perspective?

Justin

Hey DF gang. With the concept of what is an “Xbox” continuing to change and the fact that with Microsoft’s plans for the future any number of devices could be considered an “Xbox console”, how do you see this impacting how you cover games for the platform. Where do you draw the line on what to include?

(Don’t be a) Richard

With both Sony and especially Microsoft increasingly supporting cross platform releases, and with MS currently using Windows in its Xbox branded portable systems, is it time that more developers look at adopting feature sets that makes moving from one platform to the next more seamless? A feature I’m often really missing is cross platform progression. A few games have it, but it’s the sort of feature that when present will make me more likely to buy and play a title on both a home console as well as something like a Switch or future Windows based handheld. Could platform owners do more here such as providing APIs and storage to devs. Feels especially important for MS to address when their home console and Windows based handheld platforms are currently distinct and generally doesn’t cater to portability of gameplay between the two.

AfreemTheDream

Greetings, Foundrymen! Whatever happened to DF Indirect? I submitted many questions over the past few months, praying for a DF Indirect: AfreemTheDream Edition and now I fear that will never happen. Have all my amazing questions simply vanished into the void that is the Mario Kart World map? Cheers!

Pol Kallamata

Do you see the ROG Xbox Ally as essentially providing the template for all of "Xbox" hardware going forward? Instead of a first party Microsoft Xbox with its own console OS, could we just be getting living room PCs from ASUS, Lenovo, and others that by default boot up into the Xbox UI mode of Windows? And could the intent of this pivot be twofold: Microsoft washing its hands of a flailing console division and the need to subsidize hardware and game development for a specific platform. As well as a move to nip in the bud a potential threat from Valve with Steam OS, that could challenge the company's core business, not just its gaming division?

BespokeEP

My opinion is, if it can’t play native Xbox code locally… it isn’t actually an Xbox. I mean Microsoft can call Rich’s tea mug an Xbox, but it doesn’t make it true… or does it? Hmmm.

Retro Sean

Is the application of "DLSS-Lite-Ultra-Performance Mode" like in Fast Fusion going to be widespread? (I hope not but we saw the industry *abuse* FSR on Xbox and PS5 to this point already!)

BespokeEP

New name, who dis? Just to be clear, I don’t hate Xbox, it’s more of a “I’m not mad, just disappointed” situation. I hate the direction they are trying to move the industry. I hate that I now have zero reason to ever buy another Xbox. I love new hardware, it’s such an exciting time. I’ve owned every home console the big 4 has released, yes even the 32x and Sega CD, that combo was a bloody work of art!!!!! QUINTUPLE EXCLAMATION POINT!!!!! (Oliver can you add some cool lightning effects, and maybe an explosion please)

Levander Davis

Good day, gentle Digital Foundrymen (or something like that). Has anyone ever considered a “Forever Games” roundup? AMD and Nvidia claim to be producing for this market but are current GPUs actually serving those games well? These games are supposed to be quite scalable but are there performance deficiencies that should be brought to light? Or, advanced features (like Lumen in Fortnight) that need a critical eye? I would love to see you talk about this!

VeryProfessionalDodo

Not so much a question but an observation. After a somewhat negative reaction in the comment section to your previous Direct regarding the Xbox Ally, I think there’s something even more newsworthy than the product itself. This was the first time in literal years that I saw overall sentiment be positive about something Microsoft did with Xbox. It’s the first time they had an interesting vision that made the company platform itself appealing. Whether they will be able to execute it well only time will tell, but I think it’s remarkable the overall sentiment towards this reveal. Even in this very Patreon supporter section, I’ve seen time and time again hope that Microsoft will leverage what they have with Windows to create a new compelling product, so I think it’s something to finally be excited about!

Lutz Klingbeil

Hey, with the Switch 2 Review in Review. Do you also experienced battery drain and wlan slow speeds. Even when in sleep mode my battery drains a lot. Is it the hardware itself or are these mainly software problems. I have the feeling that their are drivers problems. What your opinion on this?

