Coming This Week to Digital Foundry (Week 34, 2025) (Patreon)

Hello there, and welcome to the latest weekly post from Digital Foundry. No #content meeting today since we are embarking on our annual pilgrimage to Gamescom - and I'm actually writing this from my hotel room for the week. The good news is that - yes! - there is air conditioning. Circa 80Mbps upload/download on the free WiFi connection isn't bad either. We've not stayed here before so you can never be quite sure if it's bearable/good for work until you get there. We are in business.

Despite the lack of meeting, I'm happy to report that there is some content in the offing!

Oliver is well on the way to finishing up his review of the console versions of Mafia: The Old Country. It's unfortunate that we did not receive code pre-launch because there is some good stuff here. Beyond that, he's going to working on the Xbox versions of BMW - Black Myth: Wukong. Again, no review code there either. I snuck in a retail pre-order before leaving for Germany.

Tom is going to be handling some embargoed content for us, which you should see this week. Sorry we cannot be a bit more specific on this one. We're hoping to see Xbox review code for Helldivers 2 at some point (we don't have it right now) and - of course - at some point really should be looking at Fortnite on Switch 2. I realise that at this point, it's a bit of a Matt Damon/Jimmy Kimmel situation on that one!

John, Rich and Alex are at Gamescom! And I've just received word that John is driving up with Audi, no less! We're at an Nvidia press event tomorrow that is very games-centric, so we're looking forward to that, while Wednesday morning is where the press get access to the Xbox showfloor "booth". I'm also hoping to get some hands-on time with the Xbox Asus ROGGGGGGG Ally and Ally X. It looks like there are a fair few capture opportunities this year across the appointments, so hopefully plenty to look forwards to.

DF Direct Weekly? It's happening but we've made the call to "tape" it first thing on Saturday morning once we get home, so it'll be arriving on Sunday for early access. Why? Much as it was fun to shoot in Audi's bedroom a couple of years back, Friday is fraught for timing (we're exiting Cologne, as anyone who has seen the Gamescom public days will appreciate) and we found that there are so many potential failure points for the equipment, that it's best to do things the traditional way! Also: uploading video is challenging away from home - major transcoding challenges.

It's been an uneven few weeks for the channel - between staff holidays and figuring out all the independence stuff behind the scenes, output has dropped a bit (though we still managed five videos last week). We're looking to get back on a more even keel once Gamescom is out of the way.

One more thing, I spent the weekend finishing up a short sponsored video with Bitdefender. It's essentially a test on whether it has any performance impact on gaming vs Windows Defender (spoilers: no it doesn't). Will did the testing on this a while back by essentially re-running our CPU bench suite with Bitdefender installed. This is the last piece of sponsored content arranged with IGN and beyond that, we're on our own - but that's what one part of what being independent is all about.

Obviously, there may be megaton Gamescom stuff to address, but for now, that's where we are. As always, your feedback is much appreciated, but I've just had a Slack message from Alex and it appears he has arrived in the hotel. Time for a coffee!

Thanks as ever for your support!