DF Direct Weekly

[@TehPwnographer]

I think we’re 3 horrible PC ports away from DF becoming a cooking channel.

[@pronstorestiffi]

Cannot wait for Richs bespoke sauce recipe.

[@728GT]

😂😂

[@MarquisDeSang]

No such problems with indie games like “Supplice”

[@S1X_Bucks]

If devs aren't going to cook their games more, someone's gonna have to start cooking.

[@BleedandRise]

Or the guys showing their cats :)

[@diligencehumility6971]

2000: Imagine the graphics and FPS in 20 years! 2023: *24 FPS*

[@miguelroman4294]

😅

[@willuigi64]

cinematic ;)

[@vegn_brit5176]

🤣

[@nomercy8989]

I don't think many people would talk about fps outside competitive multiplayer games back in 2000

[@willuigi64]

@@nomercy8989 pc players from then definitely would have.

[@awsomeboy360]

I completely agree it's actually a huge shame that CDPR left the red engine instead of continuously developing it since it still has huge potential. I fear because of Cyberpunk launch they've become a little bit risk averters, and that may manifest itself in their games in terms of playing it safe. I hope I'm wrong

[@cooperodom7747]

It still did well enough to spawn a tv show. Looking at it from that perspective I don’t think they have much to fear.

[@Deliveredmean42]

@@cooperodom7747 It' more than likely the TV show was being work on before the disaster. And it's that show that help the game in the end.

[@awsomeboy360]

@@cooperodom7747 The TV anime was announced before the game was out.

[@BurritoKingdom]

That's why their next game is a remake of Witcher 1. They are becoming risk adverse

[@weaverquest]

It is probably the reportedly high employee turnover due to massive crunch that caused this as the people who build the foundations of the engine leave and more and more people need to be hired who have zero experience with Red Engine things probably get really messy. Maybe losing a lot of time just so the new devs can learn the engine. Going UE5 solves the issue. Also John is praising the engine only from a graphics standpoint (which in the case of RT overdrive also took a looong time to come out) but people had a lot of issues with gameplay systems rather than graphics for example AI of NPCs on the streets, NPCs driving cars, wanted system where cops just spawn out of nowhere and can't even chase you with a car, animations of the main character (can't see yourself in the mirror because you don't have a simulated physical body unlike in RDR 2 for example) etc. Maybe some of these are because the engine is holding them back.

[@DGFTardin]

I'm equal parts happy to see John and sad to not see Rich, but everyone deserves a break right

[@johnboylan3832]

No.

[@Egurius3]

@@johnboylan3832 Why not?

[@Zeegoku1007]

​@@johnboylan3832Yes.

[@johnboylan3832]

@@Egurius3 I am a solipsist.

[@walter_the_wobot2349]

I’m all for people getting a break, but not when it personally impacts my enjoyment

[@herbalterrorist420]

If you do a best and worst pc ports (which you definitely should imo) it would be cool if you could put a “note” at the end of each game or state wether the game was fixed relatively soon after release or if the game is still broken/buggy etc. It’s one thing to release a game broken, but it’s another thing when that game doesn’t ever get properly fixed.

[@UNr34]

You forgot to mention something very important with regards to the current crisis in PC gaming: the prices are horrific, GPUs especially, but not only.

[@xBINARYGODx]

they can't - rich is too busy damage controlling price increases, even when Nvidia might make it easy for him to do that with the pricing of their lesser 4000 series cards.

[@ZeePirateMan]

Exactly! Who the hell is still buying them???

[@saturnFIV3]

​@@xBINARYGODx idk if that's fair, the team certainly prefers green in their rigs no doubt but Rich has been pretty clear that the 4080 and 4090 AREN'T good value cards.

[@Hyydrotoo]

Idk you all probably have lots on your timetables already, but I'd love a series that focuses in depth on things like "what is shader compilation and why is it necessary?" and similar topics. Would love to educate myself more about this stuff, but it's not always easy to find the right ressources.

[@aeidengtfo6758]

It's been done to death elsewhere just Google it.

[@aeidengtfo6758]

Also been explained multiple times by digital foundry already

[@couchtuber7623]

Also, I'm not sure why games started going this direction because a lot of older games I play simply do not have shader compilation stutter at all. I'd be curious about why the tech went that route and how the hell we can get out of it as soon as possible. It's horrible.

[@chibii-chan047]

Ask chatgpt dawg

[@philipegoulet448]

​@@couchtuber7623 That's because your older games simply have less complex shaders. They still use shaders, and a lot of them still need to be compiled at run time. The fact that modern games use a lot more shaders and the shaders are a lot more complex make their compilation very expensive. This is why you get stutter; the game is busy compiling the shaders before it can execute them. Theres two ways around this right now:either you precompile them ( you need to account for every possible variation of hardware), or you compile them before starting gameplay.

[@cosmonautikal536]

Thank you for mentioning the excellent state of the Indie/AA PC gaming market. Reassuring that you are not completely tunnel visioned and have some hope in there, Alex.

[@Ayoul]

tbf, those games are also a mixed bag sometimes and it's much simpler to optimize a game with a smaller scope. You don't see indie or AA open worlds.

[@mjc0961]

​@@Ayoul *Good* Open world games suck these days.

[@beardalaxy]

@@mjc0961 most of them do, yeah, because the open world usually seems more like a marketing strategy than it does intentionally designed. It's getting really annoying at this point, and I wish the industry would cut it out because we would see an increase in refinement and they would see an increase in cost efficiency.

[@StephenTheZ]

Yeah it's been nice to see Alex always talk about the AA/indie market, even as a primarily console user like 90% of what I play these days is AA stuff. It's been nice to see this section of the market return after being basically murdered in the mid-360/PS3 gen. Hard for me to even care about the state of AAA gaming when there are so many good smaller games coming out.

[@vullord666]

The one caveat of the indie and AA market though is there’s a much, MUCH higher volume of games in that bucket. You’re always intentionally shifting through a ton with the understanding most are going to be crap and finding the specific best cases. Beyond that an indie or AA game has to be REALLY REALLY good (or really really bad (or be setting unrelated expectations with way too much marketing)) for it to even get noticed. Its a lot harder to adequately judge the state of the market.

[@Secret_Takodachi]

The best incentive for publishers is a "Razzy Awards" for worst PC ports and worst game elements etc. Highlighting "best in class" and "WORST in class" is fair AND productive. It also helps to educate audiences on why "this is better" for certain elements and help wider audiences better appreciate the subtle homeruns some games hit with certain implementations of elements/ideas.

[@mechanicalmonk2020]

Nope. Jedi Survivor sold like crazy on PC even though it had massive issues. No bad press is going to drown out those results

[@MrVoland44]

That would work great if it would be on VGA, but i doubt publishers allow that

[@unbanmekoil]

@@mechanicalmonk2020 it sold like crazy because it’s a great game.. and a Star Wars one of course. For many, ignorance is bliss as far as game performance.