PS Quintuple Professional

Hi DF gents! It seems like the whole industry is moving towards handhelds now including Sony with the rumored PS6 portable. Given the thermal and power-draw restrictions imposed by the handheld form factor, I'm worried this might hold back game design for the foreseeable future. Graphics can scale up to much more powerful hardware but that's not true for CPU related functions like physics, AI, world density etc. Furthermore a next-gen PS6 handheld version will presumably be less powerful than the PS5 amateur which likely also means that developers won't be able to fully transition to lighting their games with ray-tracing features for the next decade or so and will be burdened with the extra work of creating fall-back solutions that actually look good further increasing development times. Are my worries irrational? What are your thoughts on the matter? Cheers.

Spodlude

Hello Gents, could Nintendo have implemented a better upscaling technique for switch 1 games on switch 2's handheld display - looks a bit vaseliny to me! Thanks

Spodlude

Hello gents, I have a ROG ally x, I see little point in the minor upgrade to an Xbox rog ally x, especially given that I have a grip case. Will the new Xbox version have FSR4? And do you think Microsoft will make a general public release of the windows version this Xbox handheld will run? E.g. for standard ROG owners...?

Spodlude

I'll tell you something that's frustrating: switch 1 games that have demos and also have switch 2 upgrades don't have their demos upgraded for switch 2 so you can't test out the upgrades :(

Sloth

How do you think the business model for products such as the ROG Xbox Ally will work out? Will Asus take a percentage of software sales on these devices to make them more appealing to manufacture? Nintendo sell their handhelds on slimmer margins to make more of their profits on software - but I'm just not sure how this will work for third-party companies like Asus making these products in partnership with Microsoft or Valve.

Someguyperson

Simply going off of layoffs doesn't give the full picture. You need to look at total employment numbers to get a good grasp of what's going on. In the broader tech space, there are a ton of layoffs, but everyone is still hiring, so it's more of a reallocation of resources than a contraction of the market.

The Shadow-Map

Could Microsoft have bluffed their way to success with the Xbox One? ----------- Sony's 2005 E3 presentation wasn't a reflection of what developers could actually achieve with the PS3, but it successfully cemented in the public's mind that the PS3 would be the most powerful console of its generation. When games actually shipped on the PS3, the results were often far less impressive than what the Xbox 360 could do. Yet these real world results did little to move public opinion that the PS3 was the most powerful machine on the market. Could Microsoft have adopted this strategy with the Xbox One? Is there a scenario where Don Mattrick could have said the Xbox One was the most powerful console of that generation, and proved it by showing pre-render fake demos framed as real gameplay? Perhaps he could claimed Xbox tech superiority by pointing to the cloud, ESRAM, or even a second GPU hidden in the power brick.

Kaveh PG

How do console die shrinks maintain the same performance? I was thinking a Switch 2 OLED might pull a Steam Deck OLED and iron out any dropped frames, but that seems to just be a PC handheld thing. Even the 5070 Ti was even with a 4080, is this intentional?

Kaveh PG

So what are we talking with the Switch 2? It's less powerful than a Laptop 2050, but it's made on Ampere, and has some Ada Lovelace tacked on? An RTX 3010? How difficult would it have been to make the Switch 2 on Blackwell? How would it compare?

Joshi

Greetings DF crew! This is for physical switch 1 cartridges on the switch 2: Am I missing out on improved load times with physical switch 1 carts in the switch 2? I quickly tried out the updated version of legend of Zelda totk for switch 2 but I am using a physical cart, are these load times limited because of this? The load times are definitely improved over switch 1 when entering or exiting a shrine but would I get a better experience if it wasn't running off the switch cart? Thank you and I love your work!

Jagster

Sony PC releases have seen a steady uptick over the years, but the releases have run the gamut in terms of quality and optimization. To my understanding, Stellar Blade is excellent on PC, but by contrast we've seen struggles, such as with Spider-Man 2. What in your guys' opinion should be most prioritized with Sony's PC releases in the future to possibly yield more consistent, unified quality?

