DF Direct Weekly #253: Xbox Post-Spencer Aftermath, Should MS Hire Bluepoint? Mario Wonder Switch 2!

Hello there and welcome to this the 253rd edition of DFDirect weekly. Our weekly show where we discuss the latest gaming and technology news or in the case of this one discussing the aftermath of the latest gaming and technology news. Join me first of all Oliver McKenzie. >> Yes, Rich. Aftermath. Very ominous omen today for this DF Direct. >> Absolutely. And of course John Linnamman. Hello. Hey guys. How's it going? Yes, Aftermath. Uh, we're back, but we have some interesting topics today, I think. >> Absolutely. Okay, let's crack on. This video is sponsored by the Innocent GA27T1M monitor. This 27in 1440p display has a 1 millisecond response, support for G-Sync, and a max refresh rate of 320 Hz with additional options for 120, 144, 165, and 180 hertz. Using a mini lead panel, the GA27T1M also has robust high dynamic range support with highlights of up to 1,000 nits via a full array local dimming setup with 1152 zones. There's also MPCS technology, effectively using black frame insertion to boost motion clarity and reduce blur. With display port 1.4 4 and HDMI 2.1 support. The GA271M is good for supporting both high refresh rate display gaming on PC as well as accepting signals from your gaming consoles at up to 120 Hz. There's also USB hub functionality and a headphone jack along with rear RGB lighting. The display ships in a smart white color with accompanying color matched power supply and cables with a discrete profile thanks to narrow three-sided bezels. And a metal stand is bundled with the screen. Available at sale prices now on Amazon. I had fun checking out this display playing HDR Cyberpunk 2077 [music] RT Overdrive at over 300 frames per second. So, check out the video description below and click through to learn more. [music] Um, first news topic of the week. Obviously, we're still reeling from the news that uh Phil Spencer has uh retired from Microsoft. Um, Xbox has been taken over by a new EVP/CEO, Asha Sharma. Um, there was a lot of confusion basically about what this changeover meant. Um, apart from a new boss and um, well, we do actually now have some, well, I was going to say some clarifications, but I don't actually think there's been too much clarification at all. But what we do have is an interview conducted by Jez Cordon from Windows Central and uh we basically have uh some explanation of some of the strategy elements that were discussed in the in uh Jamba's opening statement. Um Oliver, I took a look at this and um it kind of just seems to me, hey, I'm new here. It's business as usual, but here's some stuff that I think you might like to hear. I'm not I'm not actually seeing much in the way of new strategy at all. Um I'm curious what you make of this. >> I I completely agree. When I started reading this article, I thought, hey, she's actually making some semiinteresting commitments. Like she's saying, "Hey, we're going to make a commitment to Xbox starting with the console." Like I think that our core Xbox fans and players have invested up to 25 years of themselves in our universes and our console. And I want to make sure that we're starting with the console and committed to Xbox. that sounds, you know, interesting potentially. And then Matt Booty also mentions how, you know, they see themselves as a first-party publisher and not a third party publisher and they have a commitment to being a first-party games publisher, which again kind of sounds like, okay, well, what direction are we heading in here? That's interesting. But then there's this from her introductory letter just like a week ago where she says that gaming is like across devices and spans far beyond the bounds of any single piece of hardware and it's PC, mobile, and cloud and all that stuff. So, I kind of just think what she's saying here, like kind of like what you said, right? They're pleasant statements. They're pleasant sentiments, but ultimately like she's juggling a bunch of different contradictory kind of statements or vibes that she's giving off here. That all sound pleasant enough, but I think probably what they round down to is there's not going to be like a dramatic change in direction from their current approach. I don't think there will be like a gigantic writing of the ship immediately or changing of the of the rules of engagement or anything like that too too quickly here. Um, I don't really see that much changing in the short to medium term in part because a lot of commitments are already made and you know there will be a PC as console Xbox in 2 or 3 years and there will be continued multiplatform releases of that I'm sure not only the announced ones but also some unannounced ones I suspect. And you know, I suspect that the realities of the console business that have caused Microsoft to shift their strategy, those don't change too much. And obviously, you know, you have Sat Nadella still talking about how their biggest gaming business is Windows, how they want to be everywhere on every platform. And even in his announcement letter announcing Asharma as the new Microsoft gaming CEO, he focuses on studios and cloud multiplatform, and he doesn't actually mention Xbox hardware or Xbox as a console platform. So, all I'm getting from this letter is like, well, this letter and this interview and all the material that's come out since then is like there are some tentative steps in contradictory directions, but I actually don't think that there's going to be that much of a change. Maybe there's more of a change to