Introduction hey everyone well here we are we're back DF direct weekly number 179 as always discussing the latest gaming and technology news such as it is um let's get straight onto the panel Oliver McKenzie hello yes Rich unlike a certain game we'll talk about this week digital Foundry direct is continuing and uh yes I understand that reference and John linman hello oh Oliver a scorcher that was man all right I'm reminded of the hit single by Ellie Golding burn um anyway let's uh move on to our first news topic of the week uh not so much a news topic more a hint of things to come from Sony News 1: Sony leaks PS5 Pro design here um they've begun their 30th Anniversary celebrations uh obviously PlayStation uh original PlayStation 1 came out December 1994 in Japan 30 years who would have thought it um and um various activities are being planned um and well it was accompanied by a new piece of artwork which appears to confirm the existence and form factor of the PlayStation 5 professional um Oliver talk us through this one yes so Sony released some artwork commemorating like you said the 30-year anniversary of the PlayStation um and basically if you look very closely in that image you actually do see what looks sort of like a PlayStation 5 but actually has those three signature stripes on the side in that artwork so it does seem to indicate that the PlayStation 5 Pro Design that was leaked by DBS the other week is probably accurate that is probably a a correct depiction of the console but I mean I think that given the track record of Bill bkon and whatnot that probably was uh was inevitable in this case I don't think it's that exciting but I I hope that indicates a reveal very very soon for the PlayStation 5 Pro yeah mhm it is somewhat bizarre though isn't it John um I mean what do you take away from this is it deliberate or is it a mistake it's obviously deliberate right I'm just surprised that they didn't give credit to bill billon for revealing it first you know they they swoop in on yeah they should have been a little label on it Source exactly right like you know they're just no I think that's a fun way to do it I mean obviously this sort of thing would be super intentional right like they know what they're doing here and uh it's definitely a nice way to to do sort of a wink and a nod towards fans that are looking closely at the art to be like yeah this thing like it's an Open Secret at this point you all know it's coming so here's like kind of like a little hint that yes it is real it's coming very soon uh hopefully very very soon based on other rumors we've heard right so yeah those other rumors um well it depends which rumor moner you wish to believe but um essentially there seems to be stories that there'll be a reveal of the unit itself very very soon and then at the end of the month an additional state of play uh which you know is an interesting way to do things if that is the way to do things I'd hope there would be some kind of Mark Cy level presentation here to actually sort of describe what PlayStation 5 Pro is and why they're doing it as well as to actually you know have a bit of a showcase for for actual games that are coming out uh we've talked in the past how ficky this one is going to be to Market and you know I just think the way they did things with PlayStation 4 Pro is somewhat Superior which is basically to get people in front of the machine we still don't know whether that is the plan or not we've heard nothing from Sony but this is uh certainly a very interesting way to do things um and I suppose it trumps the way that previous uh consoles have been revealed uh inadvertently obviously the classic is the PlayStation 3 slim being debuted in a Philippines Marketplace which uh which is great and then of course there was the PlayStation 4 slim reveal which was basically um full retail units that somehow leaked from the Middle East ended up in Manchester advertised on gum tree which is essentially like the UK version of Craigslist and then basically ended up with consumers like weeks before the reveal well and there was no reveal in the end it was just kind of like a bit of a footnote in the Pro reveal uh event but yeah I mean well well here he is I mean it is essentially confirmation that everything is going to be happening but there's not really too much more we could we could draw from it I guess I mean what do you want to see from a a pro reveal there Oliver yes I would love to see obviously yeah I think that's number one I'd love to see a mark sty presentation presuming he is The Mastermind behind this console as he was behind the past uh three or four various major Sunny Hardware launches back to the PSV I believe um I would love to see new software I think that's key I think that we already know so much about the makeup of the system based off of the M leaks and based off leaks that were subsequent to that we kind of know the clock speeds we know the CU cting configuration the CPU the ram configuration um we don't know the TDP which is probably quite relevant because it does seem to be using a variable clock speed and because that variable clock speed I think is increased to Something in the range of uh 2.3 GHz I believe um yeah I think it's 2.35 but it never gets right that that's the idea with the PlayStation 5 you're very often from what we understand reasonably close to that figure here we're kind of understanding that it's more power limited that seems to be the case we have some impression of what the devic's shape and size will look like from the leaked imagy it suggests a device that is fairly similar in size to the PlayStation 5 so does not tell you a whole lot about it it's obviously bigger than the PS5 slim models it does seem but yeah I'd love to see new software I really want to see what Sony's first parties are cooking up I want to see what third parties are cooking up I would love to see a presentation from kind of those key Heavy Hitters that we like on on PlayStation 5 I'd love to see something from massive love to see something from CD project red love to see some new presentations of probably older games that are getting updates hopefully interesting and potentially transformative ones for the new hardware because I think that's kind of a question mark we do understand that the PlayStation 5 Pro was supposed to be used in certain ways by developers but exactly how far developers can go with it I think is still a Mark I'd really love to see them uncover that in a way that's compelling to Consumers yeah John what would you like to see from a launch from a r even I feel like we need to see at least one big title and I feel like something like ghost of sushima 2 would be like kind of a a really great reveal here right it was a very popular game they've been cooking for a while on the sequel this kind of feels like the right sort of venue in which to reveal that right so you say hey here's this new game here's here it is running on the PS5 professional uh this is the sort of features you can expect and sort of walk people through it and Sucker Punch is of course well known for their technical prowess so it feels like it would be a good match for it but we'll see I also want to see them clarify the disc drive situation because like that has received a lot of concern from many people including myself I've received Untold messages of from people saying like you think I should just buy the disc drive now just in case like yeah people are actually really concerned about this and they obviously haven't announced anything yet we don't know so that's just like the leaks sort of spilling out suggesting there's no dis Drive version but I would hope that they would sell a bundled version like they do with the slim if they don't that could be a gigantic mess and possibly turn people off of it as well because most of the people like I said last week that would be interested in a pro machine are going to want the disc drive well I'll tell you what John I've bought the disc drive dve and it's really simple I mean and perhaps you know slightly underhand but you know I've bought the disc drive and because I'll know I've got a 30-day return window and I'll know within 30 days whether I'm actually going to need it or not so I could either return it or I could possibly do the more honorable thing and just sell it for for what I paid for it because you know let's say this thing does come out with um uh with no disc drive what's going to happen is an immediate run on those drives that are available out there question is whether there's going to be enough of them out there and I suspect probably not based on the psvr2 PC adapter situation where that just is now almost impossible to buy unless I've missed out on the restocks um so yeah that's that is that is slightly concerning there I mean it's really difficult to Market this thing because fundamentally if you're telling people that this is much better than the PlayStation 5 then you're you're basically making arguments against your core product which is a really difficult position to be in but you know there's going to be people out there that do want to see those comparisons and do want to see what the point of the machine is if they can't do Live Events uh to to actually showcase the difference in a in an effective way get the unit out there to to people like us to other people that you know basically could give you an honest opinion of what it's bringing to the party I think that's the way forward right and I think it has to be done pre-launch um assuming that there's a positive story to tell here and I suspect that there is because the actual makeup of the machine in terms of what they're doing is everything that we kind of want to see barring the inclusion of a superior CPU you know machine learning silicon yes it's the future it's got to be there increased raate tracing why not you know it's it's just the way forward and obviously big games you know that's that's great um the thing is I think it's the case that every game that's come out since now basically has to have built-in PS5 Pro support so there should in theory be an impressive catalog of games already out there that you know we could actually talk about Star Wars Outlaws kind of can't wait to see what that's going to be doing on PS5 Pro so I guess that's basically where I'm sticking on this particular situation at the moment which is great it's coming got a nice bit of artwork that confirms it chances are we'll see something appearing pretty soon but yeah it is still a tough sell and I'm very curious about how they're going to handle it what I really don't want to see and I hope it doesn't happen is the kind of psvr2 situation where um basically the machine was basically a done deal it had to be released it was put out but then there wasn't really any support for it afterwards uh that's that's another concern that I've got any any final thoughts on this before we move on I mean based on the development documents at least it it seems like support is essentially required at this point so it's a fate company this isn't like the psvr2 where special software needs to be created for it it's just like we're building a PS5 game adding support for this comparatively is Trivial I would say yeah right compared to building for psvr2 so even if it's not a huge success in terms of sales I still think it'll be perfectly well supported if it's not a huge success maybe that support is just in terms of like slightly better frame rates or image quality uh but still it should at least be supported enough yeah making it kind of a worthwhile thing if if you're into the platform I also think with Sony apparently going back and saying hey games shipped on older sdks you can update those to use pssr and you can actually get a pretty big graphical boost potentially out of the hardware that does suggest that they are trying their best to make sure that as many games as possible can be updated to take advantage of the PlayStation 5 Pro and that's certainly what I want to see I want to see games of all kinds being updated even if the support is only nominal even if they aren't taking advantage of the rate tracing features or the machine learning Hardware I want to see support across all games because that would be uh be really really exciting to get that Pro console on this generation but of course I think the real real key areas where we want to see games improve will will necessitate the adoption of those new techologies yes it'll be it'll be wielded by programmers as sort of this like magical uh device to ward off all the FSR 2 from games replace it I'm just curious about the whole Ultra boost mode thing if it is just literally throwing all of the GPU and additional CPU power of the machine at existing titles that's going to be transformative to a lot of games up to and including the likes of Elden ring uh so that's just going to be fantastic just to explore on it in its own right just the inherent advantages you'll get from the machine even if there's no support whatsoever hopefully it'll be somewhat more robust and interesting than boost mode on PS4 Pro um kind of has to be what what if they included uh what if the PS5 Pro had like PS3 backwards compatibility like Hardware I don't think the CPU power is there but no but like actual Hardware like oh God like what what if you have this mod modular disc drive bay and in instead of just the disc drive you can or it is the disc drive but you get your PS3 module in there as well that would be amazing bring back cell you heard it here first okay let's move on to the next news topic man there's a lot of Sony stuff happening this week and uh News 2: Concord pulled from sale, servers close possibly the most outrageous and unprecedented was the announcement that Concord um the latest live service game from Sony is effectively closing down everybody who's bought the game is going to get refunded which is astonishing the game basically disappears it it just stops happening from well it would have happened by the time you watch this direct played some of it last night but uh before we talk about the actual game um well I mean let's let's just look at these uh suppor questions uh this one from rert nipples 209 nice yeah what is good DF crew I'm guessing we all going to ask about Concord if you have anything to add about it uh Todd vitel should I bother getting a sealed copy of Concord on clearance at The Big Box store to use as an investment vehicle well you've tried that with law Breakers haven't you uh John's that investment paying off it is not it has essentially increased in value by about 20 bucks okay so so we've come out ahead that's fascinating because it has no utility whatsoever zero utility okay zero utility and that's going to be the same with Concord by the way so don't don't pay a lot for a Concord disc if I see I will if I see one for like a reasonable costs floating around somewhere i' I'd throw it in my shelf Just for kicks but don't expect it to be a massive investment good Lord this is not that uh what is it NBA elite 11 or whatever if you remember that remember when those got out remember it was a ps360 game from EA it was the basketball game that they cancelled right before launch and like a few copies get out in the wild but then they pulled the plug on the whole thing even though it was ready to ship I mean it had shipped they recalled everything uh and it was a finished game but it's because the demo re reception was so bad there were so many bugs that they just decided to cancel it even though it was finished and copies of that routinely go for like I don't know like 10 grand or something