Romain G (VektreX)

Greetings! So with Switch 2 DLSS being unrecognizable in titles that developers confirmed were using it (Cyberpunk, Fast Fusion and possibly Hogwarts Legacy), what is the current consensus about its usage in upcoming titles that have been shown for the Switch 2? The original assessment was that it seems to have gone mostly unused, but surely now that you have seen it in the wild that assessment must have changed. When Pokémon ZA was first shown for the Switch 2 I thought it looked a little bit like it used DLSS due to the "in-painted" look of some of the TAA disocclusion trails. Do you think it could be deployed there or in the upgraded version of Scarlet/Violet? Thank you, and have a very safe, and productive day!

RustySteel777

Hello DF crew! I've been pleasantly surprised at the performance gains of many OG switch games runing on switch 2, especially on some of the ports that had DRS and unlocked framerates. That said a lot of these games still suffer visually from being, well, Switch games. Meanwhile games with dedicated free patches like Mario Odyssey and especially Pokemon Scarlet/Violet feel outright amazing with those resolution and framerate uplifts. Are there any specific switch games you would like to see get this kind of free patch treatment? Personally I would love the Xenoblade games to get a resolution bump to allow their world and art design to shine even brighter!

Leftisthominid

This is mostly a John question, but I really hope it gets chosen I've noticed in many of John's videos that his Switch capture is in Japanese. I am learning Japanese and would love to play games in Japanese (instead of just using Japanese audio with English subtitles), but Kanji remains a problem. I was wondering if John has any recommendations for games (preferably Switch/2) that use furigana (to make the Kanji legible). (Fun fact, I started learning Japanese after playing Persona 5R, I wanted to understand the unsubtitled parts of the game)

Leftisthominid

Have you looked back at any of the Switch "Warriors" games on the Switch 2? Age of Calamity famously had horrendous frame rate issues, and Fire Emblem: Three Hopes had no 30fps cap. I am wondering if the Switch 2 has made these games playable.

Robert Brown

I’ve disabled HDR on switch 2 for docked play as all it seem to do is make the games washed out. Is this a general problem or have I just been unlucky?

Roel

Maybe make sure you have dynamic tone mapping disabled on the TV, that fixed it for me.

Roel

Hi DF! I was wondering if you have any insight in how developers can patch their Switch games to allow for upgraded resolution/framerate on Switch 2. At first I assumed assumed that in order to go beyond 720p portable/1080p docked, developers would need to build a Switch 2 version of their games, but interestingly some patched games like Super Mario Odyssey still show the Switch 1 logo in the bottom right when booting it up rather than the Switch 2 logo you see for Switch 2 "native" games. Does that mean that Nintendo does allow developers to break beyond the limits of the original hardware in Switch 1 builds? Or does the logo in the bottom right not necessarily mean that the system is booting a Switch 1 title through the compatibility layer? Thanks as always!

Perfect_Organism

In your opinion, which console had the biggest leap in terms of graphical fidelity of software released initially, to the graphical fidelity of software released towards the later part of its lifecycle? Not sure it’s the best example but I’m sorta thinking along the lines of the PS2 starting out with Eternal Ring, and ending up with RE4.

Pol Kallamata

Based of day one sales and concurrent Steam user data, it seems like Stellar Blade may be shaping up to be one of the most successful PlayStation published PC releases. It is outperforming titles from major IP like TLOU, GoW and Spider-Man. What do you think is the main reason for this? Would it be the freshness of the IP, the quality of Shift Up's PC optimization work, or the developer seemingly encouraging what is already shaping up to be one of the most lecherous modding scenes in recent memory?

tod weitzel

Was anything at Apple WWDC relevant to Digital Foundry? No new hardware but they seem to be looking at non-mobile gaming again with a new launcher and game controller APIs. I think deprecating the Intel compatibility layer at the same time undoes that, however.

