DF Direct Weekly #61: Nintendo's Next-Gen Worries, Xbox Gaming Outage, Duke Nukem Forever 2001!

[@pipgoesthepossum]

We totally need an award for UE4 stutter free titles. 😂 The golden Battaglia!

[@_BitJager_]

Do Do cup

[@robreich6881]

Grounded is pretty good

[@TRONiX404]

Tiny Tina's Wonderlands ran awesome. Just played Gears 5 dlc looks better then new games with dlss.

[@megavolnutt4629]

Can't wait for the First Annual Golden Batty Awards ceremony for excellence in UE4 frame stability

[@DEVILTAZ35]

It's mostly an issue with PC as it has has two sets of memory pools . One for the GPU and one for the rest of the system unlike a console. UE4 just doesn't seem to like the split memory in the PC as much. You just don't see as many issues on console with UE4 even though you would expect PC to run far far better in reality it just doesn't without a ton of extra work.

[@arsenkay]

Who's happy to see Richard back?

[@ezepoliyu]

Me

[@ezepoliyu]

I'm more happy to see TOM!!

[@jakkudemoff3043]

I'm very happy he's back - he usually has the most unbiased and realistic opinions of the four

[@emeraldcelestial1058]

I miss Alex

[@sadgiantsfan3690]

I kinda hope they mix up the cast a little bit every week. They all have great insight. Let's be honest Alex and John usually put out the most content and it would be nice for them to get more time to get that content out by getting some of the other guys like Tom and Oliver (I know he recently joined the team) on the weekly show so we can have more varied opinions and expertise on more topics that might be a bigger area of knowledge to those guys.

[@bdre5555]

I for one would definitely like to see more Tom on this show. He has been one of the long-standing foundations of digital Foundry, but he seems like he's not as present in recent years

[@budrager]

I also would like to see more Tom

[@lachlancresswell6074]

@@budrager y

[@lachlancresswell6074]

Xyyyyyuuyyyyyy

[@lachlancresswell6074]

Xyyyyyuuyyyyyyy

[@lachlancresswell6074]

Cyxycu

[@pixeljauntvr7774]

Until MS remove that DRM requirement pretty much all my third party purchases will be on PS5 from now on.

[@Daniel-yz3zf]

Poor Tom, he finally comes back on here and it feels like John just disagrees with all his points 😂

[@akel135]

Tom denied him access to his ass..hence the bullying

[@Beaut_Beau]

John is definitely the steamroller of the group, and Richard is no good at reigning him in and giving the others a chance to speak

[@balaam_7087]

I like when Mr Morgan is on the shows, I wish he was on more often. He’s like that awesome uncle that rarely visits but when he does he always brings cool presents 🎁

[@SussedRage]

But was it actually Tom though? He was so bright I think it was a hologram

[@Ionicbonder]

I found John to be quite dismissive of Tom on a number of points. Disappointed, as I enjoy listening to Tom's input.

[@chrisbent5734]

@@Ionicbonder Thank you, I thought I was the only one who noticed. I feel like John oftentimes has a weird, lowkey passive-agressive attitude towards Tom. I'm not even sure he realizes it - but I find it very inapropriate.

[@Allyouknow5820]

@@chrisbent5734 it's been YEARS of that going on, and with Tom being quite a nice fellow if a bit more reserved, I feel John has never really made an effort to change that. Quite sad if you ask me. I love all of them (yes even when Alex goes on an Nvidia fanboy tribute) but honestly Tom and Rich are the best. And I can't believe I'm praising British people, I'm French 😂

[@chrisrichfield8906]

@@chrisbent5734 i don't think its passive aggressive as much as it is Tom just having a different opinion, or being very forgiving of technical flaws in his videos. One example off the top of my head that annoyed me at the time was the Assassins Creed 3 remaster that had an absolutely horrible looking lighting change that screwed up pretty much every cutscene visually. Tom barely, if at all addressed the issue that was obvious while watching the video. John is just being honest about the flaws he finds that he probably figures Tom doesn't notice or care about.

[@CursedTeardrop]

Regarding Xbox drm, if you have gamepass and own the game you want to play on disk as well if you lose internet connection some of the games won’t even boot with the disk in the drive, the Xbox assumes it’s trying to access the gamepass version and won’t read the disk (personal experience) This is with the console set as home and even taking it completely offline.