[@AJ-xv7oh]

@@unbanmekoil A game with major performance issues is not a great game. Sort your head out.

[@vullord666]

I’m not sure you understand how publishers (or like any for profit company) if you think they care about negative PR/press. Actually they love it. Its still free marketing and keeps their products and services in the know. What companies fear is fading away and being forgotten. Heck, look up the most profitable movies. The new super Mario Bros has gotten rave reviews like say the sonic movie or detective pikachu but it’s already become the most profitable video game movie of all time. Disney’s star wars films sit at the top of box office profits despite the continuous hate they all earned. And the franchise is still massive no matter how bad episode 9 was.

[@callumdointhings5]

This was one of the best Directs yet imo Topics were perfect, Q&A answers were entertaining, John whipping out news like the Pocket firmware update, Alex being super fun the whole time like hes just hanging with his best friends, etc. 10/10 hosting John

[@kakaovski]

I'm also glad Oliver is feeling good on these directs!

[@purringc5552]

Those big studios should consider licensing the id tech 7 engine. A very well optimized engine that scales with hardware.

[@Ayoul]

That's a huge can of worms. Making an engine for internal use and a licensed product is very different. It would probably have the same struggles we've seen in other engines scaling up to very open environments until they see a need to support such features and I don't think it's ever been used for a third person game. The engine is optimized for FPS games. I do think all of MS studios that make FPS games would probably benefit in using it if they make FPS games, but I don't know how much of that is stull under Zenimax control (depending on the acquisition deal).

[@BurritoKingdom]

After id was bought by Bethesda they stopped licensing out their engine other than to other Bethesda Studios. Now that they're owned by Microsoft, I hope Microsoft other studios use id tech. I'm still surprised RedFall didn't use id tech since Arkane used a modified version of id tech 5 for Dishonored. Same complaint about Ghostwire. Tango Gameworks used a modified id tech 5 for the evil within but switched to unreal for Ghostwire.

[@BurritoKingdom]

​@@Ayoul the evil within 1&2 were 3rd person id tech games. I'm still baffled that Tango Gameworks switched to Unreal for Ghostwire. It looked like id tech 6 or 7 would have been perfect for it and Ghostwire was 1st person, so less modifications would have been required.

[@chrll]

@@Ayoul Back in the day, id software used to license their engines. If you google it, you'll find non-id games using id tech 4 and older.

[@beardalaxy]

@@BurritoKingdom dang I didn't know TEW used id tech. That's cool.

[@hstationforthenation3299]

Alien Isolation still looks incredible today. A friend of mine was an environmental artist for that title, and he's now working on the next Subnautica game as Lead Artist, so you know it will look stunning!

[@domingorodriguez3077]

@THATvsmBRO yes, his friend is single handedly responsible for these games' success

[@dullilul]

damn any news?

[@JorgeMartinez-dp3im]

Publishers should hire DF to look over their games prior to launch and if everything is up to par, they get the DF seal of approval.

[@megamanx1291]

this is actually a great idea

[@KoeiNL]

95% of these issues can be spotted by anyone with eyes. Studios aren't releasing these games in this state because they don't know that things are wrong, they release it like this because they know people will buy their garbage anyway.

[@yellowblanka6058]

They don't need DF, they have their own developers telling them there are issues and they say "ship it anyway".

[@matthewvelazquez2013]

Nope. Money equals bias.

[@matthewvelazquez2013]

​@@yellowblanka6058 yes indeed.

[@ActNasty5]

Pc gaming lately is like having a 1000hp car with stock tires…

[@seekified]

The UE4 "gotchas" discussion is interesting, because a selling point that I often see for UE in general is that "everyone knows it" and you don't need to train new hires on proprietary tech. That argument seems to fall apart somewhat if these mistakes or lack of priority happen anyway as regularly as they do. I know I'm oversimplifying here, but still.

[@Not_Lewis]

I'm sure that with how prevalent the engine is and how many developers use it, I'm sure there are no "gotchas" that go unnoticed. They are at least visible, but it's up to management and prioritization of timeline tasks to either recognize the gotcha and fix it, or push it aside.

[@lordanonimmo7699]

These gotchas can be know but its hard to take appropriate care of them,because usually the studios who use unreal arent the most technical proeficient,outside of xbox is mostly smaller devs with not as much resources that have their own engines and the second reason is that fixing unreal would be very hard giving its not the developers code and a code that is made to support a bunch of different things,so debugging becomes much harder

[@cmelda13]

As someone who worked with UE4 on an open world game, I can say that using well known engine as UE4 is not only about "everyone knows it". User friendly tools and tool support are crucial to game development. Funnily enough, I worked also on an open world game using inhouse engine with way less tool support and it was PAIN in the a$$. I am of course not saying that Epic support is epic (I am looking at you 'this feature is experimental for 5 years'). Working with UE4, or any engine, needs someone who will constantly measure performance and who is notifying development teams with "no, don't do this, use this" or "this needs to be optimized, because this cannot use XYms from the frame". Supporting 60fps post launch is not an easy task, because you need to have this kind of target (frame budget) during the development, not post launch.

[@kohlmannj]

Thanks to Oliver for reporting live from inside the GameCube

[@EnkiduSA17]

💀💀💀💀💀

[@ryanbabik5861]

Can’t unsee it now

[@blackcatgreyhound9200]

Just an interesting video idea I’ve just had for you guys, would you ever did a timeline of the unreal engines throughout its versions by comparing a game at the start of that engine’s use and a game at the end of its run and see how far they have come and what stuff got realised from the tech demos. Thanks again for all the great videos you all each put out! 🤘🏻

[@ZeitGeist_TV]

Really dope idea that I would also love to see.

[@lethal_guitar]

Oh that'd be interesting!

[@kurtkrienke2956]

Alex is even zestier than usual in this one 😄

[@EnkiduSA17]

Last time pillow marks were in his face 💔😆 This time he might had his sleep uninterrupted 😢

[@ArcanePath360]

PC Gaming = Spend £3000 on a high end rig, and play about 3 games a year that are worth playing, but only months after release when they patch it sufficiently to run at 30 fps without stuttering, but realistically wait 2 years to play it with the proper path tracing that you paid to use with your 4090. Totally worth it.

[@redliondeaddeer]

True. PC doesn't seem worth the price for gaming if the games look better but run much worse. That coupled with the fact that patches and bug fixes are prioritised for consoles over PC makes consoles the best place to game right now. I totally wouldn't be surprised to see Nvidia and Amd sales being affected by this.

[@flow221]

Or buy a console and get 30fps at variable resolution and a guarantee it will never improve. At least the hardware is cheaper, I guess.