Conner Patzman

What is up DF? I have been thinking allot how often people complain about the PAL versions of game being poor because that are stuck at 25/50 hz refresh rates. Are their any games you can think of where the PAL version on a 50hz display is actually the better version of the game? I know plenty of games(espeically earlier 3d games) have some “cinematic” frame rates. Thanks for all the hard work and stay rad!

TheAdam

Hello DF Knights. Cheers to your perseverance, my praise, and continued energy for the summer months. After the launch of the S2 and Nvidia cards and the PS5 Pro and aside from all the other hardware news, are there any new gameplay concepts or artistic developments in the gaming scene that you'd like to see in the near future? Can this industry still bring new concepts to market without immediately seeing the dollars behind them, or does the industry need another E.T. moment? Keep up the great work!!!

The Knight Who Says Ni!

Hey DF, ASUS has reportedly stated that they chose not to use an OLED panel in XBOX ROG Allys in favor of an LCD Display due to power efficiency and cost considerations. According to them, the OLED panels available with variable refresh rate support drew more power and were significantly more expensive than the LCD VRR option they selected. From your perspective, how justified is this trade-off in terms of performance, image quality, and user experience?

Paul Riley

Hola DF team, I think it's been hinted at but do you think we will see the efficiency improvements in the 'xbox mode' on the the ROG Xbox Ally X on a windows desktop PC? Improving performance of PCs and essentially turning them into Xbox's? I game with my pc in the living room so this would be great for me being able to pick up my Xbox controller and game without the faff of using a keyboard and mouse. Cheers!

10 Watts Raytracing

Did you get a chance to test battery life of the Switch 2? Does backcompat gets close to the 6.5hrs upper bound?

Someguyperson

So we got a Witcher 4 demo showing off CD Projekt Red's great UE5 improvements, but all we get from the Coalition is a crappy pre-rendered tailer? What gives? Do you think CD Projekt Red will improve UE5 performance more than the Coalition or any other dev team?

Someguyperson

Fast Fusion reminds me of the Extreme-G games for N64, GameCube, and PS2; a really fun & stylish arcade racer that nobody has heard of. What other games in that vein do you think people should play?

Someguyperson

It looks like Rich wasn't quite right when he did his Switch 2 DLSS tests 1.5 years ago. Fast Fusion is upscaling far beyond what most people thought was reasonable with DLSS. How is this happening? Also, does this change your mind about what games could be ported to Switch 2? What are the prospects for RT in Switch 2 games if you can upscale this much? Path Traced Zelda?

muddy

I worked briefly on dev studio (which I will not mention name) that was under a group already rumoured to be hit by cuts and the morale was terrible. I jumped ship before we were hit but it was terrible to some friends there. They had families with little kids and there was no other option nearby (as in the same country) in the field. Almost all of them had to shift to a different career but it was not easy for most of them. The argument that you can lose a job because you can get another one is just bad because it oversimplifies huge blows to people's lifes.

Ali Antiasing

Hi gents. Kind of a last type of question here. What is your criteria upon which you decide to pronounce gaming realted words? Alex seems to hold special respect with CD Proyekt, John, on the other hand, never fails to deliver Japanese titles in a "Challengeru Benderu" kind of way, while Rich may think of himself as the greatest name butcher ever, but it isn´t that bad. Never change gents. Love the lot of ya.

Gutterbird

What's up my illustrious foundrymen? I'm sure the appeal of a year old Playstation port is hard to resist, but from what I've seen of the Stellar Blade demo indicates it seems to run surprisingly well. Any plans to look at the port in the coming weeks? Thanks as always for your fine work.

Someguyperson

Never underestimate the purchasing power of weebs & their nude mods.

Someguyperson

I personally have difficulty believing that 6.5 hour number. You might get it playing Stardew Valley, but that's about it. Anything in a relatively demanding 3D games with get substantially less battery life.

Someguyperson

Hello Xbox and a merry Xbox to Xbox! If everything is an Xbox, is Xbox everything? Xbox Xbox Xbox (Xbox Xbox, Xbox) Xbox!