long-term strategy. Like a lot of the things that have been done under Phil Spencer's tenure, you can't unwind the multiplatform strategy like that, even if you wanted to, even though it was prudent to do so, which I don't think it is. You can't unwind the next generation Xbox like that. you can't unwind third party Xbox hardware like that. You know, like all these things are in motion and any decisions that she's going to make might shape things further out from this. But I I strongly suspect we're still headed on the same path and I'm not even sure how much she wants to deviate from that path in the medium to long term. I'm not really sure there's a place for Microsoft to go in too many other directions other than the other than the direction they're already headed. >> Yeah. Um John, what do you make of this return to Xbox pledge that was uh that was in the initial address and uh in the Windows Central interview? Um Asha Sharma's talking about what she thinks this return to Xbox actually is and it seems to be already a disconnect between what people were kind of expecting. Um, you know, I think there's still a core user base of Xbox users, dedicated hardcore users who've been there for like 25 years saying basically, well, you know, we love consoles and um this new strategy that we've seen from Microsoft has actually been uh disconcerting. [snorts] And basically the return to Xbox is basically um well, we're making a new console, which is something that Sarah Bond and Phil Spencer had already pledged anyway. So, I'm I'm not seeing what's new here. Well, I'll tell you what's new, Rich. When you say return to Xbox, I saw one big thing this week. The major might be coming back. >> Major Nelson had a meeting with Asha. So, we get the major back in there. I miss I miss Major Nelson. So, that would be a step in the right direction. No. Um, for real though, um, I think it's exactly as Oliver said, you can't just change these strategies on a whim, right? and everything that you're saying, she's saying, this comes back to this perception that a console is only valuable if it has exclusives. And do we believe that? I think that's that's an interesting statement to think about because there are some arguments that that is super important. And then there's other arguments that maybe that's not what they need to do. I think right now with the state of Xbox going fully exclusive would be very difficult. And this kind of creates a chicken and an egg situation, right? Like it could be argued you need exclusives to build that user base when building that user base takes time and money, right? And if you don't build that user base, then that user then the user base you do have is maybe not able to sustain all these projects. I actually feel though that you know stuff like game pass may have been the catalyst for a lot of these decisions that had to happen. Like games are expensive and they're making expensive games and right >> you know Microsoft has a ton of money but they're not just gonna keep pouring money into things that aren't making money right that's not how you stay that rich. So, I still do think that there is this connection where the game pass, it's like it was a drive to get the users and it did probably get some users, but I'm not sure it got enough users and it didn't make up the difference to support these games financially necessarily and that the multiplatform strategy essentially addresses that by allowing them to open it up to a larger audience. But now that they've done that, how do you walk that back without, you know, causing turmoil? And also, they don't currently have that user base, right, that they would need to be console exclusive. Uh, and I mean, there's a reason why even Sony's played around, there's talk about them going back on it, but they've played around in the PC pool a lot, and they're doing so with their multiplayer games. It's like the cost of games has reached the point where a single platform, it's it's difficult to sustain at the production quality that people are starting to expect. I I also just think that like with everything that Microsoft has done over the past two years, basically since the infamous just four games announcement from Phil, we all know how that went. I think they've just lost so much consumer confidence in their product. >> That's lost that's the big thing. >> They've increased prices. They've gone fully multiplatform for all their tentpole franchises, for Halo, for Forza, for everything practically. they've gone down the path of basically losing that core audience and their sales are are by all reports much lower than than corresponding PlayStation sales. So I think it's hard to unring that bell at this point and bring back consumer confidence to have like a properly exclusive Xbox brand. I'm not really sure you could do it even if you wanted to do it because they're kind of set down like this path dependency now of well multiplatform because we don't have a platform. So that's the thing though is like I would assume that she's things she's saying are setting up the next generation, right? And this would likely influence that strategy and everyone starts well to a degree from zero with a console generation, but that's actually less true now with the the rise of the digital marketplace and backwards compatibility and all that and friends. But still um this is basically like what what is their strategy going forward? We have an inkling that it is this PCbased strategy. That could that change? Probably not that much. But like the strategy and how they approach