[@zaxmaxlax]

I remember bringing a brand new xbox and red dead 2 to the mountains only to find out the console and game would'nt boot without a "forced" update. I had to left the console updating using 3g connection on my phone for a whole day LOL

[@LRon-ef7ni]

I booted up Halo Infinite with the disc inside, and it said I didn’t have the license. I let my Pass subscription expire, and it made it seem like I didn’t own the game. Technically I still don’t own the game since there’s no game in the disc to begin with.

[@altaafsheik5725]

I had the same issue with Doom eternal was so stupid I already own the game on disc

[@Elysiabikha]

It’s a another sneaky way of Microsoft push all digital and back in 2013 always online

[@LRon-ef7ni]

@@Elysiabikha that’s exactly what I think too

[@MarkP733]

So glad to see the chosen one again. He'll bring balance to the podcast.

[@NetDive]

he does

[@inrevenant]

You mean, the one foretold about in the prophecy of the midi-hair-conditioner?

[@MarkP733]

@@inrevenant it's said he has more midi-hair-conditioners than Master Richard

[@NetDive]

"you were supposed to end the console wars, not join them!"

[@nonyabusiness6084]

So glad to hear you guys tackle this DRM 💩 & hear John point out that without servers, these games wouldn't be playable. I noticed this was an issue way back into last generation when I couldn't access my own single player games a few times. So this is an issue that has needed to be addressed for a while.

[@DavideDavini]

Not just. You can’t even setup your console. It’s basically bricked without auth servers. This is a huge problem.

[@rockettbuggey5990]

I mentioned this to someone a while back and they told me it wasn't like that and hasn't been for a long time. I wasn't really sure if that was true apparently not.

[@cakeisamadeupdrug6134]

I had an incredibly boring week a decade ago when I was at university, I moved into a new flat that wasn't getting connected to the Internet until the following week. I hadn't pre-emptively set Steam to offline mode, and couldn't do that (and therefore couldn't play *any* games) until it had connected with Valve's servers a week later. I hope they changed this approach before launching a SIM-less device that people are going to take on the bus...

[@dansmith1661]

Consoles sound like a dead end system.

[@pferreira1983]

@@dansmith1661 Not much better for PC.

[@AACarter0593]

Rockstar's "Agent" and Capcom's "Deep Down" are cancelled/vaporware games that I want to see

[@vrubayka]

Agent had some screenshots with favela-looking environments, so whatever they had for "Agent" they probably incorporated into Max Payne 3 with its Sao Paolo setting. That's as close as you can get to seeing "Agent", at least for now.

[@jesseomollo9405]

I thought agent was set in Egypt?

[@DEVILTAZ35]

Deep down was just a scam demo to get people to buy Playstation hardware early on.

[@redcrimson1028]

Xbox needs to fix this issue asap. A disc version of any Xbox console game should work without being online, same thing with the digital games you buy

[@pixeljauntvr7774]

Based.

[@lordspalse0062]

Anyone buying a physical disc for Xbox should know they're just wasting their time.

[@redcrimson1028]

@@lordspalse0062 why you say that? And if so why are Microsoft pressing discs? Isn't that a waste of money?

[@lordspalse0062]

@@redcrimson1028 You still can't play the game offline despite owning the disc. So what's the point of disc ownership with Microsoft when their pathetic drm extends to your disc?

[@redcrimson1028]

@@lordspalse0062 agreed

[@hopelives7469]

Any system which requires active servers is no more than rental until they are taken offline. Not buying into that anymore.

[@armorgeddon]

Yes, and unless Steam's EULA was changed in recent times it has been forever worded so that you do not own any game on Steam but only buy the license to play the games for an undisclosed period of time.

[@redcrimson1028]

I hate Microsoft and their greedy drm practices

[@lordspalse0062]

There are those of us who will never buy a Xbox console in life and I'm one of them. Don't blame Microsoft, blame the gamers that bought the exact console they slammed in 2013.

[@JonDoe-ti2mb]

Crazy how Microsoft still implemented online DRM checks into disc based games even after the disaster that was E3 2013. If they havent figured out by now that gamers dont want this, I have little hope they ever will.

[@Aribbonofsoundmen]

"No Internet? Just stick with Xbox 360" -Microsoft 2013

[@doctorsilva1345]

Microshit for a reason. They are killing Windows too.

[@legiongt]

Crazy that John suffered from sudden onset dementia when he discussed the issue as a Microsoft apologist.

[@kingshit420w]

@@legiongt I thought I was the only one who noticed

[@Harlock2day]

You can use your mobile phone internet to let those old games run. Where are you playing, in the desert ?

[@KindHappyLove]

My vote for next Generation Switch name is "Super Nintendo Switch" make it happen Nintendo.