Someguyperson

What are your thoughts on the 90% battery saver mode of the Switch 2? My Switch 2 seems to think 94%, 87%, 92%, and 86% are all close enough to 90% that the systems just stops charging at those random points? Have you tried this out? Is it as weird for you as it is for me? I just imagine the Switch 2 hitting every cone while taking a parallel parking test and saying, "Close enough!" when I use this feature.

Diecou

Hi DF crew! I'm a proud owner of a Switch 2. While taking a closer look at my 65" LG C4 with the Switch 2 resolution set to 4k and also automatic, I've noticed that the home screen has poor resolution, not that different to 1080p with poor scaling. Actually changing the resolution to 1080p made the fonts and other UI elements a little better around the edges. While on gameplay, even when I don't know how to pixel count, it does seem to be a 4k resolution. At all times the TV info shows that I'm indeed using UHD. Do you see the same I do? If so, it seems odd for Nintendo who tend to pay attention to these kind of details.

Kipters

Hi gents! Looks like the general consensus is that the next Xbox will just be a PC, but what if it isn't? What changes would you like Microsoft to make in a world where Xbox is still a regular console?

Alan

Hi guys, Mark Twain once said, "Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life." How do you switch off from being a games journalist to just enjoying a game with all its flaws? Do you ever get tired of gaming?

Paul Maddaloni

Howdy fellas, I’ve got what’s hopefully a simple and straightforward question: is it possible for Nintendo to eventually add VRR support for Switch 2’s dock? I’m really hoping that this huge feature of the system is possible for the big screen, as its omission creates a large gap in functionality between experiences. Considering the dock mode will often likely try push more impressive visuals than portable mode, VRR could be a real boon (especially if they attempt a robust VRR solution similar to that found on Xbox). Thanks for all of your hard work!

Mmm, chilli con carne

Dear Dee Eff: With news topics thin on the ground, may I suggest some more DF Direct-style casual impressions on perhaps less typical Foundry material, like Paradox's grand strategy games? I find their complex simulation of thousands of moving pieces to be a fascinating technical achievement, even if it's not the flashiest of formats. Thank you, and hugs and kisses!

Chris Gardner

I second this. Also, how does Alex feel about these changes? Are they enough to fight off SteamOS?

(Don’t be a) Richard

One of the key capabilities of the Xbox handheld device is its promise to bring in games purchased through other stores such as Epic and Steam. Do you think Microsoft can provide a good, seamless, experience? Is there a risk we’ll see a bit of a mess as an Xbox launcher directs to a Steam storefront that will launch a game specific launcher to get into a game, and then players will be juggling both Xbox and Steam (or other shopfront) overlays once in game.

DarkRod99

Hi DF I was wondering giving how under-performant Mindseye is on consoles and PC. Do you think if the team developed it's own internal engine could've the game look and run much better? do you think is possible to make a GTA style game with Unreal Engine? Or is this type of games, much better executed when is an internal developed engine..

BespokeEP

Having all those storefronts sounds good on paper but realistically how many PC gamers use multiple storefronts? And it cannot play native console games, so I don’t really know who they are marketing this to by putting Xbox branding on it.

TCPhoenix

Hi chaps! I have a question for you I've been wondering about. Resolution typically affects frame rate, lower the resolution to get a higher frame rate. A lot of games struggle because they're trying to push 4k on the new consoles but what happens if you forcibly set the console to go lower resolution like you do on a pc. So in other words if I set my output of my series X to 1080 or 1440 instead of 4K, do you actually see an improvement in frame rate? I personally think most of the games are totally acceptable but I'm just curious as to how that would affect the output. Would it upscale to 4K even though it's rendering at 1080? Would your TV try to upscale? And would there be any frame rate difference? Keep up the great work and I miss you guys saying come on lads LOL. Cheers

DaJaCo (Dan)

Happy Half-Fortnight Lads, What do you think about the leaked ''PSP 2" specs this week, I'm glad there'll be a competitive node but the LPDDR5X / "MALL" memory configuration looks a little convoluted.. does it suggest that it's coming sooner rather than later (otherwise, why not just wait for LPDDR6) ?