that, how they deliver the message, all that stuff's up in the air. And the energy that Xbox Series X has now is cannot be the energy that they go forward with, right? They've got to differentiate it and they've got to find some interesting way to make people want this platform, right? Xbox Series consoles, I would say, are dead. It's over. They are in the position that the Sega Saturn was in when Bernie Stler came in and stopped it. Like Saturn did have some success in Japan. Yes. And it's an amazing machine, but worldwide it it did fail, right? They had to shut it down. Uh there was no hope for it. Dreamcast, I would argue, was a success, but the the situation with Sega at the time was such they couldn't continue to support it. Microsoft could if they choose, but there I think it's that sort of leap they need to do. They need to say, "All right, this didn't work. We've got to make a jump." Or even I would say what Nintendo did with the Wii. I'm not saying they make a Wii, but it was that same it was a paradigm shift, right? The Wii you know, um where the Gamecube was a failure, right? Especially by Nintendo standards. They was they were trending down. They came up with something fresh that people wanted and they sold a lot. So, what will Microsoft's fresh thing be? That's what I think we need to see. And hopefully Ash is driving whatever that's going to be. And that it's just the whole multi multiplatform question that's so tricky. And how far are they willing to commit to like some new strategy to launch this thing uh with before, [snorts] you know, saying, "Okay, this isn't working." like I there's just there's so there's so much to know, but her job is going to be super difficult, I think. >> Well, I I think there's two things to this. Number one, um things not working. I think the multiplatform strategy has actually been a success because they've sold a whole big bunch of games and they are effectively the biggest publisher in the world at this point uh because of that strategy. So, you know, uh holistically, um we're getting a lot of heat about, you know, going multiplatform, but it's actually, I think, been a net win for Xbox. The problem is that um well actually no let's just quickly address the four games thing which we we were you know we've been highlighting actually had a supporter pull me up on that on Discord saying isn't this being misrepresented you know they they said it was a trial period for multiplatform they never said it was just four games that's not the point I'm making the point I'm making is that um the four games trial is kind of like I think almost a smoke screen because the concept of putting forts of horizon 5 or Indiana Jones on uh PlayStation 5, you don't need a trial period to know that you're going to sell millions upon millions of copies of those games, right? So, you know, that's the four games thing is just kind of like um uh the start of of of of introducing a multiplatform um strategy that I think was already in process that an edit file would never have made an impact on, right? Because it just doesn't make sense from that perspective. Um so yes I mean holistically from a a Microsoft point of view um multiplatform I think has been a roaring success and will continue to do to to be so. The issue is the fallout on the brand of Xbox as it as it used to be. You know um what is an Xbox? What is the brand identity of an Xbox? The concept of of it being this nebulous thing that runs on any piece of hardware has been difficult to accept and had a lot of push back from within Microsoft as as as we understand it. So, you know, what is an Xbox at this point? Is it going to be this new piece of hardware? Is that going to be pushed more aggressively perhaps than it was in the past? But if so, how do you differentiate it? Because, you know, exclusives have been traditionally been the way to draw attention to a piece of hardware. I don't think they can go back on that now and I don't think they should be doing like 2-year exclusivity windows uh for for their console. I think ultimately um the reason why we're seeing the stuff that we're seeing is that the strategy is in place but we don't actually know the full extent of the strategy at the moment. We don't know what it is. So Asharma can actually present it as it was and it comes across as something new delivered by new management and I think the strategy is ultimately going to be um and it's totally obvious um alignment with Windows and PC because you know they basically have a strangle hold in that particular area you know something like 98% of gaming is done on Windows 11 you know make the new Xbox a part of Windows um have that kind of ecosystem embedded within Windows 11 um the the the Xbox side of it and it's it's probably going to work. And I think the other thing of course is that there's actually no other option at this point. People who are wanting to go back to the old um sort of okay console approach um well Phil actually said it best. You know they lost the crucial battle which was the PlayStation 4 generation where people started to build up their digital libraries. They did so on PlayStation and it's, you know, the concept, they tried everything to basically move people across and it didn't work. They had the best console. Xbox One X was brilliant. Uh, it didn't shift the needle. Um, Series X, excellent machine as well. Um, just not different enough from PlayStation 5 to make a difference. Um, they've tried buying studios to make the difference. You know, obviously Bethesda Starfield was exclusive. Uh, didn't really