[@micsunday14]

Totally agree. Fix joycon drift and release with botw2 and Mario kart 9 and it will sell another 100m units

[@rockettbuggey5990]

Kinda like how people was calling a mid gen refresh of series x a series x pro and I said no it should be a series x elite.

[@mota2028]

The super switch Nintendo Genesis

[@kickstartavalanche]

It would be a real wow moment if they pull that off

[@KindHappyLove]

@@kickstartavalanche for sure. I know I'd loose it haha.

[@5persondude]

I’ve wanted DNF 2001 for years. It’s honestly really cool that a version of it, even if unfinished, got leaked

[@ApotheosisDivine69]

Love when Tom is in these videos 📹 he's a great speaker and reviewer!!

[@izuthree]

42:30 I'd love to see a DF:R on Daikatana, the story behind it is fascinating and I think outside of the hype there's a lot of stuff in there worth giving a retrospective on. Just that problem of overhyping something overambitious which couldn't ever really deliver, even if it was a better game than it ended up being.

[@Aggrofool]

What? No! It's a bad game.

[@RetroGamerBB]

There are a couple of community patches that fix some of the issues. I'd love to see him cover it

[@Genkaku]

@@Aggrofool I think it is a great title to dedicate a DF retro to as there's so much lore surrounding the game

[@majormalfunction0071]

@@Aggrofool I'm working on a game and Diakatana was an inspiration. The movement is an evolution of Quake and is brilliant. Too bad the first episode is a complete mismatch for the movement system. Too many cramped areas.

[@pferreira1983]

I remember the stories that came out about the development hell the game went through. It was out of control.

[@incredibilistic]

It's remarkable how a 7-year old Arkham game holds up and looks dramatically better against the latest Gotham Knights footage.

[@slackjaw10]

I doubt this game has the same kind of budget or team size, especially without Batman.

[@CerberusLetsPlay]

Actually you can have both a PS4 and PS5 as home consoles at the same time as they are separate systems just like the PS3, what pisses me off is both Xbox One and Series consoles have to share a single Primary system between them, so when shit like this happens my One X in the bedroom is no better than a paperweight

[@drumjod]

Not sure if there's a good way to say this, but the song that plays at the end of each DF Direct Weekly makes me feel like everything is going to be ok.

[@benyboybob]

John totally surprised me, for how hard he typically comes down on DRM, he was very defensive of Microsoft and Xbox, even when valid points were made. Also you are way far gone if you think having ALL games unplayable for 4 days is not that much of an issue. I get you are explaining the how, but that doesn't excuse the why.

[@lg8048]

I was thinking this exact same thing!!!! Was starting to wonder if he was in MS pocket or something?!?! 🤔

[@DarkLordDeimos]

Quite the contrary. He had one of the only reasonable takes on the matter. The way Xbox treats your games has advantages as well, but that seems to get swept under the rug. Very few takes with any actual nuance. John already touched upon Smart Delivery, but for example, on Xbox an installed physical copy and an installed digital copy are the same install minus the authentication in the physical copy. On Playstation, those are treated separately, so if you purchased the digital copy later on, you have to re-install the whole game! On Xbox, you download a multi-kilobyte file and you are done. Also, on Xbox you can install/pre-install any you want at any time without owning it via the app. Then when you purchase it digitally or a physical copy, the game just starts. Xbox's whole philosophy is to be user-centric not hardware-centric.

[@at_oussama]

when they said "Microsoft has the better infrastructure" I literally lost it. that's just a fanboy-is excuse because having the means and the technology to keep your uptime doesn't excuse any downtime for people who purchase discs, even if it's for one single hour. really incredible.

[@SaigonBrit]

Happy to see John, Richard and Tom. With these guys I can watch no worries.

[@alexweinberg3913]

I appreciate John giving a thorough breakdown of how the online requirements for Xbox are implemented compared to other platforms instead of the whole "everything on all platforms requires Internet" and just setting the record straight.

[@teehundeart]

If the Switch successor isn't backwards compatible I'm done with Nintendo and will probably give the SteamDeck a try

[@WalkerIGP]

I own a Switch and already ordered the Steam Deck. I pretty much ditched consoles (except handhelds) years ago and do PC gaming now. I think the SD will be the final step for me.

[@Liquidsunn87]

I said the exact same thing with the Gotham Knight's reveal gameplay. When you go back and look at Arkham Knight made by rocksteady that game looks 10 times better than Gotham Knight's. It just looked visually more pleasing to the eye. I know it's two different studios and I may not be fair to compare but if your game that's supposed to be on the new systems don't look better than this old game on the older systems and that's a problem to me.