okay so um I'm going to go to you first on this one Oliver I mean this is kind of unprecedent Ed kind of crazy but I'm not quite sure what else Sony could have done um what do you what what's your take on this did you actually play it you got some experience in the game I did not but I I do have to inform John right now that I'm seeing the game go for 150 bucks on eBay here so it's yeah it's it's going to go down it's yeah well hopefully it goes down I mean it wasn't in exactly wide cir well it was it was in wide circulation for a week or or so yeah yeah yeah this is just a minor Spike that always happens when these things occur it's going to go down yeah hopefully um I mean it's remarkable I don't think I've ever and you know I have enormous respect for the developers what they've achieved here and I think the game itself is is not that bad I think it's actually an all right game but I I've never seen an entertainment product land quite like this I do think that people seem to like the game online a lot of people seem to like the game the reviews weren't amazing but it didn't seem like it was in a sense that the game itself was like unpolished or didn't have good more in the sense that people are just kind of fatigued of the hero shooter and they have certain expectations from other hero shooters that are really long lasting and other live service games that are really longlasting that they basically be super polished and super great and that just is not going to be the case for a lot of these games on day one so if you have a game come out like Concord that isn't distinguishing itself in in a huge way from some of those other titles like a title like hell divers 2 might have you inevitably get compared to those games and it's not a flattering comparison because a title like OverWatch has 8 years of development behind it but you know that obviously is not realistic for a tle like Concord on day one to be exactly as well balanced and as well tuned and have the Gunplay feeling as tight as a tle like that so I understand that that's tough but I mean with titles like these there are a bit of a roll of the dice it's tough to predict what will do well obviously hell divers 2 is a sequel to a top down Indie shooter who would have known that would have been a huge success uh a s like Concord certainly seems like it would have more mass Market appeal attached to it but it's just tricky it's just tricky and then it launches and it doesn't even apparently sell 100,000 copies which is just crazy to me despite being like a first party Sunny title with a ton of promotion I think they had the opening spot at the June state of play right it was that very first title that people saw so yeah I don't know and I mean it was seemed reasonably priced to $40 asking price did not seem me I didn't expect it to do crazily well um based on the early reception and certainly based on John and Tom Impressions from a couple months ago but I also was not expecting it to do poorly in anywhere near the same league as this appears to have yeah it's it's kind of L um John you have played it does this come I mean obviously the the reaction by Sony I believe is unprecedented and possibly um uh you know we we couldn't have quite predicted they go this far but can you understand why this is happening oh man this is this such a difficult one I I do feel like that state of play thing you mentioned Oliver was kind of the canary and the co mine for this game like there was instant instant negative reactions to this including for myself and I think fundamentally this is a game that has it feels cynical whether it was or not it feels like a lot of its like what's there was very much crafted in a boardroom I don't know if that's actually true but that's what it feels like uh and that's fundamentally a huge problem for a game like this because the the pool that it's competing in when you actually break that down that kind of highlights why I think this failed so spectacularly first of all the sort of hero shooter this is uh this is a well-worn genre at this point and there are still games being played in this genre and they're pretty much all free to play now whether you know clearly fans of this type of game have moved to that model that's what they like that's what they want uh they're happy there and that also highlights this whole quote unquote forever game thing where there is a subset of that audience that will just play that game something like OverWatch OverWatch 2 as it is now people that are playing that will continue to play that game they're not necessarily in the market for this if this had been free to play maybe they'd give it a shot and be like okay this is all right and then play some more but if you got to jump in even for 40 bucks it's kind of like the uh it's kind of like what happened with uh app store games where once everything sort of raced to the bottom and hit free to play like games that cost money up front started to perform worse it was harder to actually get success in that area because nobody that that audience has become used to not paying money up front right right so they're competing in that front so that's that already is difficult secondly these games they are hero Shooters they rely on Heroes that people like and it's pretty obvious that a lot of people do not like the designs in this game they don't like them they find them unappealing this is you look at that cast and there's nobody that says yeah I want to cosplay as that person even the guy that looks like the BG from Guardians of the Galaxy no it sounds silly but I think that stuff is actually genuinely important to like creating a fandom around these things especially when it's say hero shooter where the heroes are a central part of it if nobody is actually that likable and instead it just feels like Guardians of the gallery Great Value Edition um it's you know there's no nobody's coming to play it from that side either so with those two things in place that's a huge challenge because fundamentally the actual core mechanics the technology powering the game they are actually well done but they're not so well done or unique as to overcome those problems right it's like yeah it is a competent shooter but being a competent or even good shooter isn't enough anymore that that does that just doesn't work you have to have something else to bring to the table that people genuinely want and they just didn't do it there's nothing really special or unique about this that that separates it from the pack that that that's right there like if there had been some spark some things something to grab people I think they probably thought that those weekly vignettes were part of that where it sort of tries to add like sort of a narrative angle to it uh I bet they looked at something like Blizzard's handling of OverWatch like the CG stuff that they did for it and like the way that those characters were kind of viewed in trailers and stuff and thought Oh what if we did that but like actual like more storytelling stuff and we update it regularly which sounds kind of cool on paper I would say it gives you a reason to keep kind of coming back and seeing what's going on there but again if the characters aren't that appealing to people and it just has that cynical made in a boardroom feel again I don't know if that's actually true but that's the that's the general perception like nobody's going to care about that stuff right yeah I do play the game last night first time I've played it uh usual situation that you get sort of thrust into matchmaking where I was you know a level one character up against level 50 characters um but everything you just said is correct John I think this is a really good game the basic level but it's just not compelling it's not a hell diver scenario where you actually felt like you were engaged in something different in and fun it it was just kind of like a really good example of a hero shooter but you know if I wouldn't pay $40 for it I think it's the bottom line um uh I guess I had fun with it I found the characters to be okay but I can't really remember any of them apart from uh the girl in the massive suit and um uh the the Guardians of the Galaxy guy looks like Michael Rooker from Guardians of the Galaxy uh but with a it it is kind of like Street Fighter 2 out costume so but yeah beyond that it you know it just didn't really grab me um but I do actually think the the weapons were were really interesting the gameplay was was was was quite fun but it just didn't do anything new and it didn't do anything exciting and obviously now we we can actually ja oppose this against hell divers too which was wildly successful because it actually ticked the boxes um of how to stand out it was original and and distinct in its own way it was fun it was funny stuff happened in game that you know had us howling right it was just it just really really fun it felt organic though like felt like the guys that made it were having a great time making it and it didn't feel like the the stuff around it was manufactured so much it's like they just created a cool game that did some funny stuff and people liked playing it with their friends and I think there were some issues with that game in terms of the balance there were some issues with some things that were a little glitchy a little wonky but it was such a new and fresh experience and so exciting and I've certainly played a lot of L divers to with my friends um it's a very different style of game and I think that really attracted people instead of just being like well here is another version of a game you've played before but just not with 10 years of development behind it which is a harder proposition to sell well I would also say that uh polishing and balancing games to Perfection is is not a good thing people always talk about balance I think there is there is something to be said is scraggly yeah it is PVE but but if you look back at PVE games as well I think people do enjoy finding weird little things and the balance needs to be okay good enough but like it doesn't need to be this perfect balance otherwise you you risk creating something boring right okay and that's fundamentally at the heart of this is one of the biggest problems I guess they face is that for most people it's just kind of uninteresting right so obviously the game has is going to be withdrawn it would have been withdrawn by the time people uh listen to us here where do they go next they're obviously not going to write off how many millions of dollars they've invested in it they're going to have to Pivot so to speak the obvious route forward is that they're basically going to um uh make it free to play and rejig micro microtransactions uh that's the kind of oam's Razor thing that's you know the most likely thing that's going to happen is there any other Roots forward because I'm not even sure that's going to be the right way to handle this um Oliver what do you think uh I think outside of freet to play the route for it is to not proceed with the project um I really think I think those are the two choices I don't really see a way I mean I'm not I'm not even sure that freet to play does a whole lot for you I mean I think that relaunching it exposing it to a much larger group of players that probably helps but I mean games you're competing against are also free to play games for the most part right you talking about like um you know Counterstrike rocket League uh games like this I do think there's probably some Merit in saying hey you know we we tried and this game is not connecting with players and maybe we just shouldn't uh maybe we should just move on to new pastures or I mean I don't know what that means for the studio obviously and that would be very unfortunate if something was to was to occur there in a negative fashion but yeah I mean I think freet to play has to be the move I think it has to be a game that needs to attract just a much wider audience than it did when you saw those steam stats I mean I saw that at one point yesterday a couple days ago 30 players were playing I mean it's just a a really low player population it's not sustainable for a multiplayer game like that to have a player population that low pretty much period but certainly within the first week of release it's just unheard of yeah absolutely I think that there would have been a bell weather from the uh the beta as to as to the success that was to come or not to come um John what is the The Way Forward here man that is tough because I think like Oliver said free to play is kind of the only thing that can realistically do that doesn't doesn't involve spending a lot of money right I mean they I also have to think at this point that maybe the Concord IP is poisoned as well like if you do anything else with them like imagine it just becomes a different sort of game they go back to the like all of that stuff requires investment I don't think there's any point in investing in this specific IP in these characters at this point right unless they massively overhaul them and then very interesting unexpected way uh I just don't see what else they can do there that doesn't involve that that kind of big spend free to play seems like the only way to get it to use what they've built and put it back out there but even then though what would the player base be like you get more people trying it for sure but it feels like like it's just possibly too late now for that I don't see how you how do you yeah there is an episode I'm not sure if you saw it Gamescom but there's that television series from Amazon I think called secret level that has I think 15 15 levels I'm sorry 15 episodes that cover discret games and one of those episode centers on Concord I don't know whether that's going to be released but certainly you'd think oh I hope so I certainly hope so I I don't think you cannot release it that would be again I mean so many people worked so hard on that I'm sure I mean you look at the production values for that series and it just seems seems pretty crazy pretty impressive but that will be a a bit of a marketing push when whenever that gets released I think later this year and also presumably because this is a live service title you know you don't launch a live service title and then say okay guys what what do we do for levels What do we do for New Missions characters skins whatever they would have had a pipeline right for sure a pipeline new new content that was in production so it would be a shame to see that also lost um and for sure I mean if they could retool that into something that's commercially viable they probably do have a pipeline of content that extends probably they had plans for the next year so I have to imagine at least of content that that could be continued to be iterated on and developed and released oh one one idea I suddenly had is they could just lean into this failure like rewrite the characters go in this way where like essentially their characters in a failed video game you know try to break the fourth wall just poke fun at their own do something wildly unexpected and just like completely bizarre like the Borderlands kind of kind of but more so like really like don't it would be tough don't get me wrong doing that Ty type of Comedy is not easy but I feel like there is a path where they essentially like own what happened to them in a weird way and then they make something that people might find interesting where it's like oh that's that's a weird direction to go they want to see what it is so there's possibly something there there is one one other thing to mention Oliver I saw a lot of people sort of saying like oh this