TheUnrealRich

Hello Founders! A question about your background and tooling for DF: You sometimes mention that you dabble in programming, like Alex saying he compiled unreal demos like the matrix and tried to fix compile issues in newer unreal versions, or Rich talking about the changes to the programming of your tools that were necessary to include the new data from your benchmarking system. I was wondering if you are all self-taught in that regard or do some of you have an education in/worked as programmers before DF? Or are you relying on help from others like illusion for any programming that has to be done? I‘m a software engineer myself, so I was just curious about your backgrounds, cheers!

Anxiously Chrono Triggered

Dear DF gentlemen, Konami announced a Silent Hill remake made by my neighbours Bloober Team. I think it’s great news seeing what they’ve done with SH2. It made me think, are there any games from the OG PlayStation era you’d like to be remade or resurrected? Cheers

Anxiously Chrono Triggered

Hi DF crew, Alex how did you like your trip to Warsaw? I saw you were served a Botwinka / Barszcz in a restaurant. Did you like it? What else could you tell us prior to your video on the in-house presentation at CD Projekt? Cheers!

digitalfoundry

99% of the time, whatever the upscaled output is gets downscaled to 1080p, so it doesn't help

digitalfoundry

I got close to three hours in The Witcher 3. Remember it's using the full power of the machine - pretty much - up until it hits the v-sync.

10 Watts Raytracing

Hallo Alex! Did you ask if CDPR considers a Witcher 3 Switch 2 release ? Danke Schön!

10 Watts Raytracing

Thanks! It's be a great test to see what it takes to get 6.5h :)

Ednamode

MS using a 3-4 year old chip and 5 year old micro architectures paints just how dire the cost per transistor crisis is. Does this eventual stagnation mean the stagnation of gaming graphics as well(budgets are already being blown out of proportion) with a bungee like bounce back where there is an emphasis on making game development easier rather than pushing out for achieving the highest fidelity and details possible

yogi

How's the hdr in switch 2 when docked? There's a lot that's been said about how the screen on the switch 2 leaves a lot to be desired on a lot of aspects (hdr included), but does the implementation on a good screen (like an OLED TV) work well?

Sam Ecorners

Hello team, thank you for all of your content. I have a question about handhelds, specifically how does switch 2 compare with steam deck in titles like cyberpunk 2077, hogwards legacy and yakuza 0? Tom's review of cyberpunk is superb, like all of his work, but it does lack the comparison with the main PC handheld. And while we're on it, what are your thoughts on where switch 2 fits in the super packed handheld space once nintendo exclusives are taken out of the picture?

goregutz

Hi DF voyagers! Given the PS6 portable leaks which are emerging, do you think Nintendo made a mistake by not releasing a pro console only version? Clearly Sony thinks it's the right thing to do

Brandon Dickerson

The response times are quite slow, even for an LCD. You can test this in the Welcome Tour VRR demo. Theoretically these could be improved via an update, but I wouldn't get your hopes up.

Samuel Gao

hi DF. Do you think PS6 will still be x86 to keep excitement up on the release?

John Nieves

Hello DF crew! I originally sent this question to John on Blue Sky, but he is likely too busy getting a Platinum trophy in Mindseye so I will post the question here. What is the outro song for DF Direct? It's intensely familiar,& my shoddy memory remembers hearing menu sound effects while pressing buttons during this music. I play a weekly game of, "Will I remember what it's from" every week I listen to DF Direct & lose every time. I'm sure the answer is embarrassingly obvious. 😅

Taylor Wiseman

Hello DF Crew! I've had my Switch 2 since Midnight of June 5th and I am greatly enjoying it. I hope that Nintendo will make a revision of the Switch 2 with an OLED Screen, better battery life (whether that be through an improved T239 Chip or bigger battery), and higher memory clock speeds, and the earliest it would come out is 2027. How likely do you think it is that my hope would actually happen, and how much of my wish would happen?