Digital Foundry Direct #162 - John, Rich and Alex discuss the Microsoft closures/loss of credibility, new Switch 2 info, the Rog Ally X, and more

[Tony72495]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyFx2Kdq5fs

My opinion generally is not enough people watch these videos, they're generally great, I love the discussions, so I might make some future threads for these as they're posted. The Xbox discussion is understandably a low point for news.

Other talking points:
-Nintendo confirms Switch 2 is coming, discussion of new component shipping leaks
-Ally Rog X announced
-Sony backtracks on Helldivers 2 PSN requirement
-Ninja Theory reveals Hellblade 2 PC specs
-Discussion of Namco Bandai's Sand Land game which mostly went under the radar

User questions:
1. Could Switch 2 somehow connect to a TV wirelessly?
2. How much longer do 8 to 10GB VRAM GPU's have?
3. Should next-gen consoles have much larger RAM allocations?
4. Will mouse and keyboard become more supported on console, maybe even in competitive multiplayer?
5. How feasible would it be to update a UE 5.0 title to use UE 5.4?
6. Could Intel eventually overtake AMD in discrete GPU sales by around 2029?
7. What is your (DF's) favorite immersive sim, and why is it Prey 2017?

 

[PinkSpider]

I totally tie my Mondays food eating/ media consumption around a couple of hours of this and MVG. Saving both for in half an hour before I can be bothered to make fajitas (And maybe crack open a cider after walking for 4 hours today).

 

[Tony72495]

I totally tie my Mondays food eating/ media consumption around a couple of hours of this and MVG. Saving both for in half an hour before I can be bothered to make fajitas (And maybe crack open a cider after walking for 4 hours today).

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Yeah it's becoming one of my go-to series, there are some Youtube channels that I really look forward to new videos, like LGR, or a new Best of the Worst.

 

[Yerffej]

"2. How much longer do 8 to 10GB VRAM GPU's have?"

I don't wanna know. I want my 3080 to last a while yet. Fuckin bonkers ass price video cards these days.

 

[Pikagreg]

I totally tie my Mondays food eating/ media consumption around a couple of hours of this and MVG. Saving both for in half an hour before I can be bothered to make fajitas (And maybe crack open a cider after walking for 4 hours today).

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Digital Foundry have definitely been my favorite people in gaming the last 5 years or so though I haven't seen much from MVG despite following them on Twitter lol. I should check our more of their stuff.

 

[PinkSpider]

Digital Foundry have definitely been my favorite people in gaming the last 5 years or so though I haven't seen much from MVG despite following them on Twitter lol. I should check our more of their stuff.

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MVG is good to have a backlog with. He goes through a ton of historical info on how consoles were hacked as well as impossible ports etc. All explained in fairly (Ish) basic way and entertaining.

And yeah anything DF gets a view here, generally save it for with food. Mondays I miss Tom Scott too (Made redundant a few weeks ago) but coming home from a long Monday and just putting a quick episode on before cooking and then the rest kinda made up for being back at work).

 

[Tony72495]

"2. How much longer do 8 to 10GB VRAM GPU's have?"

I don't wanna know. I want my 3080 to last a while yet. Fuckin bonkers ass price video cards these days.

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Like it's funny that even the "cheap" 16GB cards are not great right now honestly. Like the 7600 XT is like what, $60-$80 more than the standard 7600, but it only performs like 5% better in most games because it's not even powerful enough to fully use 16GB in most titles. And as for the 4060 Ti 16GB, it seems bandwidth limited.

The sweet spot right now seems to be in the 7800 XT/4070 Super range.

 

[zombiejames]

Some things I disagree with in this episode:

1. John's opinion on Nintendo's game pricing. It's trash, sorry. I can't take the side of this hyper-capitalistic stance of keeping something highly priced to "retain value". Value for who? Not you. The only value that brings is to a company's bottom line and shareholders.