make a difference. So, I don't really see the point of going back to that old strategy, but they certainly do need to have a brand identity for Xbox. And I think the perception of the brand is probably the key issue that they're facing at the moment. Um, there's something else I want to quickly sort of bring up from the um uh interview which surprised me, the Jez Cordon interview, this quote from Asher. Right now, I need to learn candidly about the why of these decisions, what we were optimizing for, and what the data says about the Xbox strategy today. That's the honest answer. I'm looking at lifetime value, not just what happened in a previous moment or in short-term efficiencies and things like that. And here's the crucial thing. The plan's the plan until it's not the plan. So, you know, >> call me crazy, but I would have thought if you're facing a crucially important transition period, you would kind of know what the plan's going to be. You would have arranged it. You would have strategized it. You'd have thrashed it out with with Phil and Sarah. you'd know the route forward and you would announce it. So to come out and say the plan's the plan until it's not the plan actually sends quite a worrying message to me because it's kind of says to me that it's business as usual until I say it isn't. And I don't think that is a strategy. Um [laughter] Oliver, I suspect what's going on there is there is a a plan. There probably are some things worked out between her and Sata in terms of what she's expected to do and the board potentially. I don't think she's ready to share those plans to to the extent they may exist. I think they probably need to prepare a lot before they do reveal those plans if indeed they do differ substantially from what um Phil and Sarah were working up and uh and Matt Booty who is still around um in the in the organization obviously. But I think maybe a little bit of this change could just reflect maybe some changes to branding because like you can do the Xbox everywhere um strategy without doing the Xbox everywhere branding that people seem to dislike so much um which was obviously a big problem. And there's an article in the Verge. which I think it came out about a week ago where Tom Warren was detailing some um some anonymous uh stories about how maybe Sarah Bond was involved in that campaign and it it negatively ne negatively reflected on the Xbox brand which I think it did negatively reflect in the Xbox brand. Bringing that brand up to a level where people are comfortable with it. Maybe it doesn't exist in that traditional console space. Maybe it exists with PC. Again, Windows is its own garbage fire at the moment. But maybe they can salvage something that's reasonable and behaves enough like an Xbox that people can look at that as a favorable platform. And then I think you have a challenge of getting that into a price point that people can appreciate because at the moment with the Magnus chip that does look like a pretty expensive box. You really want to be there in a variety of price points. You want to be there in a kind of mainstream gamer segmentation and not just that high-end. So I think there are a lot of challenges that they need to need to face here. But um maybe it's just a maybe just a different spin on the same strategy is is appropriate. And then of course you have the whole question I don't know if we even want to delve into this because it's such a huge topic but uh generative AI all kinds of things going on with exactly what side of this does Microsoft play? Do they play their traditional AAA strengths or do they focus more on these kind of generative experiences or things like this that might emerge in the near future? That's a whole different strategy. I mean, I'm sure Satya and and uh and Ash have have have some kind of strategy on that. They just aren't willing to reveal at the moment. >> Uh what do you make of the whole AI thing one week on? Um John, cuz you were quite suspicious about >> about the appointment from that perspective. >> I mean, I'm I'm still suspicious until proven otherwise. I don't trust any of this AI stuff and I know how Satia feels about AI. Um, I I maintain that I think all of this stuff is largely bad for us and this is not going so I hope it stays out of it, but I have a feeling it won't. But we'll see. We'll see. I remain, like I said, I remain skeptical until proven otherwise. It seems to be what all these tech companies want to do right now. >> Yeah. Mhm. I mean, >> the expense of everything else. my sort of key takeaway from the uh Windows Central interview which I think is really really important by the way because it's the first time that um the new management has faced questions as it were uh but the answers don't actually tell us anything new um and I think you know just going just going back to the established strategy and the hints of what we know about it I mean you know there are things that you can't roll back for example and things that I don't think you probably would want to roll back so for example there was an announce announcment of a strategic partnership with AMD >> and um you know a lot of money would have gone into that. You know the investments have basically been made both on the Magnus chip and whatever else it is that this strategic partnership with AMD um entails. Um I do think it is probably a a broader play at the PC space in terms of uh grabbing hardware share possibly that kind of makes sense for both Microsoft and um for AMD obviously. Um so you know but I think the point I want to make there is that um