game took eight years to make and it does seem that that's not true and that in reality it was more like four years of development so still a lot of years it's still a lot I mean don't get me wrong that's a that's a lot I did see a funny tweet though where somebody was like uh what do you think the budget of Concord do you think the budget of Concord is higher than the combination of every single like schmu ever made and there is a good possibility that it might be that's kind of what assuming the $250 million budget that's been floating about but yeah it's a bizarre correlation that's for sure um I don't know what's going to happen I wish the developers well I hope it does come back in a way that does find an audience I think there is there is the the kernel of something good there um and and maybe freeo play is the way forward how it's going to sustain itself going forward don't know um and obviously I really do hope that this makes anybody looking to invest in um live service games consider the options carefully because this is kind of like effectively the worst case scenario you're you're looking at here fundamentally the game is not bad it's a good game I think it's just not it just doesn't really stand out it just doesn't really excite but a lot of things in there are actually super competent and and wellmade and a lot of people are having fun with it just not enough yeah and if if this is what's going to happen with a game that you know is is pretty good what's going to happen if your game isn't pretty good you know yeah it's kind of kind I was kind of reflecting on this over the past couple days and I think like you look at a title like Space Marine 2 which is a game that has significant multiplayer elements has Co-op elements built into it you can basically play play the entire game Co-op has some co-op missions they're planning on hord mode at some point you know I mean that game could be a great single player game and it could be a game that you can access and play single player for a long time and certainly based on what I played earlier of the of the beta code of the preview code seems like a very successful game from a single player perspective but they also have this multiplayer mode on top of that which presumably was not as resource intensive to develop as like a full discreet multiplayer title and that could well be its own you know maybe it's its own breakout hit or maybe it's successful on its own terms but that just seems like a lower risk way of trying to approach this problem but maybe that's not what people are after because obviously you want that breakout hit but you end up with for every hell divers you end up with a with a Concord I suppose yeah it's got me thinking also about Bungie in the future where they're focusing in on marathon and we've heard rumors that it's not testing well people aren't responding well to it and I will say at least comparatively the marathon reveal trailer was interesting visually and I think people liked that but it sounds like the game itself maybe isn't what people want and it it makes me sad that's a case where I I kind of wish they would start to look at something like this and maybe reconsider what that is and actually try to make up an actual Marathon game rather than whatever the extraction shooter that they are building also fair games as well yeah oh there was fair games there was the so this is interesting that uh there was also hyenas from Sega yeah for that which was canned before release it's actually kind of similar to Concord so we have two High profile expensive examples of games that were in development that were just like shut down like right away well we got three we've got the Last of Us multiplayer yes that's true although iy that was probably less far along but um man I think it's just shows that you can't it ain't worth putting a ton of money into one of these kind of multiplayer games and I think like doing it on a more reasonable scale like I'd be curious to know what hell divers 2 budget was but I'd imagine it was much smaller than Concord can't say for sure but like the thing with multiplayer stuff is like until you know that it's actually a success uh finding that balance between investing enough to make something that people like but not investing so much where a failure like is is a disaster that seems like a very difficult formula to figure out yeah I'm just curious now about the failure conditions for um The Last of Us because you know think about it you've You' got a mega IP behind it you've got a wellbeloved multiplayer mode out there in factions that people absolutely adored and yet it didn't make it through to to final production I think the reason is actually it's less to do with I think it would have sold well would have been popular I think it's more that naughty dog does not want to become a studio that supports that game right we know that those types of games require a gigantic amount of resources to keep running and I think naughty dog probably looked at what was what that would take over the years and said that's not what we want to do you know what I mean okay which is why it's sad that they couldn't just release factions too yeah like it didn't need to be this gigantic live service thing right they let it go the scope got too big clearly for what it was and they don't want to support it and we know they can support a multiplayer mode so I feel like hopefully there's lessons there as well about like don't scope your multiplayer things yeah too big uh otherwise the risk of of failure is really really high so yeah okay uh any final thoughts or should we move on let's move on bit depressing really is News 3: Astro Bot review reaction! depressing okay right um our next news story of the week um astrobot is out on PlayStation 5 and I'm delighted to see that the recognition for the game the critical uh reaction has just been absolutely stellar and it's it's great to see that there's almost like complete consensus that this is just an absolutely brilliant fantastic game created by a relatively small developer within Sony T Mobi apparently 65 core developers interesting interview at video games Chronicle where they went to actually visit uh the studio in Japan get an idea of the the ethos the mentality there this is just a success story on every level which we kind of need in the wake of the Concord dearle and um I played only a small part of the game but you know essentially if you've played Astros playroom which was installed on your PlayStation 5 when you bought it it basically sets the scene for everything this game is and um I highly recommend buying it John you did the review for us um I'm curious about your reaction to the reaction to the game oh I'm I'm very relieved and happy that people are also enjoying this as much as I did uh the reaction seems to be like shockingly overwhelmingly positive maybe not shockingly uh cuz it is freaking amazing I would say this is one of the best things that Sony's ever made uh I think I think it's the best platform game they've ever made I personally I I like this better than every ratchet Jack game combined I think this is better than all of them uh this is a this is a real one wonderful wonderful piece of gaming that just man I it's it's hard to even say like and that's the thing though is like even in the video there's so much stuff that I did not include in there for purposely not include because the it's the the joy of surprise is so high there's just so much stuff that happens that's often unexpected and you're just like wow I it really does have like just this unbelievable amount of creativity powering it where like they just came up with cool ideas for levels and every level every level is like this bespoke little nug of an idea like it just feels like it's constantly shifting what's there uh and it's all based on these really solid core mechanics and everything plus a great visual presentation great soundtrack uh awesome physics display like all over the place uh it's just phenomenal stuff cool and um I've got some questions here from supporters let's start with this one from Allan the the infamous Alan on the Discord who hi guys where does astrobot stack up in the platforming pantheon better than Mario Sack Boy Crash Bandicoot Sonic Etc must be right up there for game of the year what you reckon John oh wow it's I mean I like it more than than anything Sack Boy and Crash Bandicoot for sure uh as far as Mario and Sonic it doesn't quite top the best in in those series for me and the reason is is that both Mario and Sonic at their best they have a little bit more depth to the overall control system like Sonic's momentum system for instance and the way Mario can handle in those games allows for some real uh just engaging sort of like Mastery of the game play in a way astrobot doesn't quite go in that direction uh this is to me astrobot kind of reminds me of if I had to compare it to something it feels like this combination of Kirby and the Forgotten land mixed with which I absolutely loved mixed with Super Mario Wonder right which is a pretty awesome combin I think so uh but yeah it's definitely very high on the overall list I would say it's one of one of the best Platformers I think I've ever played certainly in the 3D space uh and on top of that it's just the technical execution is is perfect basically yeah I mean what can you say it does everything that they wanted it to do and does it exceptionally well with basically no flaws you managed to find one I'm sure there's like one or two others but it's I I captured a lot of hours of this game and that was the only one that registered and that's the only one my eyes caught where it's like oh it's a tiny little dip for a very short little time so otherwise it's perfect Oliver what's your take on all of this on the game itself uh I played um a couple hours right before this direct recording and I really okay really really like it it's just a joy to play I love the levels I love all the little physicalized objects that you bump into that's really fantastic I love the haptic feedback that was great in asos's playroom but here it feels good and they're not trying to draw attention to it quite as much as they were in asos's playroom so it feels a little bit more natural the levels feel great to play I think they have done a good job kind of like you said with the reference to Kirby and the Forgotten land where the levels are pretty linear in driving but still three-dimensional but not to open but they still have secrets and they still have the the various Bots to to free and rescue um and that's very I think that's very important because like 3D Platformers to me I'm not super interested in super open-ended 3D Platformers these days but I do like 3D Platformers and I like ones that can be a bit more directed and show you something that's exciting and give you kind of like that that a bit more of that roller coaster kind of experience that's really what I like it feels kind of like to to draw analogies to other platforms it feels kind of somewhere between Super Mario 3D world and Super Mario Galaxy to me at least in terms of the openness of it I've not played nearly as much of it as John has of course but those are my initial Impressions um but yeah each level is just a delight really careful platforming um great artwork they use context sensitive actions but they don't use it in a way that's overwhelming or or gimmicky they kind of throw in a context sensitive or a unique move at the beginning of a level you exploit it throughout the level then you move on which I think is probably the right approach I personally I think that it's it's got to be and they running for some kind of consideration for game of the year um it's it's a fantastic game I mean I can't wait to play more of it yeah absolutely I mean I I too have just played a couple of hours of it and uh what could I say it's very rare that a game just constantly Delights you with new mechanics and and genuinely surprising things to do it's just basically A procession of amazingly great mad ideas being thrust at you time and time again and it's very rare that they just don't Delight you and so you know it's really interesting to actually see people talking about um oh you know okay it's about 12 hours of gaming here this you're missing the point completely you know would you rather have 12 hours of um you know fun excitement surprise or 12 or or 20 40 hours of basically doing the same thing over and over again it's it's there just no cont no no contest here it's this is a completely different type of exper experience that you've just got to enjoy and I do think um going back to the je said stuff um it's really interesting how well it works um obviously you've got um audio coming from the screen but the way they managed to localize it within the controller and add Pitch Perfect haptics to it yes um it just works time and time again and this is kind of like the Dual sense dream as it was sold to us when the uh PlayStation 5 was first announced and actually when it came out via AST Astros playroom and here they've just refined the art time and time again you just get absolutely fantastic immersion and and Delight uh from from what's happening in the controller and it's so rare that it actually happens and actually you know talking about Concord it's another one of those games where the haptics are there but it actually in my opinion makes the game kind of a bit more of a chore to play because you're you're fighting the controller Astros is just constantly enhancing the experience and that's just absolutely magical and it's really interesting because you can actually Define you know in terms of it's interesting what you said in your review there John which is that um um it isn't actually pushing the state-ofthe-art in game visuals in any way but what you are getting is nion Flawless performance imagination Joy coming at you time and time again and um you know it's it it doesn't need to be using you know virtual Shadow Maps nanite or anything like that it's it's just perfectly designed based on their existing technology it just works time and time again so what could I say I'm I'm really excited that people accepted that you know it's just a great time as the bottom line anything to add to that John yeah so it was interesting like one thing about the visuals that like kind of mastered this art and this is something Nintendo has kind of pushed for with their lower spec Hardware even of what I would say is enough polygons where if you look at any object in the scene everything always looks rounded and perfected you never look at an object and see gee that could use like smoother edges or more details it's like everything is exactly as detailed as it needs to be and you just see the whole level across the map that you cross it just has this like it feels like it's a solid object that's just perfectly put together in a way that you're just moving through and that's that's actually where the technical like the chops really shows that they just did something that looks visually attractive but it feels so perfectly solid without any of like the weird sacrifices and limitations that we've been seeing more and more right we see so many games launching with like these 720p sub 720p input resolution smear anti- alosine you know lots of like caveats all over the place and this is just like perfectly sharp and clean it looks visually attractive and it just runs exactly as it should uh and you also for the haptics thing I was just amazed at how like you can be running around and you actually can feel the the distinction between his