[@Aribbonofsoundmen]

I'd agree with that, Arkham Knight honestly destroys Gothom Knight visually

[@josedeleon1923]

And Arkham Knight was made on a modified Unreal Engine 3

[@mrbobo86]

Arkham knight looks like shit on PS5 backwards compatibility. There is lots of aliasing issues. How can you not see the low res rendering?

[@awsomeboy360]

The fact that Arkham Knight looks as good as it does is insane. Damn. If only it had less tanks and boss fights it would have been a perfect game.

[@baki484]

I share the sentiment.

[@Tomfoolery82]

On the subject of Gotham Knights; Tom may be correct on the network issue with the co-op. 70 dollar price point might have been taken into consideration also.

[@kuba_wasikowski]

There should be more Tom, cool guy

[@Aribbonofsoundmen]

He's mine, back off 💅

[@override7486]

@@Aribbonofsoundmen No one cares.

[@Aribbonofsoundmen]

@@override7486 oh?

[@robbert4550]

"It looks like a mid tier open world set at night" John roasting this New Arkham 😅

[@ctbrown2]

When Nintendo signed with Nvidia. It was a 10 year contract. It's going to be another Nvidia mobile chip. It will be back compatible. It's going to be the Oled model with a new custom tegra chip.

[@frankbreuer7185]

Would be absolutely fine with this.

[@joesterling4299]

If I have a game I own, physical or digital, installed and running locally on my Home/Primary console, it *needs* to work entirely offline. Period. There is no complexity or nuance that should hamper this simple, essential functionality. It's the way things have worked since at least the Xbox 360, which I believe introduced full digital versions of games originally released on disc. Protected by home-console ID, OR protected by account login online, OR protected by physical disc/cartridge. Never should online login be the only option, not for games that don't truly require online features.

[@Fishster]

Don’t disagree with your point but should mention you don’t ‘own’ the game you simply license it. Obviously not what happened here but MS could revoke licenses if they so desired.

[@killerfugu2659]

For Q3 I think the easiest way to think about it is in a game that doesn't scale CPU load with resolution (most of them) you can think about your CPU able to run at a certain fps, let's say for the example 150fps, now this applies regardless of the resolution. Then if you have a 3080 and in the game you;re playing the 3080 could get these frame rates : 720p-200fps 1080p-160fps 1440p-130fps and 4k-100fps. Now your "bottleneck" is whichever is lowest, so at 720p and 1080p your CPU is only getting 150fps while your GPU can do 200 and 160 respectively so you're CPU limited. At 1440p you are GPU limited and your CPU usage would drop to around 90% since it's waiting on the GPU, and at 4K you are even more GPU limited with CPU usage dropping down to 66% as you're at 100fps when it can do 150. A GPU that's 50%+ faster would make you CPU bottlenecked at 4K too. This is very laymen terms and relies on perfect scaling but I think works to explain to those new to hardware why CPU's "aren't important at 4k", they really are, it just depends on what framerate you're chasing.

[@hughJ]

Regarding the industry shift to UE5: While the proliferation and popularity of a particular engine and renderer has happened before (Build, Quake3, Unreal, UE3, UE4), what's different this time around is the presence of Epic's asset pipeline tools (Metahumans and Quixel/Megascans). I'm curious to see what's going to happen with AAA games, especially the bigger open-world games with large casts of NPCs, as there's going to be a huge incentive to utilize these assets/tools rather than build their own asset pipeline and library from scratch. These tools are a boon for rapid development and breaking down barriers for independent studios, but I hope it doesn't lead to everything from the Witcher to Tomb Raider to Mass Effect looking like it's populated by the same Central Casting service.

[@matthewjohnson1891]

Totally, and we saw that with the 360/ps3 era, where a ton of games all looked the same.

[@hughJ]

@@matthewjohnson1891 Oh I'm thinking it'll be far worse than that. This time around we're talking about assets being reused, which is going to impact art design and environments. I'm expecting to see a lot of barren rocky landscapes, in particular sandstone canyons. Any game that can justify having a canyon area (like the Valley of the Ancient demo) will do it, because those assets are among the better looking and more numerous sets in the Megascan library. Be prepared to say, "Wait a minute... I've seen that rockface before!"

[@TakaChan569]

If i buy a game digitally and it's sp only there is no reason whatsoever it should need an "online" check.

[@PerpetuallyTiredMusician]

Whatever Nintendo does next after the switch I bet it' is still gonna have friend codes 😂

[@LRon-ef7ni]

Arkham Knight looks like it’s the current gen game, while Gotham looks decidedly early last gen.