2. Memory requirements of future generations. AI is going to be a focus next-gen and that's going to require memory. We already have an example of it with the leaked PS5 Pro documents with their machine learning upscaling needing 500MB of memory to use. LLMs need gigabytes. As machine learning gets more sophisticated and does more things, you'll inevitably need more memory. I don't think we'll need 64GB or anything like that but memory isn't just going to be used to store art assets anymore.

 

[Tony72495]

Some things I disagree with in this episode:

1. John's opinion on Nintendo's game pricing. It's trash, sorry. I can't take the side of this hyper-capitalistic stance of keeping something highly priced to "retain value". Value for who? Not you. The only value that brings is to a company's bottom line and shareholders.

2. Memory requirements of future generations. AI is going to be a focus next-gen and that's going to require memory. We already have an example of it with the leaked PS5 Pro documents with their machine learning upscaling needing 500MB of memory to use. LLMs need gigabytes. As machine learning gets more sophisticated and does more things, you'll inevitably need more memory. I don't think we'll need 64GB or anything like that but memory isn't just going to be used to store art assets anymore.

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I really wonder about that though, I feel like there might be some reactionary backlash to AI in games, like it'll become the next popular thing to hate, like a game will focus on AI features and everyone will post videos on Youtube about how the game must be no effort Ubisoft trash or whatever.

Though that being said, it could open up new avenues, Watch Dogs Legion was....arguably a really cool concept that if they could have used AI to generate thousands of unique people with different lines and personalities, that could have worked a lot better.

But overall I think the broader AI adoption in gaming is going to be incredibly contentions, with some, especially more artful types or people in the indie scene, may reject AI expansion if for nothing else then just by the sheer idea of "AI bad, it's taking our jobs and ruining our artists."

 

[Mr_F_Snowman]

Some things I disagree with in this episode:

1. John's opinion on Nintendo's game pricing. It's trash, sorry. I can't take the side of this hyper-capitalistic stance of keeping something highly priced to "retain value". Value for who? Not you. The only value that brings is to a company's bottom line and shareholders.

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Not really. People who benefit -

1) Physical buyers who re-sell their games - pretty sure I've at worst broken even on Switch software and I've played basically every major first party release.
2) Staff working at Nintendo by not being fired like everywhere else because they are making bank off their own software.
3) People who don't like the constant nickel and dime of live service games which exist primarily to fill the void left by their other software that devalues over time. This is not a problem for Nintendo so they don't go crazy head first into the live service bottomless pit

 

[Zaimokuza]

The problem with the Xbox made by third parties on a license that runs multiple stores is that Microsoft already has this product: it's Windows. If that's the future Microsoft should disband Xbox and simply work on the Microsoft Store and some way to make Windows' interface nicer for tvs

 

[zombiejames]

I really wonder about that though, I feel like there might be some reactionary backlash to AI in games, like it'll become the next popular thing to hate, like a game will focus on AI features and everyone will post videos on Youtube about how the game must be no effort Ubisoft trash or whatever.

Though that being said, it could open up new avenues, Watch Dogs Legion was....arguably a really cool concept that if they could have used AI to generate thousands of unique people with different lines and personalities, that could have worked a lot better.

But overall I think the broader AI adoption in gaming is going to be incredibly contentions, with some, especially more artful types or people in the indie scene, may reject AI expansion if for nothing else then just by the sheer idea of "AI bad, it's taking our jobs and ruining our artists."

Click to shrink...

Maybe? Anything's possible when you're designing a hardware platform that's supposed to last 6-8 years. Some bets may not pay off. I've just heard them talk about AI and its importance going forward on past episodes so I was surprised it seemingly completely slipped their minds when the memory question came up.

 

[Vashetti]

For those who are unaware (as I only learned a week ago), you can listen to these officially on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, presumably elsewhere, etc., if you prefer to digest things that way.

 

[Granjinhaa]

2) Staff working at Nintendo by not being fired like everywhere else because they are making bank off their own software.

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do you think people are being fired because these publishers are hurting for money? lol

 

[Instro]

Some things I disagree with in this episode:

1. John's opinion on Nintendo's game pricing. It's trash, sorry. I can't take the side of this hyper-capitalistic stance of keeping something highly priced to "retain value". Value for who? Not you. The only value that brings is to a company's bottom line and shareholders.