Little Footsteps and like bumping into objects if feel like running through little like physics based objects uh you can actually sort of feel that distinction between bumping the objects and and his Little Footsteps running around like the it's nuts that they're able to communicate that and it doesn't even draw attention to itself it's just there and if you actually think about it you just feel it it's just so impressive in that regard yeah mhm yeah um I really hope people try it I think it's just what can I say it's definitely a game of the year Contender however John let's talk about a couple more supporter questions howdy jents this one's from groovy duck John's review of asot I don't think he really said a singular negative thing about the game not counting the lonely frame rate frame time Spike by my impressions of astrobot without playing it yet it looks like John is still spot on but for the sake of content I for the sake of content I love that hasht content I must ask you John what nitpicks do you have with astrobot it's like they say in school there's always room for improvement ah okay well I would say the HDR implementation isn't as robust as I would like it's bright and colorful but it doesn't have that massive separation between light and dark that I really love where you get those like super vibrant highlights sort of contrasted maybe that's tough to do when the colors are so bright as is in this game but I can't say I was blown away by the HDR it's like this is cromin HDR they yeah I was going to say I actually turned off the HDR within 10 minutes of playing it I did not not like it it seemed quite muted to me even things like specular highlights like throughout the scene I wasn't getting that super bright did you turn on the bright mode I did turn on the bright mode it was not it was not nearly as bright to me as just playing it in SDR and also I noticed the blacks were slightly appeared slightly raised even so I I have to admit Oliver I noticed that this morning and do you see it right at the um splash screen the the Sony Studios that but that that's just the Sony Studios logo that has the black rays that high once it gets to the next logo it's Back to Black right that it's that specific video blacks to me it just did not look like I'm a game like this in HDR you know I'm expecting a lot of contrast a lot of vibran to that image or super bright specular I'm expecting those really bright highlights to be present in a lot of the scenes in the game you know maybe they're somewhere else again I did not play it for too long but was not that satisfying to me and then I think I mean people can I've seen people talk about the overall look of the game I don't really think it's going for that super SI look kind of like that that Knack 2 look so to speak it's going for something more in the lines of Mario aicy or maybe Kirby or something it's it's not quite going for that super high in CG look I've seen some people talk about that but I think it looks like clean and sharp and what it's trying to do it does very well so I don't think that's a critique necessarily it's just like it's a different approach that you may or may not like but in terms of a technical concern I mean I think the game runs super super well feels super great to play I mean so far from what I've seen it just that HDR I don't know what their internal HDR pipeline looks like but to me that was like maybe better in SDR at least for my taste but it's going to depend the person there okay so we've had this particular question several times for 1040 stf but let's quickly address it now we've actually got the game in your opinion knowing what we could do about the PS5 Pro what are the chances that Astro bot could reach 4K 120 on it um 4K 120 I think there's probably a CPU and a physics Liberation there um unlocked frame rate possibly uh increased resolution increased perceived resolution um better anti-aliasing I guess it's it's you know you're going to be sort of just adding trimmings really because the nature of the game doesn't really lend itself to Supreme scalability uh what do you think John yeah I mean RT Reflections possibly that's probably yeah that's probably one area where they could Implement that you know just replace their screen space reflections with rt because their material properties are really great especially on metal and I feel like applying proper RT Reflections would actually look really great there um and but yeah 120 I mean 120 would be a nice thing I would love to see it but like you say we don't really know what the load is on things like all the physics and whatnot so it's hard to say if they could actually get there um so yeah it's it's just it feels like it's very specifically designed to be what it is right now yeah and RC reflection is probably the one area where I think they could probably improve things in a way that would be like a an overall win without too D dramatically changing things yeah I mean there's no obvious deficiencies but like for sure I think in the Aztec level that opening shot where you get that kind of gold reflective wall and you look at the reflection there that's not not holding up incredibly well I mean there are definitely some areas where the screen space Reflections aren't quite delivering the level of reflective detail that you might want to see that would be certainly be very cool but I mean you know I mean even if it was just like the bare minimum and it was just bumping up that Dynamic res I don't think that'd be a travesty I think the game looks good as as it stands I don't think there's any particular area where they are clearly deficient in some way that could be improved by the PlayStation 5 Pro in my opinion MH okay uh good stuff let's move News 4: RTX 5000 series performance and power rumoured on okay next new story and um obviously we're eagerly awaiting the arrival of the next generation of Graphics Hardware right um specifically rd4 and RTX uh 50 Series cards generally speaking we kind of been conditioned by various leaks and rumors to believe that the 50 Series is going to be coming first quarter of next year possibly as early as January CES continually keeps being talked about uh we actually now have some leaks about the um about the hardware from renowned leaker cite 7 kir who uh seems to have some sort of inside of track which um continually generally proves to be correct RTX 5090 and 580 are now being discussed by the leaker um 5090 apart from the fact that it's apparently going to have a much higher power consumption or rather a power limit about 600 watts is being discussed uh we don't know too much about that however we do have some level of a performance expectation from the RTX 5080 and it's believed to be allegedly 10% faster than the RTX 1490 um which is potentially quite exciting because well I mean we'll talk about performance expectations on the 50/90 shortly I'm curious what the panel makes of this Oliver going to come to you first a 5080 10% faster than a 4090 sounds exciting in theory but It ultimately comes down to how much it's going to cost right comes down to how much it's going to cost and it comes down to how much your power bill is going to cost I suppose because uh yeah if it is a 400 watt GPU that's not much less than a 49 450 Watts notionally although I guess it I mean I think we should couch that with the fact that actual in-game performance on the F on the 4090 um was generally significantly lower than the the tgp which is great might be the same here we just don't know in a lot of games it's like 300ish Watts if you if you run it pretty light it'll run it like 200 watts and the and the cooler won't even turn on it's pretty funny because it's got a massive I think the cooler is speced for 600 watt operation I believe on the on the 4090 Series so well that's that's convenient isn't it I suppose so just move over those designs I guess Nvidia has been quite kind to their board Partners there but uh yeah I think the bump and performance for the 5080 over the 4090 pretty welcome pretty cool not as big as the bump from the 3090 to the 480 I believe but RTX 5000 series will be on 4 nanometers which is not really a processed node I mean it is sort of a process node bump it's not nearly as much of a process node bump from 3,000 series to 4,000 Series where you went from like Samsung 8 NM to tsmc 5 I believe which was a gigantic jump I mean it's like almost two whole nodes by my estimation in terms of the actual performance level of the chips um but yeah I I don't know I kind of I was reflecting on the power consumption figures here and I don't know I don't think the power consumption figures are that wild like they are very high but there were rumors the 490 could consume 600 watts right in the cooler respect for 600 watts they arrived at 450 Watts these kind of kinds of details can sometimes be tweaked fairly close to Long launch and even if I mean even even if it is 600 watts I I don't know to me it's not that crazy I mean most power supplies that will work with the 49t will continue to work with a 59 at least that's what I'm hoping if I do end up upgrading but yeah and I think you do have that factor as well like you mentioned Rich the fact that most games are not going to push a card like the 4090 to 450 Watts they'll push it to 300 watts 350 Watts you might get higher than that in some titles but for for the most part these chips are not running at their maximum power consumption in most kinds of gaming workloads so I don't know I think it's for the most part this news is pretty interesting pretty positive I would be very interested to see what the performance figures look like on that 5090 but I'd be more interested to see what kinds of features might come with this new series um especially features like not just like SC or opacity microm Maps or things like this but features that really make a big difference for gamers that are kind of like these dlss style features um that they can really notice in an immediate sense not just in in in the sense that it's improving performance generally speaking like obviously you have dlss frame generation and then obviously you have the various RTX features you have dlss 2 you have all this all these Innovations I'd be curious to see what they're going to bring to the table with the 5,000 series and if that is compelling I think that's a much more of a game Cher possibly than any marginal increase in performance here or there relative to the 4,000 series yeah I I think that's a pretty good take actually I do expect that we're probably going to see some sort of double frame generation feature it just kind of seems like a logical progression to me um yeah beyond that well I think it's really down to Nvidia to continue to strive on the Innovation side with the with the software package because I think at this point dlss is proven to be possibly the most game-changing technology that's been added to the graphics market for quite some time I think the of it has been um probably in excess of uh the impact of raid facing overall for more players and um yeah they've got to continue to to keep on doing uh those levels of innovation because you know the competition is inevitably going to catch up at some point I'd like to see Ray reconstruction revamped I think Alex talks about that in the Outlaws coverage that we did it's it was a great first effort but we haven't seen uh particularly great Improvement there um I just really want to see conceptually what they're going to come up with next though you know what is the next big dlss thing you know is it even dlss is there something else on the horizon um we just don't know can't wait to find out um John do these performance expectations excite you in any way what's your I mean it all depends on pricing I think right I think that's the bottom line I do feel like there is a the 4,000 Series has become very well respected but but it is expensive I feel like if they can somehow get the price down at all if they can find a way to make this more feasible like make the 48 the 5080 something that more people can kind of afford they could potentially pull a pascal lineup where I feel like Pascal was kind of this like Perfect Storm of just just the right price to Performance ratio where a lot of people were ready to jump in and I feel like they've been you know this could become like that that for the RTX series because all of their Technologies you know frame generation the rate tracing stuff all of this dlss it's very popular now it's very wellknown uh but to get the best of it it's it just costs a lot of money right right uh and I feel like the 4080 was priced pretty darn high and there was a lot of stuff talks around that so if they could get something that's like 4090 plus performance at a more reasonable affordable price I think you're going to make a lot of people happy and it could become a new like the 1080 basically yeah MH yeah it's I mean what could we say the 40 series did actually turn out to sell incredibly well it did but which kind of has uh interesting implications for um the fact that all of the press including us were kind of not too happy about the pricing on several of the products there but that said I'm looking at the steam Hardware survey now and the products that have basically you know come through they're quite remarkable the 4060 laptop GPU is now the number two GPU which is I kind of I kind of expected that to be honest I don't think that we're appreciating the impact that gaming laptops are having on the overall ecosystem at the moment but there it is um after that the 4060 gradually moving up the charts the desktop uh version I think it's 1 2 3 4 it's the number six now um and but beyond that 4060 TI has amazingly done quite well which was universally condemned including by us but there it is 4070 uh beyond that is um is the next sort of Entry I thought that was a reasonable product it was kind of more of a a sort of uh how can I describe it um not quite as good generally as a as a 3080 but you know you got more memory and it costs less and you got frame generation that isn't exactly a hugely exciting compelling proposition but I think ultimately there are a lot of people that are on 20 series cards that upgraded the only 20 series um that's that's in the steam Hardware survey at the top of the charts anywhere near the top of the charts Remains the 2060 so I suspect there's been a lot of um upgrading from that generation pricing i' really would like to see something decent uh for the higher end products I just think the stack needs to be kind of ampere class price versus performance to really excite people people this time around um and yes features that's that's what I really want to see what are they doing next um but yeah there's going to be a a full stack there I think there were some rumors that were slightly concerning that the Next Generation 5060 5060 yeah that's that sounds a bit weird doesn't it basically the mainstream card is another 8 gigabyte card which is slightly concerning to me um but you know elsewhere it's just going to be where Nvidia pitches this I've not in terms of it's interesting we're talking about a 5080 leak in terms of performance but nothing on 5090 and I think this can go two ways if the 5080 is using the same processor as the 5090 we're going to get an ampare situation where you could buy an RTX 3080 and then there were diminishing returns in terms of price versus performance on anything better you went for the 3090 for the extra memory the 380 TI I thought it was a bust basically um 10% faster than 380 for the extra money wasn't really worth it if it is