[@redliondeaddeer]

​@@flow221 Don't most current console games have a 60 fps performance mode? I haven't played a single 30 fps game yet on my PS5.

[@Alexander-ix2jp]

Agree, and then add to that the horrendous gpu price inflation in recent years and the huge (!) power usage or requirements of modern triple a gaming gpus. It's crazy.

[@xBINARYGODx]

"and play about 3 games a year that are worth playing" lol wut? I mean - WUT?!?!?! I agree there can be a discoverability issue (which is also on all the consoles), but this take is batsh!t insane, even as exaggeration.

[@meisterwu8922]

When Alex talked about Dead Space's shader stuttering at 7:02 that "it's currently not fixed", I was shocked. It's been almost 5 MONTHS. What the HELL are they doing?

[@CasepbX]

Welcome back John! Loved that DF retro!

[@ia3630]

*AAA PC Gaming in Crisis, Indies are doing pretty great. Speaking of which, I'd love a DF video on the Indie games they like!

[@TheBean87]

This would be a great video

[@Mene0]

This

[@megamanx1291]

They literally say that 4 mins in the vid

[@ekoreko9795]

Yeah Indies are great but you most people don't spend 2k or more to play indies

[@solarstrike33]

@@ekoreko9795 You'd be surprised how many do.

[@JorgeMartinez-dp3im]

John is such as awesome host! Great job dude!

[@3monsterbeast]

that baked lighting question absolutely got me dying hahahahha

[@hilariousl]

I think oliver is right, most PC are not up to consoles cpu power + the built in decompression + the gpu vram. We will have to get use to consoles ports too demanding

[@dante19890]

Oliver hit it on the nail there. PS5 has a huge advantage in IO and effectively moving huge assets from ssd to ram without the cpu being used for decompression. PC needs to adopt direct storage 2.0 to compete in that aspect.

[@unbanmekoil]

Like Alex, I could listen to John talk about retro gaming tech all day long. All three of you made a great show!

[@brandon_nope]

Funny enough Valve rated Man of Medan unsupported for Steam Deck as the graphics cannot be configured to run well

[@ARIXANDRE]

John, you've got this. When you host, DF Weekly is a top podcast for me.

[@blubbntroet]

VRR as a savior for not hitting 60 constantly not just for frametime but also most displays only support a range of 48hz upwards. Latest games even struggle to stay consistently above 48 fps🙁

[@forasago]

The savior from games with terrible performance are other games. Stop rewarding trash developers by buying games you know run badly.

[@hooby_9066]

I still remember the first such crisis, which was roughly in the mid 2000's I believe. It was when multiplatform really started to take off, and when games were more games started to be developed for console first and got ported over to PC later instead of the other way round. I don't think that performance and stutter were the main problems, but there were definitely many bugs, games being strictly locked to 30 or 60fps, mouse+keyboard controls not working properly, on-screen hints showing Controller-Buttons instead of Keyboard Inputs, little to none graphics options, keys not being rebind-able, etc. I remember buttons in menues not properly reacting to mouse-clicks if the cursor had already been above the button, and the button wasn't highlighted. You had to move your mouse out of the button, and then back over it again, to get it highlighted, and only then could you click... Also, games got stuck with DX9 for a long time, despite DX10 and DX11 getting released, simply because publishers didn't want PC-version to look better than on console...

[@concinnus]

The PS2, PS3, and X360 all had non-x86 CPUs, so porting from them was done poorly when they bothered at all.

[@MichaelODonoghueMOD]

I remember lots of crappy ports at beginning of 360 generation. Splinter Cell Double Agent and Rainbow Six Vegas come to mind, along with any pc port from Capcom

[@solarstrike33]

Vista's...less than stellar reception really didn't help matters either, causing _way_ more laggards to stick with XP - and thus making DX9 paths "necessary" simply because XP still had a decent marketshare all the way to 2012 (even with 7 fixing things up for the most part).

[@deepblue8143]

DF is amazing, I look forward to your videos so much. Life can be hard and watching you guys is just like hanging with good friends. In my honest opinion, Digital Foundry is the best video game outlet out there. I'm always hesitant when I see new people added to the team but Oliver is great! Glad to see John back too!😊

[@nickhall_music]

I bought a DF hoodie recently and my girlfriend asked me "Who is Digital Foundry!?" I'm like uhh this is a loaded question.... just these dudes I've been virtually hanging out with for years 😂

[@cakeisamadeupdrug6134]

John is probably one of like a single digit number of people who has used a 4000 series card utilising DLSS3 on a CRT monitor.

[@dante19890]

Ye John is a bit of a weird duck. He always played on CRT growing up, than transitioned to plasma and than to Oled with BFI. He clearly is spoiled with the superior motion resolution. Meanwhile everyone else was raised on a shitty blurry lcd

[@DemoEvolvedGaming]

@Digital Foundry I think that what is missing is a set of Technical Certification Standards that a PC title must support to get an A+ from a PC review site, such as Digital Foundry. And you guys are in the unique position of having been so professional and so detailed and rigorous that you are perfect for being the arbiter of that set of standards. List all the expected features for the options menu, list the performance checks that you will run through. Because where it is right now, I believe developers have to reverse engineer what is expected in terms of what needs to be supported in the PC space. And PC Port devs very probably do want to get top marks for their ports, but just don't have the time to individually reverse engineer the expectations of the PC audience. For Digital Foundry to have a video to say, Here is the current set of expectations in the options screen, in the navigation space, in the loading of textures, and so on. I think you guys could very quickly raise the quality of PC ports that are being released by having a centralized checklist of quality metrics for PC games.

[@LiraeNoir]

Yes! Console have certifications. PC games need a certification too. Not just for smooth framerate mindyou, but also checking for the quality of the menus, the scalability of the game, the presence of DRM, if the game is artificially made exclusive instead of being available in most stores, the presence of microtransactions (or worse, lootboxes), and so on.

[@iamastrangeloop96]

to be fair, alex already made a very similar video! "13 Ways To End Lousy PC Ports in 2023" Certification is a very interesting idea, and I very much agree about DF's unique position!

[@Kubose]

Big agree that Redfall feels like a game that they didn't want to make. Feels like Arkane didn't want to make it, and MS probably just wanted it out as fast as possible to get them working on other stuff.

[@WeeWeeJumbo]

it is extremely obvious that no one at Arkane loved this game and no one was proud of it, but i think we should probably look at Bethesda, not MS, in this case. it came from the same development cycle as Wolfenstein: Youngblood and Fallout 76

[@Kubose]

@@WeeWeeJumbo Oh yeah, I don't doubt Bethesda is at fault here, I just mean that ultimately MS could have decided to delay it again upon seeing the state of the game, but knew it was a flawed product at its core and just let it ship so that Arkane can start working on something else rather than getting stuck in revision hell on a DOA product for another year or two. Redfall feels like it doesn't know what it wants to be, I don't think delaying it could have made it much of a better game apart from fixing technical issues that'll be patched or are unfixable anyways.