Click to shrink...

I think probably the larger issue is, once you set the expectation that games will be deeply discounted after launch, you're just training your audience to not pay $60 at release. We've seen that devaluation play out in the mobile and PC market, and similarly with gamepass. Developers releasing on Steam have had to take a hard stance over time to keep prices up because the audience became accustomed to paying $5 for a game during sale periods. It's not sustainable for traditional game development to get most of your sales out of people buying at sub $20 prices unless you're an indie.

 

[Spoit]

I know nvidia is trying to push that dynamic NPC line thing, but I'm still not convinced that LLMs have that much to do with games. Not all AI is LLMs

 

[mugurumakensei]

Some things I disagree with in this episode:

1. John's opinion on Nintendo's game pricing. It's trash, sorry. I can't take the side of this hyper-capitalistic stance of keeping something highly priced to "retain value". Value for who? Not you. The only value that brings is to a company's bottom line and shareholders.

2. Memory requirements of future generations. AI is going to be a focus next-gen and that's going to require memory. We already have an example of it with the leaked PS5 Pro documents with their machine learning upscaling needing 500MB of memory to use. LLMs need gigabytes. As machine learning gets more sophisticated and does more things, you'll inevitably need more memory. I don't think we'll need 64GB or anything like that but memory isn't just going to be used to store art assets anymore.

Click to shrink...

1. Devaluation of content hurts consumers and workers in the long-term. See how actors are making less in the age of streaming and simultaneously people scoffing at paying more for content as costs exploded for game development. This has lead to some aggressive and predatory monetization schemes and gacha hell.
2. The most common LLM usage will be in development workflows. Outside of some experimental PC stuff, you're only going to see minor usage to fluff out some NPC backgrounds and reactions. So, the ram is not likely to increase as much as you think. I can also see for the games that do experiment adopting always online to occasionally poll for LLM generated updates and avoid local computation.

 

[zombiejames]

2) Staff working at Nintendo by not being fired like everywhere else because they are making bank off their own software.
3) People who don't like the constant nickel and dime of live service games which exist primarily to fill the void left by their other software that devalues over time. This is not a problem for Nintendo so they don't go crazy head first into the live service bottomless pit

Click to shrink...

I'm sorry, but saying people are being fired and live service games exist because sales happen is a crazy stretch.

 

[Tony72495]

The problem with the Xbox made by third parties on a license that runs multiple stores is that Microsoft already has this product: it's Windows. If that's the future Microsoft should disband Xbox and simply work on the Microsoft Store and some way to make Windows' interface nicer for tvs

Click to shrink...

Well it's not necessarily Windows, because PC gamers on the whole seem to hate the Microsoft Store still.

But I have no clue how MS would ever somehow implement an Xbox store within Steam.

 

[daybreak]

1. John's opinion on Nintendo's game pricing. It's trash, sorry. I can't take the side of this hyper-capitalistic stance of keeping something highly priced to "retain value". Value for who? Not you. The only value that brings is to a company's bottom line and shareholders.

Click to shrink...

I recently sold a copy of Mario Odyssey for $40 Canadian.

My copy of Horizon Zero Dawn, purchased a few months before Mario Odyssey, is entirely worthless.

The net cost of my 7+ years of owning Mario Odyssey is ~$40 less than the net cost of my owning Horizon Zero Dawn.

I'm very glad that Nintendo prices their games in a way that retains their value.

 

[ghibli99]

Regarding Nintendo game pricing, I don't know when video games became this race to the bottom thing. Maybe it happened coming out of the mobile goldrush era (circa 2010?) or the greater prevalence of digital, but I honestly don't remember this focus on waiting until a game is 50-75% off being a thing until the last generation or two. Maybe I'm wrong (probably).

 

[Duxxy3]

Well it's not necessarily Windows, because PC gamers on the whole seem to hate the Microsoft Store still.