separate chips then we're going to have another scenario with 4090 where it sits on its own the 5090 will sit on its own in performance terms Nvidia will probably you know charge whatever they feel they can for it because it will be the Halo product yeah nobody ever really had any issues with 4090 pricing uh it was basically uh the 80 series and below so yeah from my perspective 80 series pricing crucially important features even more important and um we'll go from there any any final words uh Oliver if that pop and GPU is spanning 600 at least 400 watts to 600 watts oh boy that's either a very that's maybe a very cut down 80 series GPU at very low power targets or I don't know what that would be that would also be an interesting uh interesting thing if they did a more of an Amper style approach but otherwise it will be basically the 590 standing alone at that that top end if it does have the larger chip yeah MH I think the other thing to bear in mind the memory situation um we're seeing increasingly now that rate racing does have a specifically impactful level um on vam needs to be sorted out there it does concern me that you know a lot of these products that we're seeing at the top end there just not offering enough memory um to accommodate tripa games uh and and you know you want to be able to exercise the higher end features um on those lower-end cards just at you know proportionately lower frame rates or Fidelity but you know the fact that you've got bvh structures requiring a lot of memory means that that does become slightly problematic uh any final News 5: Bloodborne PC progresses thoughts on this one before we move on John no I think it's good just wait to see where they go okay um Next News topic uh we've been watching for a while now that um PlayStation 4 emulation is actually happening we've got we've got the hilariously titled Shad PS4 emulator that's coming out and I think what's been quite fascinating about this is that yes we've seen um leaps and bounds in terms of what that emulator is capable of we've gone from like games booting but not doing anything to games actually being semi playable it's still really ear days but there seems to be this community will to make a PC version of bloodborne happen and the only way that this is seemingly possible is to is to basically use Shad PS4 to emulate the game get it running but then moders are basically coming in to fix stuff that the emulation doesn't support yet and so we're seeing a procession on Twitter of really interesting videos of how modern are actually improving um bloodborne on PC before it's actually fully playable on the emulator we're seeing things like um uh higher resolution texture packs we see things like Dynamic Shadows being added this is this I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like it um John what's your take on it I mean I've been sharing some of the videos on the slack Channel but you know they just keep cropping up in social media and it's a kind of like a joyous thing to see it's super super impressive and it really shows that uh the froing demand for bloodborne on new platforms has continued to increase uh there are a lot of people pouring a lot of effort into getting it there and it's it's first of all it's amazing to see image quality and features implemented here that kind of exceed what the original game was doing uh because it's kind of something that I think fans have been wanting for a long time and obviously the original game is famously limited to just running for in base PS4 mode it's 1080p it's 30ish frames per second uh and that's it and it this was before any sort of modern uh image quality treatment no TA or anything like that so the image quality is quite poor uh and yeah here it's starting like it really is starting to look more like a native PC game at this point than than like an emulated game yeah and I guess that's kind of what they're doing here right because when it was first running on I want to say Chad PS4 that just seems more natural it was just missing stuff a lot of the effects just weren't working and as a result it looked pretty Broken But now now I see it I'm like man I I could totally play this I understand that it's that it's actually really unstable and the yeah the footage that we're seeing is is very very Cherry piics but even so still it's kind of like you know it's people are willing this thing into existence and I kind of think that with the progress we're seeing so far I mean it is going to ultimately rely on the emulation improving yeah yeah yeah to get to get the base experience working properly but you know to see this actually happening I was actually had a quick word the other day with Lance McDonald who did the 60fps um mod for blood bloodborne which basically involved memory serves John it involved taking um work that was made for the Dark Souls 3 PS4 Pro like redro fittig it to bloodborne to allow for higher frame rates yeah something like that so yeah he was kind of tickled and happy to see that his work still forms the foundation of what's happening with shad PS4 modss to about the game higher than 30 frames per second Oliver have you been following this one at all well I've taken a look at the various footage and pieces of content that people keep dropping on Twitter and it does seem like a very impressive effort at the moment though like said there is a certain level of just getting those basic visual features online and performance not amazing um from what I can tell and it does seem unstable but emulating a PS4 game it's very tough I think there is some element to this where it's like you look at the other games that people are successfully emulating on Shad PS4 and it's all like very basic 2D games and then more complex 3 games that are totally broken so I think the fact this looks so much better and there's so much Community interest probably does indicate that there is an extreme level of community interest in getting this game at higher frame rates at higher resolutions with crazy features like uh higher end texture packs and maybe even like I saw people talking about like screen space r racing and things like that I mean you're kind of limited what you can do with an emulator but you could probably push up pretty in some pretty interesting directions there but I mean ultimately like what this just tells me is that you know Sony needs to find a way to get a better version of bloodborne there I don't know through by hook or by crook how they'll do that but I mean if it's a pretty straightforward port or a remake or exactly how they do it I think they've got to do something and the fact they haven't feels very conspicuous at this point does not feel like it needs to be a huge project I mean I can imagine them saying hey we have a version of this game that's running on PS5 it's called the PS4 version and it runs fine and maybe they have some internal metrics that say people are continuing to buy this game people are continuing to play it why do we need to make a new version it's not analog as for instance the situation with Demon Souls where you had a PS3 game that would not run at a PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5 getting a a new remake to PlayStation 5 that was certainly quite transformative but you know in in a large part existed to get that game on a console where it previously had not existed so yeah I don't know what those metrics look like but personally if the game was ported to PlayStation 5 or PC I would certainly be interested in playing it again I'd certainly play a lot more if they resolv those issues and I think critically unlike a game like Elden ring which does have very notable performance issues on PS5 does have very not notable performance issues on Cross consoles and PCs there's no way to kind of configure your way out of it with Trixie things like enabling vrr or playing the PS4 version on PS5 so it's just one of the situations where there has to be some resolution to this personally I don't think the resolution to It ultimately the best resolution to it is going to be to get a a version of the game emulated running well I don't think that's the ideal solution I think the ideal solutions for somebody to step step in and provide a new version of the game but the fact they haven't to me at this point starts to seem like maybe it's harder than I think for some reason that's why when they revealed a PS4 Pro next week presuming it happens it's time to bust out the new blueo developed remake of bloodborne there you go do you think that's happening no I I have no idea but I feel like that would be a pretty cool thing to happen and it feels like something that we get a lot of would get a ton of attention if they especially if they revealed that while revealing the PS5 Pro can you imagine the attention they would get from that I feel like that would do that would do huge for them yeah yeah I mean you're talking about Elden ring there Oliver I mean I think helden ring will be fixed by PS5 Pro runs with unlock frame rates time to replay it it's GPU limited should yeah yeah it should be good it's it's GPU limited I'm pretty sure yeah so yeah I think that's going to be probably the first order of business for mayy Tom to take a look at that when where we get our hands with on Pro Hardware yeah that's oh I can finally get a physical disc version of that game Cool absolutely okay um I'm really intrigued by this whole Shad PS4 project I'm going to try and uh uh get in contact with the developers developers of it to get some idea of where things are heading with it you know um what I will say is that if you go through onto the Discord I mean you've kind of got this reality on Twitter of these amazing bloodborne videos that dropping seemingly on a on a sort of daily basis but then you go to the Discord and there's a bloodborne Channel there and it's just a lot of people having trouble even getting basic visuals up and running on it oh so you know there there kind of like two sets of there's two alternate realities playing out in front of us here so yeah I really do want to find out more about Shad PS4 and how it actually works I mean fundamentally the PS4 is an x86 based computer and um it's just using its own custom apis so I'm wondering whether you know to what extent that is the case whether it's more FY than we're imagining where the performance will actually be quite good at the end of the day because ultimately what you could be looking at is just like a proton Style translation layer perhaps uh maybe News 6: John’s Windows handheld impressions! that's oversimplifying things but I'd love to to learn more okay let's move on Final news topic of the week um not exactly news as such well it is kind of um uh Gamescom recently obviously I went over to Germany met up with John and I gave him the onx two player Pro hold on here we go because got it I gave him the 1X two-player Pro because John you were really interested in checking out um gaming handheld gaming experience that runs on Windows 11 and I wanted you to have a machine that wouldn't have like issues like lack of memory for example it's 1x2 Player Pro it's got 32 gigs of memory ryen 7840 U so it's uh standard Fair really it's like a Rog Ally in a different form factor with more memory basically Y how are you getting on with it what is what is your takeaway over all of the portable Windows gaming experience so I had used a rag Ally before but only temporar only a bit right and I I could see right there that yeah this is not great but it was manageable when you actually sit down with one of these things from the beginning and you go through the whole like you know restore it back to factory presets and like try to get stuff installed I found the experience to be extremely annoying uh basically if you don't have a mouse and keyboard it fights you every step of the way like even simple things like oh I want to bring up the onscreen keyboard sometimes it would come up sometimes it didn't I couldn't figure out why for a while and I was just like I couldn't like log into I couldn't even log into steam at some point because I was like I can't it won't bring up the darn keyboard uh yes and I was doing this in a place where I didn't have a keyboard handy so I I just could not actually get this stuff working and I I was I was getting so frustrated with just the general use of it and like going through the everything and just that part sucked it's really really bad as like a portable kind of device if that's all you have but once you connect a mouse and keyboard to it uh to just use it like a normal PC then it's a surprisingly impressive little device where you feel like okay this is like it's basically like a laptop and a different form factor and once you actually get the game sort of configured and working then it's like okay enough to use you know what I mean like you can it doesn't feel great going through tee or any other things but you can still do it okay it's just the setup process that really sucks and then once you actually play in the games it's fine but then it also reminded me of things like that I take for granted on the steam deck like pre-compiled shaders games have to go through the whole Shader compilation process it takes a long time on a system like this uh there's more stuttering issues that I encountered on some games uh it just it felt more like a typical Windows PC experience but with less horsepower but that's not to say that the horsepower here didn't allow for some impressive results like I was surprised that I was able to get Quake 2 RTX running at 60 FPS on this thing yeah uh and it was actually like really smooth and nice and it's just like seeing that running like on the steam deck there's ways to get it up and running but you're lucky to get like 30 FPS on there and that's what the resolution cranked even further down so it's not a good experience whereas on this thing it's like just it's just you know 60's pretty good I would say for that right so another one that I tested on here was a black myth Wukong of course which is very heavy game as we all know uh and with sort of a medium highish sort of settings uh I was able to sort of cap it down at 30 FPS and get a really nice stable experience I would say uh if i cho the settings down a bit more without a cap then I could actually get North of 60 but there's a point in that game where you just sacrifice too much detail and it ends up looking pretty gnarly I would say but I was just impressed to be able to get a nice pretty playable good-look experience uh on a handheld like this you could also uh turn on the frame generation if you wanted and then it's like you kind of get that PS5 experience and it's true the frame rate does indeed go up significantly and you can actually keep the higher settings and still get a smooth performance visually but it feels quite laggy I would say so in that case I feel like this 30 FPS is actually better so uh that's interesting for sure beyond that though you know I tried a bunch of just random games I tried Need for Speed 205 just out of curiosity because that was one I never got working on the steam deck for some reason and uh that looked awesome running on this thing and just you know the overall performance package profile was quite nice and it this this thing even has these like detachable controllers like yeah like the switch basically you got to use this like little battery pack thing to even operate them it does not support them like the switch that's kind of weird isn't it yeah like I think the reason is probably maybe to keep the weight down yeah because this thing is already extremely thick and chunky