[@xBINARYGODx]

@@Kubose well thats a goalpost shift - it was a Bethesda/Arcane thing, and Ms didn't bother to pay attention to you for various reasons good and bad. Really, they should have delayed it past other better games, and then maybe cancelled it AFTER announcing the other things the Arcane is working on. and while I get that MS has to wear it, that's a pr thing, we who pay more attention know this is a Bethesda thing. At lest MS wont make this mistake again - Bethesda cannot really be left to its own devices, outside of Todds' team and ID software, I suppose.

[@Kubose]

@@xBINARYGODx You think they should have delayed and then canceled it? After 4 years of dev time? Imo might as well get some return on investment, even if its a turd.

[@AmariMaahes]

I love listening to you three on my daily commute from and to work so much. Thank you guys for all your hard work and everything you do for us.

[@Mr_APeezy]

Besides the games they mentioned as fantastic early gen titles, I gotta throw out: Infamous: Second Son It came out within the first 6 months of the PS4’s launch (March 2014) and that game was unbelievably gorgeous. Also within that first year we got the incredible remasters of GTAV and TLOU which also looked fantastic. And since you also touched on Arkham Knight from 2015, gotta also include MGS: Ground Zeroes (2014) and of course MGS5: The Phantom Pain. Great DF Direct as always guys!

[@craigsampson3386]

Agreed 👍 Also man those MGS games on the FOX engine ran buttery smooth, the game play was a dream. Shame that engine has been left to rot since Konami and Kojima's break up.

[@theanimerapper6351]

I'm shocked nobody mentioned rise of the tomb raider, boot it up on PC after the dlss update and it looks like it came out yesterday

[@Mr_APeezy]

@@craigsampson3386 facts!! Like you said that insanely optimized engine has been left to literally rot UNLESS Konami uses it with those heavily rumored MGS remakes (1&3). We’ll see but I’m not holding out any hope.

[@rokkudayo]

2014 was also awesome for racing games. DriveClub, Forza Horizon 2, and Need for Speed Rivals, these 3 still look great to this very day.

[@peteparker22]

I would love to see another Infamous

[@Lishtenbird]

I don't remember the last time a AAA game captured me for longer than 20 minutes. Lately I just watch review videos and think - "neat, maybe in a year on sale", and move on. Incidentally, many of the previous one I got "on sale" I haven't even launched...

[@transtechgirl8786]

It’s such a shame that an entire generation of games will never get fixed and always be as far as I’m concerned unplayable.

[@Wobbothe3rd]

Hyperbole. It's not even remotely that bad.

[@transtechgirl8786]

@@Wobbothe3rd maybe for you, but I can’t stand playing games with stutter. I expect a much higher standard if I’m devoting my time to a game.

[@killerfugu2659]

@@Wobbothe3rd If that was true we wouldn;t have the first 25 minutes of this video devoted to discussing how bad it is.

[@marciamakesmusic]

Yeah it's also a shame that some people insist on blaming "lazy developers" instead of shitty product managers, marketing teams, CEOs and publishing companies constantly chasing dollar signs.

[@voyager9959]

@@Wobbothe3rd Are you daft? It's not hyperbole, it's a fact.

[@ScrapKing73]

Make Oliver a DF Direct Weekly regular please!!!!

[@peckc16]

When I got into PC gaming in 2017 with my 1080ti it felt awesome. I feel like most mahore games ran incredible with few problems. Things have gotten so bad since covid I wait for reviews to see if a game is even finished on PC before buying and sometimes if I really want it, I'll just get it on my ps5 because its probably better.

[@dante19890]

it was cuz pc at that point was so far ahead of the console spec that it just bruteforced the games so hard people actually thought the games were well optimized.

[@supertrendymoneymaker0722]

If I ever get any third party game or console exclusive game on PC, I am very selective with the developers I trust! Because too many times we are getting outsource developers giving us shitty PC ports! I personally see myself as a console gamer first, and I know how PC gaming is mindblowin with higher framerates and resolutions, but you can have all that bells and whistles on a polished Turd 💩 game! Especially if it struggles to have higher framerates! PC gaming will be back in action when Crysis 4 is release! A game that will melt PCs for 2023 and beyond!

[@AJ-xv7oh]

That's not true. I got into PC gaming in 2018 and i noticed immediately how poorly alot of games were made. This has been going on for years.

[@mangshu21]

@@dante19890 have you actually done any testing yourself?? lmao i love it when random people type shit with no evidence to back up their claim

[@anonony9081]

I'm the opposite, I have a PS5 but I keep buying things on PC because 4k120 just can't be beat. I can't stand playing any game on console knowing I could be playing 4k 120 if I got it on PC

[@hansolo6831]

The homies are back. Love to see John

[@bigboihenable]

I can't believe Oliemack tried to compare Redfall to Days Gone... That was actually pretty wild. Glad the other two shut that down.

[@chillnspace777]

For real. Totally different games

[@-Bill.]

PC gaming sales are getting drastically smashed right now due to the derth of AAA titles and the low quality ports. I sell computers for a living, and while the general rising costs of food and necessities have had a negative impact on sales, the lack of any real "sales driving" titles has been massive. The major popular titles have been designed to either run on a potato (i.e. League of Legends, Rainbow 6 Siege) or are available on the consoles for much cheaper hardware investment cost (i.e. most current AAA titles) There really isn't any current excitement in the PC gaming space right now, maybe Diablo 4 (which will be on consoles), but I think most people are just morbidly curious about how Activision-Blizzard will screw it up.

[@yellowblanka6058]

You forgot an important factor - incredibly bloated GPU prices. When coupled with piss-poor PC ports, people aren't exactly running out to buy gaming computers/GPUs. Also, Diablo IV is being released on PS4/XBO as well, so I doubt that is going to be driving new hardware purchases.

[@-Bill.]

The prices are high, but they were during the pandemic and chip shortage as well, and there wasn't nearly the slow-down there is right now. During the height of crypto and chip shortage, even a 3070 could go for over $1000, but they still sold a quick as we could get them. The problem with pricing now is that people don't have any motivation to buy and are resenting the GPU manufacturers trying to normalize the inflated pricing instead of letting the prices fall now that demand is less. I know Diablo is coming to consoles, but it's about the only upcoming PC release of note. Given the crappy performance of these Unreal Engine 4 titles at the end of its life span, can you imagine how much worse it will be on the new Unreal Engine 5 unless you've got a team like Epic to optimize it (like they did for Fortnite). Unreal Engine 5 titles that I've previewed seem to suffer from the stuttering even worse.