[@Liquidsunn87]

So true

[@SITSIndustries]

1:02:52 "Rich says in-the-here-and-now" drinking game. (You're getting sloppy, Audi.)

[@PoopinAndScoopin]

any time pirates have a better experience than paying customers is a big issue

[@guillermopaolini9895]

X2

[@nomisastro2000]

The reward for stutter free UE4/5 PC releases should be a gold embossed plaque that shows a flat frame time graph with a be congratulations to the team. The plaque should be in style to starship plaques you see in Star Trek, TNG/DS9

[@delta7890]

I think this Xbox situation really highlights the fact that emulation will be the only way to play a huge swath of games from systems of the PS4/Xbox One era and beyond.

[@ammanus356]

Not so much PS4, PS4 didn't have online DRM.

[@pixeljauntvr7774]

PlayStation 4 & 5 as well as Nintendo seem to be ok outside live service games. The Xbox on the other hand has a big issue.

[@davidagiel8130]

It always was

[@RazielAU]

Common misconception, the final release of Duke Nukem Forever is still running on Unreal Engine 1, it's just a heavily modified version of the engine with an updated renderer and material system. George Broussard got this wrong during an interview where he said they branched off when UE2 received static mesh support. That interview often throws people off and most assume DNF is running on UE2 as a result, but they're actually using a version of UE1 which had some experimental UE2 features implemented. UE2 always supported static meshes, it's not something that was added later on as suggested in that interview. The engine which received static mesh support towards the end of its life was Unreal Engine 1, where it was implemented as an 'experimental UE2 feature' before doing the actual implementation on the UE2 codebase, which is not what DNF was built/shipped on. The 2001 build ended up getting worked on, reworked and enhanced all the way up to 2006. In 2003 the renderer was rewritten to be similar to Doom 3's with real time lighting and shadows, which required a lot of rework, but from what I understand, it was still the same game at that point. But by 2006, the assets from that version got so dated that development was restarted and the 2006 version eventually became the game released in 2011.

[@brometheusjables2644]

the fucking OG DF CREW together.

[@rob4222]

nice to see Tom again

[@b-radb5483]

So weird, I never ran into the Xbox outage during those 4 days 😳

[@chrisbullock6477]

Poor Tom, can't even have his own opinion on Nintendo conversation, LOL....John taking over the conversation again.

[@budthecyborg4575]

I love the idea of using my old Xbox as a disc authentication device. I've been pondering how someday Microsoft might release a standalone Bluray drive, but I guess if for the time being with 50+ million Xbox One consoles out there using my old xbox isn't a bad idea, this also allows the "Series S Bedroom Console" idea to work for people with both Series X and S.

[@neilwilson5785]

Yeah. Like many I suspect, I have an Xbox one sitting underneath my series console doing nothing.

[@dominicdibagio7166]

"The fact they are launching it in China first is a bit of a red flag" is a great unintended joke - 45:55

[@jameswright5049]

John, with respect, you really have to stop disagreeing with everything that Tom has to say. Whenever Tom's talking, I am usually nodding along in agreement, so when you turn around and suggest outright that he's incorrect, you're also saying the same to the audience that agree with him. If you've a different impression the best you can do is state *from your perspective* it isn't true for xyz reasons. Tom is by far my favourite one of the DigitalFoundry crew and I could listen to the guy all day long. He's the single person with no platform bias and that's incredibly refreshing when compared to, say, Alex prefixing every video with "I'm not a console user". Would be interesting to see average view counts of each of DF to see who has the highest, because I'd doubt it's the folks that most often speak authoritatively on each matter...

[@curryking1]

Agree Tom is demonstrating a lot of professionalism. The senior staff are not really showing him the same respect he is showing them and it's quite obviously clear the DF success has gone to a few of their heads.

[@benny6814]

Couldn't agree more. Hope they see these comments and take it on board.

[@CTBell-uy7ri]

👏🏻 John got the contrast in his video feed fixed

[@SussedRage]

I thought they'd uploaded a Switch trailer for Gotham Knights by mistake...

[@Aristowi]

It's unacceptable that you can't play offline, not even discs. If you can't even play your own games in your own console then they should just lend consoles for free, they are very expensive and being obligated to having them hooked to their servers just to start a game makes no sense. It's like having ads after paying for removing them.

[@Nekrosmas]

TOM AND RICHARD BOTH BACK!

[@mattdhargett]

PixelJunk Eden is 1080p60 IIRC, and maybe also Blast Factor? Would be interesting to see how “locked” it is. Wipeout was one of the first games to use DRS to try and reach 1080p60, I’m curious how close it gets!