these are agreements that are in place that new management can't effectively unroll. So you know that's that's that's kind of like the way it is. Um, I do think that obviously there is going to be a um a change in terms of how Microsoft talks to the audience. I think that's probably crucial at this point because I think a lot of people, you know, may well be rethinking Allegiance to the Xbox brand as we move into a new generation. Um, so I'm curious to see how all of that is going to roll out. But I'm in terms of like the the core strategy in terms of what it means for the console side of things, I can't really see it uh changing dramatically. Um but the point is it might look like change because we don't actually know the vast majority of what the strategy actually is. So I think you know it's kind of like almost wait and see but I would have liked further clarity from this interview and um just kind of like seems to be everything's okay. Um John, what do you make of this comments about how um Asha Sharma wants to make uh sort of return to the renegade spirit of the original Xbox? I mean, in theory, he sounds great, but but we both know how Microsoft works. It's not renegade, is it? >> In the slightest. >> So, I I man, I don't know how that plays out. Um because I would argue the original Xbox probably was somewhat renegade. Yeah. When you see all the stories, you hear them talk about it like they were basically pushing back against what Microsoft normally does, right? And they had to fight hard for it. >> Uh and they did do it. And that that's why I have so much respect for that original Xbox is like they really they didn't just want to make a Microsoft product. They wanted to make an actual platform that people cared about and was a proper games machine. and they did it. Um, this time I don't know, man, when you coming in as a replacement and I I I mean, that's rallying the troops to create something that goes against what upper management seems to think they want. Like the renegade spear would be basically not doing what Satia wants, [laughter] right? That's what makes it renegade. If you're just going along with the big plan, then it's not that at all. So, like I I'm very curious to see what this translates into, if it translates into anything. >> I guess what what does renegade actually mean? You kind of like would suspect it would be a fully independent unit that is able to take its own decisions, take risks. Um, and I just don't really see that as being possible within that particular environment of and also bringing in leadership that is um, you know, unconventional, willing to take risks and we don't actually appear to have that. I guess we'll need to wait and see. There's a lot of wait and see on this obviously, isn't there Oliver? >> Yeah, there is a lot of wait and see. I can't help but think that maybe we're just going down a path of like maybe more pressure on studios, less emphasis on Game Pass, more of an more of a push to do generative AI within studios and push out experiences that are substantially enhanced with generative AI or at least made in a much more efficient manner with generative AI. Um, I think that's an imperative that goes through the entire structure of Microsoft all in on agentic AI. And even if it doesn't come from like some dictate from above, it's going to come from people wanting to be more productive sometimes within those organizations, right? Depending on the role. So, I think that's going to play a big uh big role in things regardless of whatever happens elsewhere, regardless of whatever happens elsewhere, their strategy. But, it is kind of a wait andsee thing at the moment. I just it's just really hard for me to look at what Microsoft is doing now to look at the last two years of Xbox in particular to look at how much frankly value has been destroyed in Xbox Series confidence an Xbox series has been destroyed and look at what Microsoft is doing with this Magnus chip and how much it's likely to cost especially in a world of incredible RAM prices and potentially tariffs in the mix and storage prices in the mix and think that they're going to end up with like some confident chest beating console offering, taking on Sony, taking on Nintendo, it's not going to happen. I I'm just going to say it's not going to happen. So, I I suspect it's very much staying the course uh until I see a real imperative to to stray from that course. >> Yeah, it might well be taking on Dell, taking on Lenovo, taking taking on uh Nvidia is probably what they're trying to do with that. Uh I want to round off with a supporter question from Abadab Wu Jun. >> He's back. He's back. Yeah. Uh, what what was with the whitewashing of Phil Spencer's abominable leadership in the special? He killed the Xbox console business, but he's a gamer that was nice to us. So, let's not focus on that was the vibe I got. Do you agree that his liability was one of his worst traits as Xbox CEO? Taking into consideration that if he were unlikable, he would likely have been fired much earlier due to his ruinous results and Xbox would likely be much more alive today. I've got to sort of take issue with that princ principally because um uh what would have been the alternative route forward for Xbox moving into this generation right now um it's pretty clear from my perspective that the damage was done in Xbox One they had a golden opportunity to um uh move forward from Xbox 360 where we saw real momentum >> uh into Xbox One where you know everything was up for grabs But Xbox One had completely the wrong focus and it failed. And