But I have no clue how MS would ever somehow implement an Xbox store within Steam.

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On the steam deck there's a desktop mode (basically Linux desktop) and a gaming mode (essentially big picture mode). I wonder if something like that would be possible on Series S and X. An Xbox mode and a Windows mode.

 

[Zaimokuza]

Well it's not necessarily Windows, because PC gamers on the whole seem to hate the Microsoft Store still.

But I have no clue how MS would ever somehow implement an Xbox store within Steam.

Click to shrink...

If they make their Store good and annoying (like Edge) it's going to gain marketshare (like Edge). This way they also avoid a whole lot of costs, R&D and supply chains. If Microsoft ever became serious about their store they'd sell and update the Office suite exclusively through the Store. They don't even update Edge through it. They have the killer apps to make it relevant, they just don't care enough

 

[Gitaroo]

I didn't know ROG Allay X is increasing the ram quantity, I thought it was just the speed. Now I am more interested

 

[Sinkfloridasink]

do you think people are being fired because these publishers are hurting for money? lol

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Yes but only in the way they measure success, which is quarter to quarter. And the decider is probably some CFO who don't inherently understand video games.

Hell in the industry I work in, I had one of the largest companies in the world walk away from a multi billion dollar, multi decade contract because they didn't see profitability in the first 3 years.

 

[Granjinhaa]

Yes but only in the way they measure success, which is quarter to quarter. And the decider is probably some CFO who don't inherently understand video games.

Hell in the industry I work in, I had one of the largest companies in the world walk away from a multi billion dollar, multi decade contract because they didn't see profitability in the first 3 years.

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ok but no one is lacking profits in this industry - well, maybe embracer was, but that is a whole other can of worms. sony, xbox, take two, ea and whatever are laying off people because they aren't profiting enough, not because they lack profits. all of them are swimming in money.

 

[Tony72495]

If they make their Store good and annoying (like Edge) it's going to gain marketshare (like Edge). This way they also avoid a whole lot of costs, R&D and supply chains. If Microsoft ever became serious about their store they'd sell and update the Office suite exclusively through the Store. They don't even update Edge through it. They have the killer apps to make it relevant, they just don't care enough

Click to shrink...

Well that has kind of always been the problem with the Store, it always felt half-assed, Microsoft is kind of terrified of forcing any change on PC, like remember when the store was heavily pushing new "UWP" apps as the future of Windows, and then they really pushed it for maybe a few weeks to a few months and then never talked about it again.

I mean Apple removed 32-bit support like what....6, 7 years ago now? Microsoft could remove 32-bit support in 2040 and still have droves of anger, like they're almost screwed no matter what they do.

 

[Dekuman]

Some things I disagree with in this episode:

1. John's opinion on Nintendo's game pricing. It's trash, sorry. I can't take the side of this hyper-capitalistic stance of keeping something highly priced to "retain value". Value for who? Not you. The only value that brings is to a company's bottom line and shareholders.

2. Memory requirements of future generations. AI is going to be a focus next-gen and that's going to require memory. We already have an example of it with the leaked PS5 Pro documents with their machine learning upscaling needing 500MB of memory to use. LLMs need gigabytes. As machine learning gets more sophisticated and does more things, you'll inevitably need more memory. I don't think we'll need 64GB or anything like that but memory isn't just going to be used to store art assets anymore.

Click to shrink...

John is right; price collapsing games is unsustainable and has led up to where AAA is at.

 

[Tony72495]

John is right; price collapsing games is unsustainable and has led up to where AAA is at.

Click to shrink...

It's also worth noting that crucially, live service games generally do not implement their own sales for microtransactions. They might do like a discount bundle, but they never discount buying the currency.

 

[Mr_F_Snowman]

I'm sorry, but saying people are being fired and live service games exist because sales happen is a crazy stretch.

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Live service games are there to bring in a constant stream of revenue. If software sales did not crater after month 1 (both in unit sales and price) for every other pub besides Nintendo then yeh, you'd see less live service games because that constant stream of recurring revenue would come from evergreen software sales. You might want to notice I was specifically talking about Nintendo btw and pointing out there is much less of a need for them to go whale hunting in the live service ocean when BoTW and Mario Kart 8 sell millions of full priced copies every year.