[@matthiasm4299]

The Alex Battaglia Award for Stutterless Excellence

[@aL3891_]

John looks extra color graded today, looking spiffy :)

[@xpgx1]

@2:00 When I was active in Xbox land _(around the 360 and early One generation)_ - I **think** this was actually not the case. You could absolutely play games offline, even the games with gold titles you could keep "forever". I might be forgetting some account sign-in/sign-out workaround. But since then, they seemingly revised this system totally and yeah... today we have, essentially, the always online drm solution msft was talking about back when they tried to launch Xbox one =) Minus the extensive share options. _Edit: Typos =)_

[@SimplexPL]

Back in the PS3 days you could have 1 PSN account "activated" on 5 PS3 consoles. Every other account on that console had access to those games (I don't remember if when the console was offline, but probably yes). Those were the days.

[@xpgx1]

@@SimplexPL Aww, the golden days =) That's what I meant by Sign-in workaround. I believe this, in some form, was also possible on Xbox. Once your entitled account signed into that device - all the games associated with that account could be used as long as the system was online (along those lines). Even if the account was then signed into a different device =) Naturally, we all did it...

[@SimplexPL]

@@xpgx1 Unfortunately some people took it to the extreme and started selling access to such accounts on shady marketplaces :( That's why we can't have nice things.

[@HiCZoK]

john got some new nice lighting? nice. Man... that DNF... I've waited so long for is and it's FANTSTIC!!! And it's only mid 2001 build. They worked on it until mid/late 2002 so I would love that. The 2003-2006 doom 3 build is also very interesting

[@LiraeNoir]

No it's not fair nor legitimate. And it's based on false premises. GOG doesn't have DRM, and they don't have a higher rate of piracy. There is no correlation between DRM and the absence of piracy. I'm disappointed, I would have expect professional gaming media to know this very basic fact.

[@Xoron]

I think the main issue Nintendo is facing is that they accessed a huge group of customers that are almost exclusively playing their Switch mobile/handheld. And with that Nintendo maneuvered itself into a situation where they will have to provide a main or near-main console that is usable in that way. So it's either hybrid like the Switch or maintaining two systems in parallel in the future.

[@carlharrison3637]

Microsoft has taken a huge dump on us Eggbox owners. Great.

[@godfreake]

What would be a better video for the PS3 would to look at what games render at 480p and what better performance we get from it

[@AndyGilleand]

Speaking of unreleased 90s versions of games: SHENMUE on Saturn!

[@CasperEgas]

Shenmue on Saturn, yes please!

[@MrInvinciblewarrior]

Ubisoft should open their vault. The prince of persia which eventually became ac, the original beyond good & evil, the 2-3 versions of bg&e2 and skull & bones and of course the vastly different game which became immortal fenix risimg

[@chairforceoneYT]

Make a 4k 60fps switch for the old price point and drop the price of the original

[@ellogames96]

Love these podcasts.

[@alex1212456]

The Batman gameplay looked weak but I’m confused because the 2020 gameplay video looked really good

[@Daniel-yz3zf]

Haven't watched yet... but I'm going to bet £100 that John mentions black frame insertion

[@KhromTX]

21:24 Disagree with Jon here completely, it's been proven time and time again that Nintendo literally does not care about their fanbase at all, and is very anti-consumer to their own install base. It would not surprise me at all if they went all digital. Jon is wearing rose tinted glasses.

[@jakkudemoff3043]

I guess that delivery isn't so smart after all....

[@Winnetou64]

Tom is back! ❤

[@stevohoward3076]

John's face when Tom was poopooing his opinion, thats gold

[@rexthesheep]

Regarding physical games on Series S, - Just let me plug any old USB Blu-Ray drive into a digital-only Xbox to read the game disc. I don't need a Blu-ray/DVD license to watch movies like you get on Xbox One and Series X, I just need to authenticate the game license on the disc.

[@patfuryy]

I can already see in 5-6 years the overabundance of Unreal Engine 5 games and all will share similar qualities and sets of issues UE5 hierarchy will become a thing under the various studios and the public will make fun of the ones that don't handle it well We gotta appreciate the in-house engines

[@juegadenuevo6532]

Yay! No Alex!

[@90lancaster]

I great many of my games "Vanish" if I don't have an internet connection they don't even show up on the game Library on my Series X when off line. Considering Electricity prices just skyrocketed I am more likely to turn my router off more often than I would have been some months ago - so yeah that can be an issue.