[@yellowblanka6058]

@@-Bill. I think the stimulus checks had a lot to do with that vs. people thinking the GPUs were worth the money. It was a perfect storm of people being stuck inside and having $1000+ checks to play with. Personally I would never pay that much for a GPU, stimulus or not, but I know there's a fair number of irrational people in the public.

[@beardalaxy]

@@yellowblanka6058 I remember going to Walmart right after everyone got those checks and seeing at least 5 people walking out of the building with massive TVs. Huge companies really reaped the benefits of that whole thing and now that it's gone the people they hired are getting let go too. What a shit show.

[@yellowblanka6058]

@@beardalaxy Yep, between that and Crypto, Nvidia thought they could set a new pricing standard for GPUs, but now they're just sitting on shelves because absent of government checks and with inflation raising the cost of commodity goods, people aren't so keen on throwing $700-1000+ at a GPU. Unfortunately, I think it's going to take a decade of tepid sales for the prices to slowly creep back down to sane levels.

[@SilverEye91]

What bugs me is that at least Jedi Survivor seemed like it was not too far from being fixed. At least on PC. A couple of patches in and disabling ray tracing gives me a really solid experience on a 3070. Obviously ray tracing is still bringing it to its knees and the FSR implementation just gives truly awful looking image quality but it really gives me the impression that this game was not far from being done. Of course they probably crunched a lot but say a couple of months delay to prevent that too and I think it would have been a lot better.

[@xtalpax902]

With zelda,sf6,diablo4 and ff16?

[@SilverEye91]

@@xtalpax902 So delay it to a better launch window? What's the problem with that? Most of Respawn could have worked on the next project while a small crew got the game patched, then just let it sit for a couple of months for a right release window. It's not like that doesn't happen with other media, why do games have to be different?

[@chillnspace777]

That game needed to be out before all the Star Wars dates in early May. I would agree with you for the most part, but this game would not matter past Zelda and going through the rest of the summer / autumn

[@xBINARYGODx]

"is that at least " don't do that, that's you capitulating. Don't let worse games make less worse games feel better.

[@daniellivesey6749]

It's not as if UE 5.1 doesn't have horrible shader compilation issues either. Fortnite 5.1 stutters a ton in dx12, this isn't a problem that will go away when developers switch from UE4.

[@willuigi64]

pre comp is a good bandaid solution, but proper pso caching needs to become standard in ue releases. just as you say, even fortnite on the newest version is experiencing huge shader comp stutters. shameful

[@Omar-Asim]

​@@willuigi64 You seem to know what you are talking about. Can you explain why this was a non-issue for PC games in the PS3 era (and early PS4), but has now become such a widespread difficult problem for devs to tackle?

[@mechanicalmonk2020]

​@@Omar-Asim because DX11 took care of shader compilation. DX12 puts the responsibility on the developer but also allows for more complex things which were not possible with DX11

[@SerBallister]

@@Omar-Asim PS3 used pre-compiled shaders, the PS3 operating system didn't compile them from source code like what happens on PC.

[@dante19890]

People think unreal 5 is gonna be better but it will actually be even more demanding

[@uninfamous]

You always do a good job, John.

[@matthewpokora336]

Alien Isolation. Good shout John. Utterly brilliant game. The sound FX as well are simply amazing

[@RobertFromEarth]

Alex mentionned in his intro that we're getting tons of good games in the non-AAA category. This is true and PC gaming should not be only about big (bug) AAA titles. A lot of good games based on the Unity Engine / C# I've played recently: Wasteland 3, Inside, Stray, The Entropy Centre, ...

[@steel5897]

Age of Wonders 4 is a GOTY contender for me, a shining example of a true PC game (and on a genre) that just has no place on consoles.

[@paul1979uk2000]

That's the irony, a lot of indie games usually just work on the PC, it's more of an issue with big publishers. Considering that indie developers have far less resources, there are no excuses for big publishers, and all it suggests, they don't care as long as you keep giving your money to them, and the only way they will care is if games stop buying, at least on release, or there is a lot more negative publicity on those games, so fewer gamers will buy them on release. Honestly, I blame review sites, they put so much work on reviewing a game but hardly any on the quality of the port of a game, and I think that should factor in to the review, because in the end, publishers are treating early adopters of games as idiots, paying full price for a buggy mess, it's better just to wait, get the game cheaper and where it works as intended.

[@Coxy-b34]

All we hear form the basement dwellers is how wonderful PC is and how much more powerful it is over the consoles. But all that power is only good for playing indie games that could easily be done on 20 year old PC's? Wow.

[@theanimerapper6351]

@@paul1979uk2000 well indie devs make way less complicated games, im definitely not giving AAA excuses tho. Indie devs are also more talented and that plays a huge part as well

[@2canwin635]

@@theanimerapper6351 “indie devs are also more talented” point to one indie dev more talented than fromsoft

[@overdev1993]

Im still on my rtx 2080 and the recent triple A games showed me that I dont want to upgrade my PC if the games still don't run good on new hardware, after almost 20 years of PC gaming as my main platform Im thinking about switching to consoles.

[@WeeWeeJumbo]

i abandoned the PC as a gaming platform and the only thing i miss is keyboard input for a small minority of games

[@igorthelight]

I couldn't switch to consoles because i like to tinker and install mods ;-)

[@emlyndewar]

I’ve just stopped playing AAA tbh and it has been very enjoyable. Playing games at 720 for the most part, on medium/low 😮, on an Ayaneo Air. Beats chasing framerates, and being frustrated by stutter on the desktop.

[@Apoplectic_Spock]

Welcome back, John! Hope you had a lovely time away!

[@MrWizardGG]

They each deserve it in droves

[@LolaliciousSmiley]

I don't have, nor have I ever owned, a PC with gaming capacity greater than minesweeper. I don't even really play new games, but I like these podcasts. I hope PC gaming will be treated as a greater priority during AAA development in the future.

[@Knockout1811]

Oliver! No offence, but I love to rewatch one of your videos if i need to sleep ... your voice is so calm and relaxing! Love you guys, great work, always!

[@Kmaitland89]

Also, according to Phil Spencers interview, Redfall Is the game Arkane WANTED to make.

[@solarstrike33]

...at least until the inevitable expose about the game's sordid dev cycle comes out this time next year.

[@ohnonotchrismusic]

Alex Battaglia: from Crysis to Crisis. Available in all bespoke bookstores.

[@chrisbullock6477]

The Order 1886 was a work of art of a tech demo and doesn't get enough praise.

[@XZ-III]

xD no

[@R17759]

If it were just a tech demo maybe. Instead it was sold as a $60 game.

[@WickedRibbon]

It's easy to look back at The Order and admire its technical achievements, but you have to remember at the time they were selling it as a full priced $60 game. For that money, the game was incredibly short, restrictive in design, and offered very little replay value. It failed as a "product", even though the tech and premise had lots of potential.