uh it's it is a lot bigger than the steam deck and I feel like putting batteries and extra stuff into each of those controllers would only increase that right and I I think they wanted to avoid that yeah so I don't know I mean my experience from this was just like okay this is cool this additional horsepower is nice and it's nice to have a little portable PC you can just I was able to plug it in using USBC into my 240 HZ OLED Monitor and it runs over USBC at 1440p 240 yeah it's amazing there was actually a number of games that I was able to play at 240 FPS when pluged into this thing like Doom 2016 okay I made cuts to the resz of course but uh with the right settings you know it runs at 240 FPS which for a little device like this that kind of blew my mind that I was able to get a frame rate that high on a game that looked that good right and then you know all like the modern night dive stuff zero problems just like pushing that up to 240 so it's actually like a weirdly little device uh certainly better than any of like the typical like business laptops that we have floating around at the offices and such right like it's it's it's great it's it's a nice little device but yeah in terms of the overall experience Steam OS is King Steam OS feels like a console it's like a console with flexibility we've got um Oliver's video coming of basite uh which is essentially a stos version for wind for for Windows based handhelds right Oliver um which should hopefully address some of those issues but I think fundamentally it also means that um well what can I say if there is going to be an Xbox handheld coming they've got a massive mountain to climb and actually making it into a machine that doesn't feel like a like a Windows machine essentially yeah yeah yeah but you do want that compatibility yeah what's your thoughts so far sadly that's true that's true I mean I honestly I used my RO Gall for you know over a year now without running a variant of steam essentially on it and um I really didn't know what I was missing I guess because when you actually run Windows on it uh and then run bite immediately after you realize just how much more flexible fast scalable useful genuinely good steam 's relative to Windows now baz that is not Steam bite is Linux plus the Steam Big Picture view plus all the features and interface from Steam o so it it is basically Steam OS it's not Steam OS technically but they ported everything over it runs and looks just like Steam OS it's about as stable as Steam o is to be honest um it feels very very good just a way better experience than Windows no difficulty with closing games opening games window management no more Mouse simulation with the right stick game suspend didn't resume properly great control over different display options like frame rate caps TDP modes everything in Steam OS uh vrs FSR brightness volume everything it's all very nicely mapped out all super convenient just like the steam deck in terms of like things that are possibly issues I mean the installation is a little yeah more challenging maybe than some people would like um for me it was fairly easy I'm using the rag Ally which I gather is quite well supported it's very very popular obviously very well supported um I don't think there's the potential to Brick anything but if you do run into problems in that installation process I get the sense that you might have some difficulty with getting that device actually to to to to install bazet correctly um but for me it was not too difficult it's not that much more difficult honestly than installing Windows on a on a steam deck and the the the inverse situation but yeah I mean it's it's very very good very very good I'd certainly recommend it to to anyone who wants to give it a shot but John I would recommend one more thing in your windows handheld Poss andbe your journey which is maybe to try local stre with moonlight that's personally how I've been gaming a lot on those devices these days I actually do not play very many games natively I'd rather just boot into steam big pcture mode using Moonlight with the game running on my Windows desktop with the um you know high-end CPU and GPU combination there doing 120z streaming or 90 HZ streaming basically flawlessly to either device running games at those um that's frame rates at 120 FPS 90 FPS maxed out settings you know a lot of games can can run very well on on a higher end system obviously they're not going to run nearly that well on the device itself right so that's a huge trade-off and actually image quality is great I'm running it at I think 150 um megabytes per second I believe um on those devices you get you get a pretty big uh pretty pretty nice um level of image quality there and uh latency is not too much of an issue and I think to whatever extent there are increases in latency they're offset by being able to Target much higher frame rates than you would on the device itself so yeah I mean I think that that works very well it works reasonably well in Windows but I think in Steam OS possibly it runs even a little bit better um because you can just open it just like any other app close it like any other app you don't end up with any weirdness full screen problems um I also noticed some frame pacing problems in windows with moonlight that I did not notice in Steam OS or in b which is not steam but it is basically steam just a way smoother experience so yeah I also think I said 150 megab per second I think it's 150 megabits per second just a yeah slight difference but I mean the image quality is it in most games most circumstances it is so close to Native as to not really be significantly different in my view it is a very high level image quality if you're doing 10ed p120 for sure on something like a r Ally looks looks very very good very very smooth you're not going to see any kind of compression artifacts it looks uh looks very good that's awesome um I guess that's it that's so we've got newswise for you this week so let's move on to supporter Q&A this is the part of the show where every week I put up a call for questions on our patreon asking our supporters to basically ask anything they like and uh to comment on the various topics we'll be discussing and um well in terms of questions we choose the ones which uh we best equipped to answer within the confines of this show um something we couldn't actually discuss last week because it happened literally after we stopped filming uh was the closure of anandtech um which I think we should tackle here we got this interesting question from some guy person uh the Supporter Q1: What should we make of the closure of AnandTech? closing of an anch is a huge moment in my life I went into Electric electrical and computer engineering specifically because of reading an anch there was no other site that could so clearly explain the magic of how computers actually worked like an anch hugely complicated topics and about half my engineering degree were all discussed on an anch and I loved reading every minute of it re release day of new processes were just as impactful as Christmas to me filling my head with ideas and possibilities of what the future might hold and how it actually works in the present day I wouldn't have my job without an antech I wouldn't live where I do without an antech my entire life as it currently stands has a clear line between where it is today and that website it's clearly not a bright day with the closing of an antech but I see a lot of the same magic and passion from the DF team which is partly why I'm a patre member I want to help ensure your future so I can see how the latest and greatest Tech works and what the future holds for all this technology if someone cares about making journalism like this last for years to come please help support DF on patreon hope you guys can really dig into more Technical and specific topics with your PC Benchmark Suite to help educate the audience and developers themselves hopefully your passion for the work you do shines uh through your content and encourages another generation of engineering Talent from your work um yeah I mean we'll talk about the second part of that shortly but um Oliver uh you posted on Twitter that you were dismayed about the closure of an anch um I'm really interested in your take on it yeah I mean going back is is almost as far as I can remember at least to 2007 or 2008 I started read reading a NCH and I mean I really prioritized reading it over other Publications that covered similar topics because of the level of detail they would go into and the understanding they displayed especially when like you know back in the day when anad was running the ship up until 2014 when I believe he left and I mean I mean even even subsequently under Ryan Smith I mean they've just been doing a tremendous job covering new new architectures new products I mean I especially enjoyed their analysis of new Apple products and of new CPU architectures um just it's just such a shame they're gone I mean I I honestly don't know because it's such such it just feels like it's leaving such a hole in the computer analysis space I don't know exactly what will replace them I mean Ian cutus has a YouTube channel X um an antech journalist there he has a YouTube channel and he has a new website and stuff like that that could certainly cover some of the some of the Gap but I just don't really know of any other publication in in terms of of really in-depth Hardware analysis and coverage of specific specifically microarchitectural features and things like this I think it's just a a gap that might persist for a little bit but um yeah I mean my go-to whenever there' be a new product launch would always be an anch whenever a new iPhone would be announced I'd always trust that an antech would have a good seat of the pants kind of impression of exactly okay what process nodes are they using what what new technological aspects of this product should be we should we think are are interesting um you know and I just think that they're just so steeped in the hardware world and they had so much understanding and their journalists did such a terrific job and it's such a I think a great failure of the of the model of tech journalism that a site like a NCH you know I presume was not U profitable enough or profitable period uh to survive because that seems like a pretty lean outfit they did tremendous work did really Stellar one-of-a kind work in in some respects on covering new CPU architectures and things like that so I don't know I think it's really unfortunate I I hope those guys land on their feet I hope that there is some kind of new site or or addendum to an existing site or existing publication that will Encompass some of that work so that I can continue to get that level of of quality that really I think only in antech was able to consistently provide in some of those subject areas yeah did you have much of a a view on this John because it's not really your primary oh no I I've I've long read an anch stuff more so in the past than these days I guess but maybe that's part of the problem but yeah they their extremely meticulous takes on Hardware is something that I don't think anybody else is really doing at this level and it's it's like there's so much information that that has come from an an anch dating back decades uh this is this is a gigantic loss for us and they did not specify specifically I guess why it shut down I guess we can assume that future publishing decided to close them down is that there was a video from Ian cutus which basically went into a lot of depth about stuff that wasn't covered in the exit statement um but it was essentially that from what I can tell at least from from Ian's comments was that it wasn't really a great fit for the you know they found it difficult to slot into the future hierarchy and um there wasn't really much um sort of innovation and change over the years um so you know the anch that that sadly left us last week wasn't really fundamentally changed from you know many many years ago it was finding it and obviously the amount of content that was being posted was was becoming sparer and more thin on the ground as well there seemed to be a lot of issues there but car on no I mean yeah that's just that's kind of gets to my concern though about like the the survivability of traditional websites like this like this the fact that this had not evolved is one of the reasons I think it was so good because uh in many ways I would argue websites have become worse in the last like five years they've become so optimized for the smartphone experience and just the these giant lists of endless content that's just most you're just supposed to keep going through right and just the logic and like just the feel of using it is kind of gone it's not it's not what I like anymore which is why I've largely moved away from most of those sort of modernized websites I just don't feel like the design is conducive to a good reading experience and and antech kept that and I'm sad that that's not a viable model because they were a big name in this space and it also makes me kind of resent future I have to say like that they wouldn't that they that they couldn't find a solution to this it just it just I don't know it has that typical shortsighted corporate nonsense that that we're all sick of like kind of like emanating from the background you know what I mean and it's just it's it sucks well I think the route forward would have been full Independence and patreon frankly because um you know the reason it's not in existence anymore is because they couldn't make a business model work for it and ultimately you know people need to be paid uh and may I mean maybe maybe the running costs maybe the salaries the number of people working on it maybe that was all just too high I don't know and I don't know man I I really don't know i' I never hear people say positive things about future necessarily so I don't know this just sort of adds to the bucket of of of mess that they've continued to make over the years okay um yeah I mean for yeah what could I say I mean I think we first started to actually take PC a lot more seriously on digital Foundry in 2012 yeah um I think the first sort of editor's day I went to was um GTX 680 um which would have been March 2012 if memory serves correctly and um you know ultimately it we know it was early days and you would look to the great to see how this sort of reviewing stuff is done first order of business would always be to go to an antech right because they were kind of like the the definitive word on Hardware performance and you know from there you start to learn there were things some things in there which in an antech which did always sort of strike me as rather odd for example uh their CPU of used the gaming bench marks would always be virtually the same for every processor which you know just highlights it's probably a GPU that you're effectively testing then um but ultimately the you know methodologies improved how can I say this an anch was the start point right for pretty much uh everyone in the industry that as far as I was aware at that time and um to see them sort of diminished over the years has been sort of troubling and to see them gone is is is really disappointing what can I say I honestly think that you know Ryan Smith and what remains of his team should possibly consider starting their own thing and consider patreon as the way to do it I think that there's enough Goodwill in the world uh for that particular brand to see it brought back and I hope that does happen or something like it it's really disappointing to see um the STA were like okay you know