I'm going to say it, Phil Spencer, he did point out that this was the area where um digital suddenly became relevant and people wanted to keep their libraries. Um I don't know what else they could could have done. I mean, Xbox One X came out under Phil Spencer. That was that was just brilliant. And the backwards compatibility initiative. Um, you know, when I went to see the Xbox One X, I spoke to Phil about it and he was really passionate about the fact that people own games and they should expect to continue to play them on their new hardware. Uh, preferably with improvements, right? And you know, that was a key strategy. Um, and I'm not sure it would have happened if um on the on the PlayStation side, if it wasn't happening on the Xbox side. Um, John, was there was there any sort of anything extra that Phil could have done? It was his tenure quote unquote ruinous. >> I mean, if I had that answer, maybe I should have been the the leader there. I don't know. [laughter] I mean, they were in a really difficult spot. I mean, I think to a degree he helped save Xbox One to make it more viable than it might have been otherwise cuz it I mean, the the public opinion on that was in the toilet when that thing launched. and he was there obviously during that launch period of course, but it the strategy very much shifted around Xbox with under Don Matrick, right? And that's we know this he he's the one that changed the course of Xbox 360 in the end. I would argue the 360's first half was a lot better than its second half, >> right? uh it was much more interesting. And then we we ended up missing out, I would argue, on a lot of great potential games in pursuit of this connect stuff and all the other things that Matrick was obsessed with. Uh which was not good. But again, you can't turn the ship around that quickly. And I think he worked with what he had. Um maybe some things could have been done better. I don't know. But I think it's it's very very difficult to come back from something like that. To be fair, I guess Sony also managed to come back with PS3, uh, where that was also kind of like an Xbox One out of the gate and then they they were much stronger with PS4 and Microsoft wasn't able to manage that and that may be tied to the digital stuff like Phil noted. Um, I do feel like [clears throat] a lot of mistakes were made with the Xbox Series X launch in terms of getting people excited. >> Well, they had no games principally. It was all enhanced older games >> fundamentally. I think that's the big thing is that it didn't feel like a generational leap in the same way that the PS5 did. It just felt like more Xbox, right? >> And so to like even simple things that that seem like they make sense, like shared interface across generations, it just makes it feel like the same old. >> Yeah. >> But yeah, like I think the original plan of the idea of launching with a new Halo game that was great could have been it. And I do think that and maybe not have completely changed things, but having a good version of Halo Infinite at launch, uh, striking back only on Xbox Series consoles could have been a huge deal and at least drummed up excitement around the box that was not there otherwise. >> Mhm. >> That kind of thing. Like they just needed more exciting things happening and they just didn't have it at all. It was just like here's Xbox One two. >> I I think Phil Spencer has dealt a bad hand of cards like you said >> for sure. >> I mean Scorpio was great. Series was great in terms of the hardware designs. I think there were a lot of high points. I even think the game output wasn't that bad and has indeed been >> pretty good. I mean there were some droughts in Xbox Series times. Uh, but certainly like you look at the slate for 2026 and Microsoft has like a killer slate. Like so many great games, four big heavy hitters plus Call of Duty plus all this stuff. >> That's and that's right. >> And Matt Booty and they they >> Don Matrick got rid of so much talent and he had to build it back up. >> Yeah, that's >> right. And that and and then you build that up and then you develop the games. That's that's like a decade time. If there to the extent there is a big problem in Phil's tenure, it may just have been the Activision Blizzard acquisition because it's $70 billion for what seems to be kind of a depreciating asset. confidence is declining in Call of Duty and there's lots of competition in live service and it just changed the course of the business and forced them into a position where they had to give up seemingly at least so far it looks like they're giving up the platform and the promise of long-term revenues and your cut of game sales and all this nice stuff for more conservative approach that emphasizes multiplatform and kind of guaranteed revenues on every single game sold. So that's a that's just a complete step change. And I wonder how much of this multiplatform shift we would have seen if not for that Activision Blizzard purchase that completely changed the dynamics of the Microsoft gaming division, right? And that I think was a big mistake. >> I mean I do kind of like the concept that because he was likable, he was not fireable. I mean [laughter] in a company like Microsoft, they don't care if if you're likable or not. [laughter] [gasps] >> Okay. Uh let's move on. Okay, so we got some more um business to follow up from last week. Obviously, there was the closure of Bluepoint and um actually had an interesting supporter question here from 1040 STF. I couldn't stop thinking this week that Blueoint is far too talented a team