[@peteparker22]

It was a great ride and an interesting story but im not sure it should've been full priced

[@Crimsongz]

Cool tech demo indeed

[@Maryokutaizero]

If I remember correctly, Virginia ran at 24fps and was also locked at that framerate on PC, trying to mimic the cinematic feel (it also incoporated "cuts" into its gameplay by making the main character "teleport" forward when walking long distances for example). It was an interesting concept, and I really enjoyed the game for wat it was but it's not for everyone.

[@vyasrushi5177]

You guys forgot Driveclub while talking about good looking early PS4/Xone Era games....aside from resolution, I think it's still one of the best-looking racing games out there, surpassed only by GT7 to be honest

[@pipgoesthepossum]

Honestly in terms of lighting and weather effects it easily outstrips GT7 still.

[@ConnorH2111]

​@@pipgoesthepossumhahaha no it doesn't, Driveclub rain effects are very unrealistic.

[@existentialselkath1264]

@@ConnorH2111 hard disagree. GT7 effects are solid, but they're just bogstandard effects that do the job. Driveclub had such attention to detail that even with the lower graphical fidelity, it still looks much better in many ways. GT7 replays with full RT reflections can't be beat, but during gameplay it's closer than it has any right to be

[@ConnorH2111]

@@existentialselkath1264 Yeah it probably looks close on your 1080p phone or tv, Try GT7 on a 4k TV then you'll see a massive difference.

[@existentialselkath1264]

@@ConnorH2111 well obviously the resolution looks better. That's not what anyone is talking about. You disputed the fact that the rain effects look better in GT7, that's nothing to do with the resolution. It's about the quality of the water shaders, rain particles, wiper physics, windscreen effects, etc

[@skywalkerranch]

AAA gaming on consoles is broken, too. Thanks for your efforts once again guy's.

[@acf8888]

Yeah, Redfall and Jedi Survivor have lot's of issues on consoles.

[@007GoldenLion]

​@@acf8888 but not as hugs as on PC

[@aggies11]

I also think part of the issue is that there is a crysis(sic) in modern big budget game development. Developers seem even more constrained for time then they ever have been and games are coming in even hotter than ever. In this scenario the gulf between console and PC means that the PC versions require extra work from developers when they are already struggling just to get the "normal" amount of work for the consoles done. Which means I'm not sure if it will change anytime soon.

[@ATLsF1N3ST91]

That's the opposite of the truth. Games are getting delayed more than ever and companies are scared shitless to be accused of crunching. Devs are just doing a shit job, knowing they can fix it in post, and get paid to do so.

[@yellowblanka6058]

@@ATLsF1N3ST91 That's as far from the truth as you can get, crunch is still very real, and all the pressure to release pre-maturely comes from the publisher. The majority of developers would prefer to take more time and fix the issues, but publishers have unrealistic deadlines/release dates etc.

[@xBINARYGODx]

@@ATLsF1N3ST91 your doing that thing where a sharp increase in bad ports makes you blind to the games that launched just fine, or were fine after a day one patch. Most games are actually just fine, on all platforms.

[@ATLsF1N3ST91]

@@xBINARYGODx That is the exact OPPOSITE of what I'm doing. No one complains about games that launch in an okay state, or get a Day 1 patch that actually fixes the issue. What are you talking about?

[@theinsfrijonds]

Fun fact: In Old English 'to forspeak' was forsprecan. It meant - to speak against, speak ill of, denounce - to speak amiss or wrongly - to deny

[@JJSideshowBob]

Fully agree with you on Alien Isolation, John, it truly stands the test of time. Except for it's lack of temporal anti-aliasing, but there's an injection mod for that.

[@Wasdniak]

To quote the old Playstation lead: The current state of AAA development is unsustainable. One of my theories is actually that a lot of these studios are TOO large and it's contributing to some of the many development woes that we've been seeing.

[@TheNerd]

There is a simple solution to "The Crisis": Wait for the reviews and do not buy those games AT ALL (not even when they get patched). And in general: Do not buy games from big publishers like EA, Ubisoft etc. *_AT ALL_* *The only way to wake AAA companies up, is to reduce their profits. Personally I did not buy a single EA or Ubisoft game in 15 years for that simple reason*

[@BenderBendingRodriguezOFFICIAL]

"Personally I did not buy a single EA or Ubisoft game in 15 years for that simple reason" You're definitely lying.

[@scopecreep_]

Oliver hit the nail on the head-the weirdest part of redfall is just how non-triple A it feels. It feels like a steam free to play alpha

[@nephirion4868]

UE4 saturation, Denuvo , £70 console ports with barely any PC specific features or optimisation, over reliance on upscaling FSR/DLSS.

[@landoishisname]

with respect to CDPR using UE5, they can edit the engine if they want to do specific things, the frost giant devs carved out a bunch of stuff they didn't plan to use to make the UE5 engine more lightweight for their use case

[@DarthStone]

A few years ago, I seem to remember Digital Foundry blaming the fact that CD Projekt Red was using a proprietary engine instead of the ubiquitous Unreal Engine 4 for all their problems. Now it’s the other way around? I think it’s basically a question of where the publisher’s priorities are (console or pc) and their particular managment of the situation. PC is ALWAYS going to have shitty ports with very few exceptions.

[@LeesChannel]

The stock situation with the Analogue Pocket is dire. People have been waiting over a year after paying in full, with no idea when they will get their devices. There's no transparency whatsoever. Honestly, it feels like Analogue have taken peoples' money hostage as it seems like they are selling the systems and accessories through side channels with huge markups without actually delivering to pre-orderers.

[@Jaem-ml4lx]

As an Xbox guy, I think Playstation has the superior games.

[@grahamt19781]

DF has to be the best damn channel on You Tube for PC Gaming. Love this episode.

[@kiisseli1337]

Always fantastic to see more cinematic 24fps games. Like they are meant to be!

[@sololoquy3783]

And unstable framepacing on top of that too. Really gives a sense of anticipation & surprise at every turn.

[@MrBl3ki]

Movie-like > unnatural and fake high-framerates. PC gamers are finally learning the charms of consoles. I hope devs remove the different graphical settings as well so we can truly enjoy the experience.

[@voyager9959]

Damn Goobisoft...

[@takumifujiwara9181]

EXACTLY! my eyes can't even see 60fps when its closed!

[@cikame]

I find low frame rates combined with input lag really lend video games a weighty realism that's hard to replicate, truly inspired design.

[@3diamonds524]

I'm just here to say i love this channel.