[@shodan2958]

I think UE5 is on the "one to watch" list atm. I recall times where things like Id Tech and Renderware gained large scale adoption, but in the case of Renderware ended up burning out after the PS2 era and I think better still with the Id Tech engine, many of those licensees essentially ended up using that codebase to make their own distinct in house variant to the point it didn't carry the name anymore and I think its a path UE5 could go down. Also I feel a shout out to Remedy's Northlight engine here, they seem to make their own custom stuff still and have it work and they aren't even owned by a major publisher, so there is some hope here at least.

[@BurritoKingdom]

Criterion, the creators of Render Ware, was bought by EA. EA stopped licensing out Renderware and decided every team at EA should use Frostbite. So basically EA killed Renderware

[@flyingplantwhale545]

What’s crazier about Arkham Knight, is that it’s an UE3 title.. and looks leagues better than a title from 2022. Just shows the artistry of the devs I guess.

[@bluepill8077]

This show is perfect for bed time. It's about video games which I love, and is very long, monotonous, droning, uneventful and full of completely forgettable people and conversations. Thanks for helping me zone out and not care about missing anything.

[@Technoko]

Yeah mr 'blue pill' they should really learn a thing or two from your "Fireworks mishap 2017" lol

[@ITNoetic]

12:50 Microsoft never went on record about how the "disc to digital" pipeline would actually work back in 2013. They announced that you'd be able to buy a physical disc, then they'd have some method by which you take it to the store to get your digital license or something. I remember trying to ask a Microsoft employee via an upcoming Q&A, but IIRC it got canceled and they switched back to the status quo within 1 or 2 days of announcing it. I think they said something about being able to trade in (like at Gamestop) or transfer digital licenses, too. I wanted actual logistical details, because the idea seemed unfathomable, but they rolled it back instead of ever telling anyone publicly how it would work.

[@LockeTheCole]

I'm glad this outage happened. No one was talking about their shitty DRM scheme (which is basically what people were up in arms about when the One was announced) this time they just didn't bother to tell anyone hoping no one would notice and when someone did the game journalists just ignored it. Even after this outage many sites and journalists were ignoring the story. I wish the outage had been more widespread and lasted longer so it might have actually woke a good amount of people up. Instead we got so many people going "Didn't affect me" like that means there's no fucking problem.

[@ironsword7]

You will own nothing and be happy....until we turn the servers off...then you're effed.

[@JohnKobylarz]

I suspect that if there are 20 million PS5’s in the wild, at least 5 million of them are sitting on the shelves of scalpers. It’s been over one year, and they still cost 2x MSRP on the aftermarket. And buying them new at retail is still very tedious unless you happen to be lucky, or part of a membership (extra cost). I am an avid gamer of all platforms. I have been keeping my eyes open for any PS5 that I can buy in a store without having to line up or pay extra for the privilege of buying it. And to this day, I have never seen them in stock anywhere for more than a second or two. My point is, I’d be curious to know what percentage of PS5’s have actually been turned on by a end user. (Unique Console Activations vs Units Shipped). I doubt Sony would ever release that data, but I am relatively confident that the scalpers are still fixing the price by scooping up most of the supply.

[@Solegor]

There are no 5 million or any number of millions sitting somewhere with the scalpers. I don't think this is feasible at all. I don't believe it's even 100k consoles all over the world that are with scalpers at any given moment. Those consoles are being sold regularly and aftermarket for them is still a market (and saturating it with MILLIONS of consoles would just drive prices to RRP) and the price fluctuates there with the amount of drops from official sources. At points I'd seen scalpers go as low as 580 EUR for bare disc based sealed ps5. And you can get used ps5 at 500-600 with a game or two, basically at RRP. What you're seeing now is an effect of very small amount of consoles released to market by Sony q1 2022 - only 2 million, which is more than 2 times lower than q4 2021. If they are really getting out 18 miliion more by end of FY2022/23 as planned, this would really help. And you should understand that despite the constraints in supply, the demand is VERY high. Previously, when going let's say from ps3 to ps4 - you would have to abandon ps3 library and just play (not so many) new games for the first couple of years of ps4's life cycle. Now there is just no point in waiting - old ps4 games are playing on your ps5 and even getting patches to run better. And you get the new games. That's why a lot of people who would want to switch to a next gen - want to do it immediately and it's not as prolonged in time as it was with the change from ps3 to ps4. Also there is little chance that ps5 will get cheaper over time so people are not waiting for that as well. All of it creates the situation where many many people want to switch from ps4 to ps5 at the same time and this coupled with the supply constraints creates the situation. Scalpers are actually making the situation worse but they are not a deciding factor here. If we just remove all the scalping this very moment - you will still not be able to go to a shop and just buy ps5 for at least another year

[@dad-of-war]

So smart delivery isn't that smart then

[@steveco1800]

Has there been similar outages on PC, such as with Steam? I can't remember anything and it's been going longer.