And yes people are being fired many reasons, namely capitalist greed but would less people get fired if their software wasn't mostly valueless outside of a few months and every release almost assured to make a healthy return on investment? Sure

But ignore those points if you'd like as yes, they are conjecture and impossible points to prove (or disprove).

I guess a better point may be that if you don't like their software pricing then its your own fault - you could buy and play every single release and it would barely cost you anything if you simply purchase physically and resold them. Not choosing to do so and then whining when the digital games aren't $5 after a year is a ridiculous complaint and a problem you choose to encounter. You don't need to buy digital. You don't need to collect physical copies. If you cannot afford to buy full priced games and hold onto them / go digital then...........don't? There is a perfectly good alternative for the cost sensitive buyer

 

[LCGeek]

"2. How much longer do 8 to 10GB VRAM GPU's have?"

I don't wanna know. I want my 3080 to last a while yet. Fuckin bonkers ass price video cards these days.

Click to shrink...

I have a few of these in the same boat as you and its nowhere near what the 970 did to some of us back in the day.

Don't go heavy on pixel density or post processing when you hit cap. When you hit vram cap use dlss if possible or pullback post processing. Card will last two more gens before it needs a replacement.

 

[Hero]

Iwata spoke to lengths that the race to the bottom pricing of video games would hurt everyone in the industry. Seeing as how mobile gaming employed this strategy and almost all of it is now f2p with heavy gacha bullshit monetization, I think its fair to say he was right.

 

[Sinkfloridasink]

ok but no one is lacking profits in this industry - well, maybe embracer was, but that is a whole other can of worms. sony, xbox, take two, ea and whatever are laying off people because they aren't profiting enough, not because they lack profits. all of them are swimming in money.

Click to shrink...

You're absolutely right. It's why the Nintendo strategy is the long term survival path.

Big games (4-6 year dev cycle): botw, totk, smo
Medium games: LM3, Pikmin 4
Small games: nwc: nes, mario v dk

A single small or medium bomb doesn't kill the team.

 

[NukeRunner]

Some things I disagree with in this episode:

1. John's opinion on Nintendo's game pricing. It's trash, sorry. I can't take the side of this hyper-capitalistic stance of keeping something highly priced to "retain value". Value for who? Not you. The only value that brings is to a company's bottom line and shareholders.

2. Memory requirements of future generations. AI is going to be a focus next-gen and that's going to require memory. We already have an example of it with the leaked PS5 Pro documents with their machine learning upscaling needing 500MB of memory to use. LLMs need gigabytes. As machine learning gets more sophisticated and does more things, you'll inevitably need more memory. I don't think we'll need 64GB or anything like that but memory isn't just going to be used to store art assets anymore.

Click to shrink...

So should we pay less and get more people fired? Nintendo is the only massive game company not bleeding out talent it seems.

 

[ThisIsMyDogKyle]

Stacking eshop card deals, the NSO money back, and vouchers I can get every single new Nintendo game on day 1 for like $43, which is vastly cheaper than any other publisher and they've yet to move to GaaS, so it's kinda hard for me to be upset about the pricing.

 

[Jonnax]

Some things I disagree with in this episode:

1. John's opinion on Nintendo's game pricing. It's trash, sorry. I can't take the side of this hyper-capitalistic stance of keeping something highly priced to "retain value". Value for who? Not you. The only value that brings is to a company's bottom line and shareholders.

Click to shrink...

Nintendo basically has no debt and has not laid off staff by the hundreds.

They have been consistently considered a good employer.

It was really illuminating reading some posters in that switch emulator thread saying that it's justifiable to pirate their games because they appeared on a list of richest companies due to no debt.

If they operated like other companies there's a case for saying they wouldn't have been able to continue after the Wii U. I guess there's the western gamers dream of them going multi platform or getting bought by Microsoft.