effectively appealing for jobs on on Twitter in the wake of the closure it's kind of like worst case scenario really um going back to some guy person's um comments here about digital Foundry and you know this is exactly why we have our patreon because let's just say that we not a commercially minded Enterprise um not by Design but just the way things have kind of worked out over the years and it basically means that we are relying on support via patreon to actually have a viable business which is kind of scary but at the same time um liberating in a way because it means we don't need to do a lot of the stuff that other people are doing um in terms of our plans of PC which uh some guy persons alluding to here yeah we we're looking to revamp the way we do do benchmarks we're looking to revamp the way we do reviews and I think that's possibly um one thing that you you kind of have to take into account when you're um running a tech-based website which is that the pace of technological change in this market is is astonishing and you have to keep up with it I don't think we have c um kept up with it fully I think we've made some big strides I think we've embraced the fact that features are actually really important in terms of PC gaming the state-ofthe-art isn't just about silicon anymore but we do have to up our game in terms of you know stuff like benchmarking and whatnot and to get back to doing CPU reviews on video which we haven't done for a while now because I've always felt slightly uh disconnected from the whole CPU reviewing process I don't think it you know looking at those various bar charts that appear they don't actually reflect the importance of the CPU in gaming and how it actually is manifesting in actual game play that's something we need to work on um but yes you know ultimately it's about recognizing that you've got to adapt you've got to change I mean I've been in this business for like 34 years now and that's the reason I'm still in it um you know you've got to evolve you've got to do better and I think that I think it's unfortunate that Anan wasn't given the resources to do that I do wish the team well I do hope that they consider their importance and their Authority and the fact that there is a lot of people out there myself included that would support them directly in any Venture that they Absolut choose to to go um to to consider um I think that's all I've Supporter Q2: Where will Microsoft be in 15 years? really got to say about that so let's move on okay next question this one from whell where does the DF team see Microsoft in 15 years no more Hardware games as a service plus tiers for performance levels on the cloud sounds a bit nightmarish from uh everything I'm reading so far will I have access to digital games that I bought or have I bought a license that can be revoked do they need to do more with the play Anywhere approach my purchasing habits on the Xbox store starting to be based on it as I know I will have a PC version as well why isn't the Master Chief Collection part of it um interesting question right because I think we're looking at a transition period for Microsoft SL Xbox and I am curious how that's going to work out in the longer term and I do think just generally across the industry I think consoles are always going to be there I question whether anybody other than Nintendo will have one though um let's try and project ourselves into the future here Microsoft's uh transition period is over the platform is something quite different to what we know of it right now um what how what does it look like what do we want it to look like Oliver 50 yeah I mean you could you could you could you might as well say five or 10 it's much the same I think you might as well say 60 years I I don't know I can't predict that far especially with machine learning and the changing fortunes of console hardware and economics of game development and I think you can observe Trends maybe five years or 10 years at at most I mean 15 years is so long but but if I had to guess I think it probably does involve some homogenization of their platforms into one platform maybe that you're buying a Microsoft game and not a Windows Xbox or cloud game and maybe in the future that also includes uh other console platforms like PlayStation who knows um I think if they had a very successful console outing maybe their their goals would be a little bit more focused on that but I think there probably is some degree of hom homogenization and to try to bring their platforms together um but yeah I think there are a lot of questions about what where game development goes in the next like 5 to 10 years I think that some things probably change in terms of the way that games are budgeted in terms of the way that machine learning plays into that but I also think that Microsoft is in a good position just speaking abstractly because they have gigantic R&D budgets they are one of the most valuable companies in the world they have um all kinds of Technologies I'm sure that are in the works um and I tend to think that they're well positioned if you look at the progress of technology and where they are positioned with Windows where they're positioned with most their products frankly I think they're really in a in a good good state state to take advantage of those Technologies and presumably those Technologies do have a large gaming application um on the production side and also in terms of what you can do in real time I think that's probably true so I think that the future is to bring all their various brands for gaming Under One Roof and to deliver that to people in a format that is a little bit more straightforward than the format that they're currently being served in but beyond that I mean I don't know 15 years is so long I don't I don't know what 15 years looks like anymore I don't know what that looks like John yeah same that's that's such a difficult thing to answer right but I mean I assume by that point Microsoft will will have become you know like more unified with this where it's like Xbox is no longer a thing in the way that it is now and it will essentially become part of the PC platform and assuming things go to plan they will basically just be one of the biggest if not the biggest publisher in the world releasing software all over the place uh but I do think like development practices are going to have to start to shift at some point because games are just taking too long to make now too much money invested like it's just the current trajectory feels unsustainable and I'm curious if we'll actually see a shift well the part to sustainability is to basically make the game available everywhere or as close to everywhere as you can I'm sure that the problem is that that only just postpones the inevitable exactly exactly so it's TR it's man these types of questions are so difficult to answer um well I think there's well they're committed to the next console generation we consume the same from PlayStation right um so you know that takes us well into like into the next 10 years the question is what they're going to do with the platform itself and you know obviously the stuff that we're talking about um continuously it seems about some kind of uh merging with Windows or at least some sort of way for the Xbox platform to sit alongside steam everywhere on a on a plethora of PC Hardware seems to be the route forward um the question is really where your existing Digital Library ends up is it just going to be on consoles is there some sort of way to bypass any potential licensing issues and move your Xbox console Library onto PC don't know about that love to see it um I do think there needs to be a cleaning up and and a homogenization of um uh of the of the platform because you know why isn't the master collection play any uh play Anywhere it doesn't make sense Master Chief Collection doesn't really make sense right it should be standardized across the whole Xbox platform um yeah I do think that the concept of actually owning a game digitally is something that might be tested at some point in the next 15 years but I think that ultimately the concept that you buy a license that can be revoked will probably be tested at the sort of state level even the EU level and I think there'll probably some sort be some sort of settlement there that makes it possible or impossible for them to do revocations I think that's my take on it the EU seems to be getting awfully involved in gaming relative to what happened in the past and as are the sort of U anti-competitive agencies that that sort of looking at all of this stuff um I think Xbox is going to be about simply by virtue of the fact that you know it's Microsoft and they are effectively at this point surely the world's biggest games publisher just by virtue of the fact that they've got so many um so many games and Studios and things like Activision so yeah that's kind of my sort of reading of the tea leaves potentially exciting um I just question the future of the console within a sort of two decade time span we're already seeing how difficult it is to to make new consoles that are not actually quite expensive I think that situation isn't going to improve okay um next question this one from gartan Riser and I think it's Supporter Q3: Could an RTX 6090 equipped Xbox explain Microsoft’s largest generational leap claims? another Microsoft question Microsoft said their next console would would be the biggest leap in in performance ever uh what if Microsoft just licenses the brand to other manufacturers as you previously suggested and they hope that someone manufactures an Xbox with an RTX 6090 and that's how we get the biggest leap ever um I mean that's potentially something that could happen but that doesn't tie in with Microsoft specific claims that they've been making for the next console generation which is that they're in on gen 10 they're making a gen 10 console the extent to which it might or might not be PC like in some regard that's totally up in the air but I think we need to we need to accept that they are going to be making this machine and not just letting you know Aus stick in a liquid C 6090 yeah but what about in 15 years in 15 years good question you know Xbox could be something much more emal at that point and you know as I said the the future of the console is uh is is certainly Up For Debate um after gen 10 uh Oliver any thoughts well Zoom zooming out I think it could be a combination possibly a combination of what this individual is suggesting with the Xbox 690 Edition and then also some interesting new software accommodations like I think when you look at device like the PlayStation 5 Pro personally I'm not excited for the PlayStation 5 Pro because it's 45% f faster apparently in the same workload that's not why I'm interested in the PlayStation 5 Pro why I'm interested in that console is because the combination of new machine learning techniques and greater RT acceleration and how that opens up new possibilities right I think it's probably a lot it's probably substantially similar on the Xbox side of things in terms of what Microsoft is suggesting here because I think if you take that basic Paradigm and extend it to higher-end Hardware you could see that go even further you could see it Go much further but in terms of it being the largest generational leap ever I think I'd still be um a little bit skeptical because when you talk about some of the more fundamental transformations in gaming history like the transition from 2D to 3D consoles or some pretty apocal Hardware gaps like the gap between something like a PlayStation 1 and an original Xbox I think it's hard to imagine a similar increase here not just in terms of you know what percent is it faster but in terms of what new experiences is that new hardware enabling Beyond just like show me prer image when you look at something like um I don't know something like Halo on the original Xbox something like Grand Theft Auto 3 on the PlayStation 2 you could not have achieved those in earlier consoles right just flat out those were not in seeps in the same way that those games were delivered so I'd have some questions about that but I would suggest it's probably a combination of that potentially that 690 infused system and then also lots of interesting new hardware techniques of machine learning potentially on the on the platform side okay uh John I'm Still Oliver you kind of touched on it there by mentioning like GTA 3 and Halo and I feel like that just that sort of sort of you know expansion of what's possible in the realm of games kind of can't happen anymore like it's just beyond that point right like I I so that's why the whole that's why this whole like the biggest leap ever thing always kind of confused me in the sense that like what are they talking about are they even actually talking about like games in the traditional sense is what what is this referring to and it does make me wonder if it is a potential shift to a completely different business model which then would allow Hardware that you typically wouldn't expect to see in the console space right like if they let's say they did move to like a multi console sort of model instead of like this here's the box like what if here's a bunch of boxes and you can spend as much as you want on this box more like a PC then technically that would be a very big leap in terms of Hardware but it wouldn't necessarily yield anything in terms of like leap in games right yeah so I don't know I just I I do lament the sort of we've moved so far away from that but I think it's just the nature of like games have become more like we we've kind of just man I I don't know it's it's difficult for me to get this out because it's such a nebulous topic really and it but it's something I've been thinking about just in terms of what what does this what does a leap even mean anymore I've kind of lost that excitement and I miss it yeah I mean when Microsoft uh expressed that I mean you would expect it to be on common terms of reference that the audience understands and the audience understands stuff like um you know you know War CPU cause that's just not exciting anymore you're quite right yeah that just isn't really really exciting at all and ultimately um you've got to make games accessible to as many people as possible we understand that now and that basically means games have to be scalable and that means that you actually need to accommodate systems that are actually not particularly powerful at all like the handheld that they're going to be making this is the stuff that we've been talking about for for a long time now um I'm just kind of I'm I'm just thinking about this whole PC thing and you look at the steam Hardware survey and there's what 120 million users on Steam okay so I'm looking at that steam Hardware server again and just like looking at that 4060 laptop um we've got like uh 4.55% of the audience with that specific laptop GPU that's like 5.4 million units I mean that's that's just one particular GPU skew out there I mean that's that's that's quite phenomenal yes so ultimately we're talking about a proliferation of Hardware out there that all of these games need to support so you know what does a biggest generational leap ever actually mean how many people actually have access to that super high level of uh of Hardware it's all a bit of a mystery at the moment uh all I can say is you know RTX 6090 Supporter Q4: Could Ridge Racer make a return in the near future? egregious edition let's do it okay let's move on um this question from monk fuit ninja hey DF dudes with 30th anniversary of PlayStation looming could we see a return