[@EmeraldForestCat]

The problem is not at all in the presence or absence of its own game engine. Major game companies deliberately refuse to spend the time and money to bring the PC versions of their games to an acceptable state. They are used to the fact that you can release a raw product and then fix everything with patches. This is a completely conscious and balanced decision that is made by those who receive the maximum profit from the sale of the game. The management of large companies and their shareholders are quite happy with this approach. But once they change their mind, all the technical problems will magically disappear. So the problem is not technology or hardware. The problem is that such behavior of large companies remains unpunished. Perhaps a couple of class action lawsuits from dissatisfied buyers could change the situation for the better.

[@janklaassen6404]

Oh, it's not unpunished. They get buried in negative reviews at release.

[@EmeraldForestCat]

@@janklaassen6404 This will not affect the distribution of bonuses for management. And if so, why would they change anything?

[@janklaassen6404]

@@EmeraldForestCat If the word of bad optimisation gets out sales will drop. Sales hit upper management.

[@EmeraldForestCat]

@@janklaassen6404 There is an example of Cyberpunk. Bad reviews and a sharp drop in sales did not prevent the distribution of bonuses for managers.

[@CanOfFanta7]

Nice to see John introduce Alex first. When Rich introduces Oliver first it feels like a low blow with Alex being there longer

[@homuhomu4678]

They should’ve limited the co op to 2 players instead of 4, and then work on the immersive sim elements more

[@luke44444]

I love this channel so much. Just this past week we've had multiple tech analysis of newly released games, a new DF Retro (one of my favourite segments) and the DF Direct Weekly podcast. All top quality content.

[@leftisthominid2028]

We finally got the answer that we/I had been seeking!

[@SimplexPL]

Ironically, you could run Man of medan on Deck in properly frame paced 24fps.

[@thombias]

Never thought i'd ever see someone at DF mention or remember Paragon. RIP

[@iamastrangeloop96]

"Cyberpunk in its current state is far more performant and visually impressive than every single Unreal Engine 4 game ever made ... it outclasses them all" John layin it down damn!

[@grahamt19781]

It's true. I'm always so impressed my how quickly the game loads and how smooth it runs even at sub 60. It's a great engine.

[@dante19890]

Ye but it took 2 years to get there

[@grahamt19781]

@@dante19890 still faster than you would get there

[@dante19890]

@@grahamt19781 Low IQ comment. John did make a unfair comparasion there comparing a new broken release to a patched up game that had 2 years of updates and patches behind it. Cyberpunk at launch was one of the worst broken releases ever

[@grahamt19781]

@@dante19890 low IQ comment. Cyberpunk release issues were not predominantly PC performance related at all so your comment is illogical and poorly thought out. The Red Engine has been above average in terms of relative performance compared to UE4 ever since CP released. John knows more than you; that's why you flip burgers in McDonald's.

[@weaverquest]

With regards to VRAM usage I remember Mark Cerny in his road to PS5 video talking about how their storage solution made much more efficient use of the available VRAM because now you only need to store assets needed for the next 1 second of the gameplay vs 30 seconds on the PS4. Maybe the lack of direct storage implementation in current gen PC games is the culprit here?

[@dante19890]

The IO is gonna be the weak link in pc gaming going forward. Assat streaming and stuttering will be a thing for a long time Direct storage api with gpu decompression is the only way but it's gonna take a while until it's in every game.

[@zhaf]

When we get over this pain period with cross Gen broken PC games. Do you (DF) think the AMD X3D type CPUs will still come on top or will the CPUs with more cores and threads be better?

[@zihechen3111]

X3d has reaching to its limits.

[@dante19890]

What really matters is the IPC and the performance of the cores themselves

[@zihechen3111]

@@dante19890 the thing is zen4 only got 6% ipc increase. X3d, and the whole ryzen series has reached its limitations

[@fafski1199]

X3D really hasn't really got anywhere to go, plus only a select few games benefit from having more cache (50% or so of games). The same goes with cores/threads. It's pointless going much above 16-cores because the gains are logarithmic and any benefits made then begin to taper off fairly rapidly, beyond that point. Even node size is fast heading straight into a brick-wall, where architecture won't be able to get any smaller (at least until quantum computing becomes a thing). Higher clock frequencies, higher bandwidth, IPC improvements, core improvements with more power efficiency, stacked wafers with integrated 3D circuits and modular (upgradable) chiplets/tiles, that are dedicated & specialised to do specific tasks, all aided by AI/ML, is pretty much where CPU's will likely head over the next few years. I'd also expect them to start growing in size (upwards vertically) once that brick-wall is hit, on node size shrinkage. It wouldn't even surprise me we even see a secondary CPU or a large co-processer come into play, in order to offload or supplement some of the functions of the CPU at some point in the future. Also within 2-3 gens, we might see a small amount of stacked HBM memory or/and NAND flash memory (SSD Storage) added directly onto the CPU die, which would also greatly speed things up.

[@dante19890]

@@zihechen3111 IPC gain wasnt great on zen 4 but it does clock significantly higher. But it wasn't as much of an improvement as zen 2 to zen 3

[@420trippyhippie]

Developers/publishers should be taking notes. You guys raise some excellent points. One can hope that there are some devs and corpo's watching this and taking the criticism seriously

[@ArtbyOscarMejia]

To me the Phil Spencer`s interview felt like “ look world! We are doing poorly, we will never win, let us buy activation, king, blizzard … please! only this way we would have a fighting chance”

[@Fegisen]

Feels like when they introduced DLSS and FSR, it feels like the developers thinks let us throw that in there and it will fix the performance/fps

[@Primarch_Vulkan]

PC Gaming is only in crisis if viewd through the lens of AAA games.

[@johnboylan3832]

Who cares about indy junk.

[@StarRain6]

very extremely true.

[@Coxy-b34]

$2000 GPU's to play indie games🤔

[@StarRain6]

​@@Coxy-b34 totk 4k 60fps pre-release.

[@Primarch_Vulkan]

@@Coxy-b34 There is also AA games like A Plague Tale: Requiem, that game is stunning. Also who cares what people spend their money on and how they use it.

[@SoFishtry]

Do think there's some short term memory with port quality--there've been bad PC ports since the dawn of porting--but it's bleak nonetheless. It is pretty disappointing that Indie is willing to put in the time to get things right, but established names aren't, AAA or otherwise. One additional factor here that's an issue that you guys didnt touch on is that the standards for PC ports have also gone up. One thing that people don't think about is that *tons* of older ports broke above 60fps, but people didn't notice as often before since >60hz monitors were far less common. Bioware's PS360 titles are an example, with Dragon Age Origins for instance having pathing bugs all over at >60fps, among other issues.

[@chrisbullock6477]

Funny how ATOMIC HEART actually ran well and fulfilled on the graphical and artistic look it showed off earlier before launch and that was completely forgotten about.

[@maximefraisier1010]

Atomic Heart run like a charm and look damn well, but it has no ray tracing has it was promised and it show.