Not lowering prices is "Hyper capitalistic"? A friend mentioned to me he spent more than £100 on Call of Duty last year.

People are spending thousands on GaaS lootbox games.


What level of capitalism is this?

Dad saddled with $20,000 credit card bill after daughter's in-game spending spree on Genshin Impact

The 18-year-old had linked her Grab e-wallet to the mobile game and spent the amount in 6 weeks. Read more at straitstimes.com.

www.straitstimes.com

19-year-old gambling addict lays out a case against video game microtransactions

Loot boxes can be a major problem for gambling addicts.

mashable.com

These Genshin Impact Fans Spent $1,000 to $90,000 On Its Characters

It turns out that the biggest spenders in Hoyoverse’s popular gacha game have very different opinions about money and value

kotaku.com

 

[pswii60]

My opinion generally is not enough people watch these videos, they're generally great,

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I don't watch the videos but I listen to the podcast version every week without fail when I'm driving. Fantastic podcast with no nonsense or gimmicks.

 

[Tony72495]

I don't watch the videos but I listen to the podcast version every week without fail when I'm driving. Fantastic podcast with no nonsense or gimmicks.

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Funnily enough, I had an old car with a broken sound system that I was driving over 55 minutes each way to a job, so I would mount my phone and just use it for podcasts. Then around October of last year I got a new job that was good enough for me to buy a brand new car with a great sound system, but it also cut my drive time to about 30 minutes each way so I can't actually listen to as many podcasts.

 

[Tobor]

I don't watch the videos but I listen to the podcast version every week without fail when I'm driving. Fantastic podcast with no nonsense or gimmicks.

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It's one of the podcasts I listen to while walking the dog.

 

[giallo]

I recently sold a copy of Mario Odyssey for $40 Canadian.

My copy of Horizon Zero Dawn, purchased a few months before Mario Odyssey, is entirely worthless.

The net cost of my 7+ years of owning Mario Odyssey is ~$40 less than the net cost of my owning Horizon Zero Dawn.

I'm very glad that Nintendo prices their games in a way that retains their value.

Click to shrink...

I looked up Arms on Amazon the other day, and it's going for like $90CAD. Used on Marketplace, it's $50-$60.

 

[pswii60]

Funnily enough, I had an old car with a broken sound system that I was driving over 55 minutes each way to a job, so I would mount my phone and just use it for podcasts. Then around October of last year I got a new job that was good enough for me to buy a brand new car with a great sound system, but it also cut my drive time to about 30 minutes each way so I can't actually listen to as many podcasts.

Click to shrink...

It actually blows my mind that your old car was so slow that it was adding 25 minutes to your journey :o

 

[RivalGT]

I agree with them on Switch 2 expectations being too high when your expecting series s/PS4 Pro level of overall quality. I agree with them mainly because we actually dont have final hardware specs, like the clock numbers or process node the being used. But no doubt its going to be a massive leap over the original switch.

 

[Tony72495]

It actually blows my mind that your old car was so slow that it was adding 25 minutes to your journey :o

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The advantages of cutting nearly 16 miles from each direction.

 

[pswii60]

The advantages of cutting nearly 16 miles from each direction.

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Ah lol I missed the part where you changed where you worked. I'll get my coat :)

 

[808s & Villainy]

1. John's opinion on Nintendo's game pricing. It's trash, sorry. I can't take the side of this hyper-capitalistic stance of keeping something highly priced to "retain value". Value for who? Not you. The only value that brings is to a company's bottom line and shareholders.

Click to shrink...

I love buying things as cheaply as possible but "hyper capitalistic" doesn't mean anything. Prices aren't ever determined to be the best value for consumers, otherwise companies would sell things at margin. The reality is prices are determined by market elasticity and if consumers always bought games at full price no devs would ever lower their prices outside from outside of special sales periods

 

[rafiii]

For those who are unaware (as I only learned a week ago), you can listen to these officially on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, presumably elsewhere, etc., if you prefer to digest things that way.

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OMG THANK YOU!