of Ridge Racer I would even be happy with an updated collection starting from the beginning thanks for all your hard work I think I'd be happy with an updated collection starting all the way from the beginning John what about you I mean I would love anything Ridge Racer related including a new sequel but uh yeah I mean a collection by itself but like done well like sort of an enhanced collection is what I would like where you present those original games in their most pristine possible form eliminate some of the problems like the texture warping and from the PlayStation games you know get the arcade games in there properly uh Rave racer should be there I would really love to see that at some point but I still really want to a proper sequel especially when you look at what namco's managed to do with Tekken and and Ace Combat uh the last entries in both those series are both phenomenal and I would love to see that level of quality applied to Ridge Racer mhm yeah I mean I think we actually had a pretty good prototype of how this should actually work with the PSP games oh yeah where essentially it was like pretty much every track they'd ever made yep all all sort of shoe ored into one excellent game that's that would be one way to do it um I guess I don't know how much commonality there was with the PlayStation 3 version of uh was it Ridge Racer 7 yeah r go ahead and and the entire sort of collection of maps there probably quite limited right uh r s was mostly derived from six which was mostly new tracks right okay so there would be a lot of work to do there it's worth doing though um I do think there needs to be some appreciable effort made for this 30th Anniversary because you know um PlayStation 5 Pro hints apart we've not yet seen anything sort of substantial or amazing from from Sony not at all yeah Oliver what do you make of this I think it'd be cool I think like a lot of these older franchises that are sort of dormant any activity would be exciting I think at this point I'm sure John would would have to sympathize with that perspective I know that for a hot second there it looked like Ace Attorney was going dormant and they brought it back with some remasters and even though that was not the same as new game I think that a remaster can be exciting and even if it doesn't lead to anything new like what we saw with the wio Omega collection it can be good just to replay those games and enjoy them again so for sure I mean I'm not super enamored with Ridge waser necessarily as as a series in the same way that John is but I think it'd be fantastic to see New Ports I know that there is one Ridge Racer game maybe more that are playable on PS5 maybe you could correct me Ridge Racer PSP I think is on PS but that's I think that might be it I'm not sure it's not fantastic but really is it in terms of the overall sort of celebration of the franchise um well what can I say I think you know at the very least having access to the games would be good which presents the um the question of what you're going to do with Ridge Racer 7 which you know I think is overdue a port of some description surely you could just put it out on Nintendo switch as is based on the uh on the PS3 version and you've got a viable business model I think um so you know just getting the games out would be a good good thing to do beyond that you know an updated collection featuring all the tracks and essentially rebooting the PSP model that we saw uh for PlayStation 5 I think that would be fantastic too it just annoys me and irks me slightly that the franchise was allowed to go dormant I guess it kind of happened in the ps360 era didn't it did yeah um the Vita version didn't do particularly well and good yes yeah well it played okay but it was really Limited in terms of what it offered and then they did that unbounded game which was made by like bug what was it the studio that did like um bug bear was a yeah I was gonna say bug bear but that feel that felt like a weird name but I guess that actually was it huh yeah I don't love rid racer un balad it's an interesting game but it feels nothing like Ridge Racer and that just kind of killed off the series those two things at once yep bug bear entertainment that was that was that the developer there yeah I mean you know it's just a bit of a shame really we really should be seeing something a lot better uh to celebrate the 30th anniversary and something for Wipeout as well I think those two games basically defined um the the the kind of PlayStation Z really I think they just have a hard time figuring out how to make arcade style racing games work in the modern era and it seems like the approach everyone wants to take is let's make open world games like forts of horizon I think that's not the right approach forid racer certainly that would be a bad idea for Ridge Racer um so yeah but yeah they got they got to find something there's got to be some way to make it work okay let's move on Supporter Q5: If Alan Wake 2 isn’t profitable, what hope do other original single player games have? to the next question for Bor tribe uh looks at Allan Wake to still not making royalties first time I've seen role playing appear in one of these questions but let's crack on with the question if this incredible game is not profitable after almost a year how can any investor group take any reasonable bet on a $100 million game that isn't alive service money printer or an established and beloved franchise I'd love to see more lower budget risks on original Ip from major Publishers but the market at that level is also extremely saturated and tough to cut through what is a major Studio to do oler I mean first of all live service is very risky if you're talking about making a $100 million bet on a new title obviously we've seen that with Concord recently and other titles um I think alen w it's a bit tricky because Allen Wick 2 is a sequel and arguably a less marketable sequel than the first game which from my understanding was not a gigantic commercial success to begin with yeah so it's not a gig Alan Wake too yeah it was a risk it's not a gigantic surprise it didn't sell like 10 million copies but at the same time it is a great game and it's unfortunate it has not sold enough to apparently clear its uh consider probably will I think in the fullness of time in the fullness of time yeah that I mean it's only been out it has a long tale and it's only been out for what 10 months at this point maybe 11 months cuz it came out in October so not not an eternity in in terms of game sales but I do think that remedy has a certain style of game design and development that might not mesh super well with commercial expectations like if you look at Quantum break Allen wake Crossfire X's single player component famously which I took a look at back in the day which you can no longer play unfortunately ly some of those were more modest successes but none more big hits you know if they had been perhaps we'd be talking about Quantum break 3 right now instead of Allen we 2 um I think control has been more successful but I think there is some danger with that in it's upcoming sequel because control is a very low budget game and if you do increase that budget even to something like Allen we 2 levels you know the all of a sudden the commercial expectations become higher in in a concurrent way with that right so you need to be careful with that stuff so yeah I think wi to is just a it's a it was a tough sell from the beginning it's obviously something that was very surprising when they announced it that it was even going to be a project certainly a very exciting game certainly a very well executed game but a kind of game where you could kind of see it was probably not going to be the greatest of commercial successes from the outset yeah John thoughts yeah I think they also kind of made their own bed there uh a little bit so obviously they epic was the publisher and they obviously funded it so I understand why but I think not being un team was a huge problem and I think not having day one physical versions was another huge problem I think those two things together probably killed a lot of those potentially initial sales they could have had uh right like first I know a lot of people that did not buy it because it wasn't on disc right away and then by the time they finally get that version it almost feels like too little too late you know what I mean like they've missed the buzz cycle and in addition the epic game store just isn't like it's a fortnite portal for a lot of people still and I I just don't think you get that kind of sales I think being on Steam would have made a gigantic difference for them and those two factors right there probably had a pretty nasty impact on on their success yeah yeah that's really tricky because the it's difficult to under underestimate the kind of hatred there is for the epic game store most a certain subsection of the PC audience but at the same time they did fund the game effectively as I understand it so it's it's yeah definitely a tricky situation there right so I mean if they wanted to make that money back as a publisher you'd think they they would just go ahead and do steam as well but uh I guess it's more important to them to keep it as an epic games exclusive thing even if it ends up hurting the success of the game itself yeah they've cut New Deals recently is it anaura control to um yeah so you know clearly remedy are looking to to sort of change up the situation with future development but at the same time you look at uh control which by all accounts was an outrageously great success for remedy um you know not to sort of awesome degrees but certainly a very comfortably profitable game I think there's probably still more to come from the original control as surely we've got to see a Nintendo switch 2 version um but yeah that's kind of the way things work out um I'd love to see just going back to Bor DB's question here I'd love to see more lower budget risks on original Ip from major Publishers um H I guess we should see that right but you know it's it's yeah I guess that's a pretty interesting example but that's still you know a substantial I don't think it's a is it a lower budget risk I guess so I don't know not an original Ip though um oh yeah yeah um what can I say um I think there is obviously Roots forward control has proved it let's see what reede comes up with next with control 2 and its other titles Alan Wake 2 though I suspect it will probably be Supporter Q6: Will we really see ray tracing on Switch 2? fine in the long term just as as control was okay final question this one from anxiously Chrono figured hi DF crew do you think we'll see any rate tracing on switch 2 with dlss on I can see Wich of three with rtgi running on the hardware or cyberpunk 2077 with the RT Shadows I wish we saw any first party gave with this feature but Nintendo don't do RT Nintendo don't do RT I guess uh Oliver I think it's viable the hardware is doable it's the Hardware's got Hardware accelerated raid racing features so so why not um we've also obviously heard the rumor about the uh mat fix awakens demo Unreal Engine 5 which has some element of raid facing to it whether it's software or Hardware we don't know um what would you expect to see well I would say that we nintend don't know that nintend don't do RT because Nintendo uh yeah it's a stretch anyways Nintendo uh has not shipped Hardware in the past with r tracing capabilities it could very well be the case that the new Zelda has rri Reflections or something it could well be the case that some of their smaller scale titles are more experimental with rate tracing in a way that we would perhaps not expect um but could well be a possibility but yeah I would say the fact they got Matrix awakens running on the switch and apparently quite reasonable form according to the people who did see it uh obviously we don't have any kind of resolutions or settings or metrics or capture or anything like that but we do know that it looked like a pretty credible version of Matrix awakens in the room that certainly does suggest they have some kind of decent R tracing now if that's uh is that Hardware Lu maybe not is that software you know I mean that's a that's a matter of some discussion but it is rate tracing in either case I think when you look at dlss that probably does carry you pretty far on the GPU side of things I mean they could have a variant of dlss 3.5 R Construction for all we know I mean certainly the hardware seems like it'd be perfectly capable of running that potentially um might be might be demanding but you know who knows I mean ue5 is pretty scalable to lower end stuff I think the question there is really like if you can stomach the image quality and dlss maybe answers that question but I also think when you look at some R tracing effects like when you look at rtgi you have to remember that some things you can render at kind of criminally low resolutions like with rtgi you can be rendering it at like 1/8 scene resolution 1/8 internal resolution rather um and you can be still still be getting good results good enough results I think you do see that with the windows handhelds in certain u5 titles so I mean the hardware is there we're going to see R tracing on the hardware I'm almost certain it at this point I think the question is really just how far do people take it obviously it is very limited Hardware even relative to something a series s but I think we will see it I think we'll see a fair bit of it just a question of how far things go yeah I think you know if you go back to the t239 video I did uh which basically attempted to uh mimic as close as we can the moted specifications of the t239 rate racing was possible we could run uh fortnite on 1080p dlss performance mode actually look fine and uh we could use both hardware and software paths they're Circa 30 faves per second not too bad I'd say uh control I managed to get low um settings there uh with medium raate racing which is effectively the RT Reflections and you know played out at 1080p 30 frames per second with rt it's all sort of eminently doable it's all going to be down to developers to choose how they they uh deploy those features if they choose to deploy them at all also the question of what is the difference between a switch to Portable mode and what is a switch to docked mode there've been some various rumors uh circulating that the difference is actually going to be more pronounced this time around who knows so yeah interesting stuff I'm not sure rtgi on The Witcher 3 is viable bearing in mind how heavy it is on um on existing consoles and um the fact that I don't think they did it at all on Xbox series s uh yeah RT Shadows cyberpunk 2077 I don't think it's impactful enough to be worth putting in the developmental effort there um but I do think there will be some raid facing effects on switch 2 it's just the case of you know exactly as I said how the developers choose to to use that particular aspect of the of the tool set um but that is the last question therefore the end of the show so please do like subscribe share if you en enjoyed the content ring bells for notifications that may or may not happen uh DF supporter program join us join us for Early Access to DF weekly every week chance to help shape the show Early Access to other content amazing retro stuff happening there uh John your um Saturn versus PlayStation retro um segment is episode rather is now up on check that out amazing one of that yeah it's going to be more coming and uh yeah so please do consider that but that's all from us for this week thanks for watching and supporting digital Foundry