[@nicwilson89]

35:40 I wanna see someone do something with all of the Duke Forever stuff and turn it into the Duke game we all wanted...please...c'mon, I'm begging EDIT: John just said it, too. Someone has to do this

[@BENergizer1]

I'd much rather a dev axe a game version meant for machines that don't run it well versus giving us a subpar port that simply can't be made better because of hardware limitations. Cyberpunk is a terrific example of that. If CDPR said six months before launch, around one of those delays they had, that the PS4/XboxOne versions were cancelled and focused all their efforts on the PC and current gen machines, I think they would have been better off. Yes, people would have been mad, and yes they probably wouldn't have sold as many units overall, but they also would have avoided the worst of the publicity black eyes they got and I think the version of the game that launched would have been much better off because the final QA and bug squish push would have been much more consolidated.

[@XenogearsPS]

Nah they made their sales, and their next Witcher game will sell as well. They just need to hit it off with their next game. That's about it.

[@electricgigolo]

I've noticed that with my Series X that if I haven't used it in a while and I'm offline, I can't launch digital or physical games. I have to connect to ring home. The console is set to home console, it shouldn't be doing that. The original Xbox One before release got slammed for this always online BS which MS removed. I just got my hands on a PS5 and I'm buying ALL multi platform games for it. It is now my main console.

[@deusfaux]

John are your lenses tinted slightly? Good look

[@MrOP66]

Kudos to John for explaining the issue in detail. If I understood the explanation correctly, MS had implemented the home console setup so that if people test it, it will work and people believe that DRM is not a problem. They actually never made it to cover a genuine server problem. The other point which really stands out is the fact that the universally praised smart delivery was not that smart. Perhaps Sony was still one step ahead.

[@Taker597]

Damn... Gotham. KNIGHT straight up getting roasted by everyone.

[@PickeringSamuel]

I like the Series S disc solution. But they should offer an alternative, which should be an external disc drive for £40/£50

[@dannypoo3281]

I don't play my Switch, but there is no denying it's success. It found the perfect niche in the market. A Switch 2 that is more powerful seems like a better idea than seeing Nintendo try to create yet another new unique console.

[@oleost]

Regarding cancelled last gen consoles it’s much better than risk anything like cyberpunk again. TBH, last gen got to go for games that is into pushing visuals.

[@izamanaick]

21:00 they already have that with regards to collections. For some godforsaken reason Nintendo had the idea of allowing publishers to release physical copies of collections with only one of the multiple games on the damn card.

[@LeesChannel]

51:10 I was a QA tester for Full Auto 2!

[@MrSTVR]

I'd like to play the PlayStation 1 version of ICO. It would be interesting to experience the animation and realistic physics they were aiming for on such limited hardware.

[@agromchung]

Ico was going to come out on PS1?!

[@devan_danger]

At least it's still 240p on ps2

[@Tropcopter]

Arkham Knight was so ahead of its time visually. In my opinion it melds the artistic and technical aspect of game graphics better than any other game, period. Absolutely gorgeous and timeless looking game.

[@Vsevolod3788]

So nice! A "Next-gen" game looks worse than a 7 yo(!) last-gen game. Stagnation continues.

[@AndyGilleand]

Ooh another game that I think got canceled. It was some open world game where the map was supposed to be all of europe, I think it was supposed to be a prehistoric type game with creatures, and it was supposed to be a PS4 exclusive. Can't think of the name, but I haven't heard about it for years, so I assume it's canceled. EDIT: The title is "Wild"

[@ScrapKing73]

Agreed that the PS360 era was woefully underpowered for 1080p. The Series S is vastly more powerful, and mostly targeting 1080p for 60 FPS (and occasionally 30 FPS) games, for goodness sake! I would have preferred the PS360 era had targeted 60 FPS at 480p, which is what a lot of people’s TV sets at the time maxed out at anyway! That would have been a significant upgrade from the 240p and 480i games that were still reasonably common in the previous generation. I understand why they didn’t. People who’d bought HDTVs wanted HD game consoles. A shame that they didn’t just give users the choice, as modern games do. I’d take a solid framerate at 480p, over a sputtering frame rate (with bad frame pacing, naturally) at 720p. If any generation desperately needed “pro” consoles, it was the PS360 era! :-P