[@Inpulsiveproductions]

​​@@maximefraisier1010nd if it had ray tracing it would stutter and run like crap so...

[@steel5897]

Atomic Heart is just a mid game. It's beautiful, but nothing special. Not bad, not great.

[@MinosML]

I understand it's weird saying this in the DF comments section, but it just shows that graphical fidelity isn't the be-all-end-all of a game. It needs to be actually good too. Why isn't Watch Dogs 2 mentioned outside benchmarks again?

[@chillnspace777]

The game is wild in the AI enemies. If u fuck around you can get over whelmed pretty quickly with those repair bot fixing things and the air drone drops of enemies 😆

[@realforest]

Once DirectStorage GPU Decompression actually becomes a shipping feature, I think the cpu demands (at least multiple threads) will go down slightly freeing up the cpu for other tasks.

[@yellowblanka6058]

They would need a sizeable/majority of the market to both adopt Windows 11 and a GPU/SSD etc. capable of that for it to be a common minimum requirement, which I don't see happening anytime soon.

[@realforest]

@@yellowblanka6058 Devs have already ruined it with TLOU part 1, the game runs hardware decompression algorithms on the CPU. Which is why the cpu usage is insanity on any pc platform. DirectStorage would just allow a gpu decompression path, which works on gpus 900 series and above (D3D12 + Shader Model 6.0 hardware support)

[@yellowblanka6058]

@@realforest Ah, I stand corrected on the GPU side, the problem is that AFAIK DirectStorage is Windows 11 only, an OS that is also for some bizarre reason out of bounds for a lot of very recent CPUs which has slowed adoption so I think my overall point stands.

[@realforest]

@@yellowblanka6058 Windows 10 also has directstorage gpu decompression support luckily. Epic Games just needs to make it an unreal engine V plugin.

[@yellowblanka6058]

@@realforest Huh, I had thought they were always talking that up as a Windows 11 exclusive.

[@VampireNoblesse]

EXACTLY! we need the 360 era back! we need games that hype & deliver! (Xbox needs to make great games again...)

[@chillnspace777]

Bring back the arcade stuff. Or that 100 v 1 game show. Something. Gamepass is alright but it's losing its appeal

[@JoeMaranophotography]

I remember games being PC only or PC first and carried high regard due to that. I cant think of many PC exclusives these days.

[@marciamakesmusic]

The state of AAA games is so abysmal because games have become a stronghold for giant corporations who see them as functionally printing money. Games at this scale with this much polish required simply take longer to make in this day and age, and are not compatible with profit chasing unless (and we know this to be the case), you're okay with shipping unfinished software and demanding a premium for it. DF is great when it comes to technical analysis, but I feel like y'all brush up against the real crux of the issue here without ever outright saying it. People are obsessed with blaming lazy developers but it's obvious to anyone remotely cued in to the gaming industry that this simply isn't true and I wish you'd do more to emphasize this. Indie games don't have these problems because the scope is smaller and the developers are often in charge of their own time management, not because the developers are somehow more competent.

[@alexatkin]

I've been telling people for years that once games move to current-gen that PCs would have problems due to PCs having bottlenecks that the consoles don't. Every time I was laughed at. I'm trying not to be smug about it as its not like I WANTED to be right, but its hard.

[@chengcao418]

For Cyberpunk being so impressive graphically right now It's actually mostly Nvidia's work. They first developed the raytraced local shadows for them, now they developed the entire overdrive mode for CDPR. I doubt CDPR at its current state has the capability for such things

[@ajdaniel8128]

Cyberpunk graphically looks very outdated. Path tracing automatically doesn't change the graphics. Those horrible Pop ins are still present and distracting especially while driving. I completed the whole game. In my opinion it's one of the most underwhelming AAA game ever made

[@bern9642]

​@@ajdaniel8128 does redfall graphics more modern then?

[@ajdaniel8128]

@@bern9642 Redfall looks like a PS2 game

[@zikarisg9025]

You really should do a video series "The state of UE4 in 2023" where you review the pro's and cons of common game engines...

[@Dynasty1818]

PC Gaming isn't in crisis, publishers forcing devs to release shoddy PC ports and/or too early is the problem. Hell even the console versions are performing badly, all screams "released too early" and the publishers don't care because too many gamers are stupid and just constantly pre-order due to FOMO, the patheticness that is streaming and feeling "part of something" etc etc. The psychological battle is there and we need to win it, creating a market where the consumer doesn't buy until release or reviews are out (but even then so many reviewers are too scared to say bad things about performance etc because the publisher will just stop sending them games to review and kill their business so...)

[@walter_the_wobot2349]

Respawn bragged about making Survivor in just 3 years. When EA asked them if they wanted to delay for more polish they were like “nah, we got this”😅

[@xBINARYGODx]

@@walter_the_wobot2349 yup, as we have learned over and over again - instantly blaming the publisher is the easy answer that gets proven wrong far too many times.

[@emlyndewar]

Yeah, it’s tiring to hear just how talented and awesome all these teams are, but the evil publisher overlord made them do a bad job. I feel like a lot of teams are just trading on their names now, the real talent is perhaps long gone or not interested.

[@captain_hanzo]

You are literally describing the current crisis PC gaming is in. What's your issue with framing it that way?

[@Dynasty1818]

@@captain_hanzo Because "PC gaming is in crisis" is too vague a description (no doubt deliberate clickbait crap as usual though for views). It suggests we have hardware issues or PC gaming is an issue. It's not. The hardware is fine, PC gaming is as strong if not stronger than ever and still growing. Publishers TREATING PC gaming the way they are is the issue. So the title should be more akin to "PC gaming being treated worse than ever lately" or similar, not "PC gaming in crisis" that paints too broad a brush stroke over the issue.

[@xBINARYGODx]

It's legal in various US states, and the Lionshare of developers in the US are located in those states - so I say, all RT lighting should just be assumed to be baked unless it's coming from Japan or maybe Europe.

[@HueyTheDoctor]

Dead Island 2 and Atomic Heart are both UE4 powered games that look incredible and play at a nearly flawless 60fps on console and 120fps+ on PC. It's not as though UE4 games were always doomed to poor optimisation, you just needed a developer willing to devote years to the process.

[@dante19890]

It probably helped a lot that there were last gen versions of these games. Easier to scale up for current gen console and PC with alot of headroom.

[@paracuja]

"Cinematic 24FPS" nice ... and the next game will be "Silent Film 16FPS" in black and white? 😂

[@DavidS00]

Please do the worst pc ports of the year video. It's not mean spirited, games really shouldn't be releasing broken, no matter who is to blame.

[@james-andrew-adams]

For Redfall: It reminds me of Generation Zero, that robot open world game set in a Scandanavian (?) country. So, so similar.