not to rise again from the ashes and form another studio, an independent one. Independence comes with its own share of stress, of course, but in these strange times, I can't help feeling it might actually be safer for a company and its employees to stand on their own rather than be part of a massive corporation. I think there's kind of pros and cons to that because um uh life is very tough as an independent game studio. Um you know, you're basically constantly chasing your next job. It's not easy. But there is basically the um the aftermath of Sony's decision is that the bottom line is there's an extremely talented studio out there readym made to be you know taking on some interesting projects and then you're looking of course at Microsoft who have got a problem in terms of uh their sort of stewardship of their entire [snorts] brand at this point which kind of got us thinking didn't it John basically about you know >> Bluepoint Microsoft >> I mean It kind of makes sense at this point. >> Greenpoint. >> Yeah. >> No. So, yeah, this is an interesting thing. And I'm not even necessarily saying it needs to be an acquisition, but [clears throat and cough] I think if Microsoft were smart, and this would be a move Asha could make right away, get Blueoint on board. They've struggled with a lot of the classic re-releases and >> and other things with their games over the years. This is no secret. Bluepoint is the type of company you want. They've done work for them before. They they worked on Titanfall if I recall, >> right? >> They brought it to the Xbox 360 and it was a tremendous conversion honestly. >> Mhm. >> But um >> imagine this like we got the Halo campaign evolve stuff happening already, right? What about more Halo [laughter] but like with the Bluepoint engine? >> Yeah, people >> presuming they can >> people like Halo. Let's let's have more of it. I mean, >> so one of the problems that Halo's faced is like once it shifted to 343, like they never managed to find their footing and they they worked with other partners, but like it never really went the way it needed to. Halo 2 Anniversary is interesting enough though, but like the whole Master Chief Collection, the the original Halo games, none of them really hit quite right. There's always things off about it. But I think if you if you gave a company like Bluepoint the Halo IP and let them do something with it, work their magic, like imagine Demon Souls or Shadow of the Colossus level like work, but Halo freaking awesome. >> Well, that's a really good point actually, John, because um you look at the the campaign evolved footage uh and and compare it to the original. Obviously, there's some great stuff happening there, right? But then you look at Souls on PS3 and then compare it to the PlayStation 5 version, we're looking at a quality level that's like, you know, steps beyond. >> Yeah, >> exactly. It may It's one of the better looking games of this generation still 6 years on. Like you look at that, it's it's a stunning experience. I would love to see them tackle a series. There's other series as well. Like imagine something like Crackdown for instance or, you know, any other classic Microsoft thing. But I really think Halo would be a smart play here because Bluepoint has experience with other companies, very big IPs, >> right? And they treat them with care and are able to do just an amazing technical job on it. And I feel like Microsoft's currently at that state where they Halo [clears throat] is really at risk, but I think people would still love Halo. I think it still has power if you do it right. and, you know, maybe even get them on an original Halo. I don't know. That's that might be a bridge too far for them at this point. But like I feel like they should at least start with something like this. Like if I if you ask me, they're already doing campaign evolve. What I would like to see is like imagine you take the next two Halo games, which is one story, and you make a singular product, right? That is that story all all through Halo 2 and three as a singular thing, one product. That would be so freaking cool. And and and seeing that in their engine without the Unreal stuff, like you know, it would be beautiful. And I'm sure like provided they get to keep their tech. That's the that's the big question. But if they do, like I can't imagine they've been sitting on their laurels, right? Like they shipped Demon Souls like six years ago almost. And it's like I'm sure the engine continued to evolve with that God of War project and whatever else they were working on, right? Mhm. >> So, you got to imagine like there's even more crazy tech there that we've not seen from those guys and they always shipped stuff that was just in impeccable shape. >> Yeah. I guess the question is what is Bluepoint at this point? Is it's you know um >> right >> what happens post Sony? What happens to the infrastructure they have? What happens to the technology they have? How do they keep the staff together assuming that they can >> um it's it's just deeply unfortunate. But there is, you know, [laughter] in theory, there are plenty of games out there that would benefit immensely from having Bluepoint involved, whether it's remasters or or even new versions or, you know, sequels or whatever. I'm just, you know, I just I mentioned Crackdown. Crackdown is just like um you go back and play that game. It's doing things, you know, it has a focus in in gameplay terms on stuff that's just not happening at the moment. the physics, for example. It's really crazy when you go back and play some of these games in the 360 era where physics was so important >> and um created gameplay experiences uh that we just don't we don't see anymore. It's like um I was playing the um the HDR and DLSS mod for Just Cause 3 and there's there's crazy stuff happening in that game that you just don't see anymore. So, I think there's kind of like, you know, you can't help but wonder, can we get any of that stuff back? and who would be the guys to do it? And the answer is Bluepoint. >> Yeah, I actually think your idea of remastering or remaking Crackdown would be great. But I think they should remake Crackdown and also the Halo 3 multiplayer beta, which is what most people are buying [laughter] Crackdown for. That's really what I bought Crackdown for. Although I I actually ended up liking Crackdown quite a bit. At least that first game. I thought it was terrific. I'll tell you what, I've said it before, the Crackdown playable demo, which was basically um you had half an hour and you could accelerate the way you built up your character compared to the main game. It's like a mini game and it's all right. I still think that's the best playable demo. >> Uh it's alone. Anyway, sorry I was interrupting. >> No, no, of course. I mean, there are so many projects they could take on in addition to what John said. You know, Gears 2 and three, make that a package with Reloaded. That would be great. Imagine remakes of those games. >> Oh yeah, we we only got one like done twice. >> Two is still quite dated. Three, I think still looks very beautiful. But certainly remakes would be incredible. I'm sure Call of Duty games. I think about older Call of Duty games like Black Ops 1 or Black Ops 2. They went back to Modern Warfare 1 2 3, but they have not gone back to those a lot of those kind of classic Call of Duty games. And they've also not gone back to their multiplayer components really as much. they've really focused on the single player so as not to cannibalize the uh the current Call of Duty game which I think is a bit of a mistake there. Also, you know, from Bethesda, we've seen uh Oblivion where seeing Fallout, why not Morowind? [laughter] You know, Morowind, incredible art, cool game, very dated in a lot of respects. That would be awesome, I'm sure. Um or possibly even from Rare. you know, you have a lot of projects that they could tackle, but maybe something like Banjo Kazouie or Conquers Bad Ferd doing that again, again, modernizing those games, make a really another very beautiful remaster of Conquer Bad Fe, beautiful remake. Sure, that would be appreciated. But yeah, on the on the Halo front, I mean, certainly, you know, when you look at the Halo games that are currently in the Master Chief Collection, Halo 3 does look a little bit more dated than the other games. Could be a really good target for a remake. Halo Reach as well, I think, is just a brilliant game. could use a remake and maybe they could do the same approach that Halo Studios is taking with uh expanding content, maybe adding some bridging content like John suggested, maybe between Halo 2 and Halo 3, things like this to further explain the story line. Um, tweaking encounters, tweaking mechanics, that's all brilliant. and doing it within the bluepoint engine which won't suffer the kinds of technical issues that Alex and John noted with the Halo campaign evolved footage where you're crossing a corridor and there's like a you know stutter in the middle of the corridor for some reason that keeps happening over and over and over again right that would not need to happen within the bluepoint engine and I'm sure the graphical result would be extraordinary regardless so yeah I think there are a lot of potential projects they could take over again with certain provisos they were able to keep on you know probably the majority of the staff you'd want to keep that team. You'd also want to keep the Bluepoint engine. Whether that involves licensing it from Sony purchasing it or whether it belongs to studio with its IP or exactly how that uh shakes out. We don't know what the details are of whatever agreement might have occurred there in terms of the acquisition uh that that that took place in 2021. But yeah, in general, I think it's a no-brainer. And I think it would be a really bold move too for Asha to come in and say, "Hey, we're going to make this acquisition, this smart targeted acquisition cost a lot less than $70 billion or maybe not an acquisition, maybe an aqua hire basically of a dead studio, whatever they choose to do." You know, that would be a really smart move, saying, "Hey, we're going to pick up where Sony left off, take the studio, put them to work on our vast uh library of of old IP and have a great time with it, you know, and really make a make a mark in the industry that way. I think that would look terrific." >> Okay. Uh supporter question, Shinobi Tentu Gaden asks, "Good day, gents. Exclamation point. Thinking about the unfortunate shattering of Bluepoint games and other region closures. It's always a bummer to hear about people losing their jobs and I wish them well. But perhaps a silver lining in my opinion, far too many game developers, very talented ones at that, are working on quote unquote part three of fill-in-thelank franchise that I was bored with halfway through part one. Does this free them up to work on something more unique and interesting? God forbid new exclamation point double question mark. I think back to all of the quirky risk you find interesting games from basically the early 80s through to at least the Xbox and PS2 era. Easier to take a risk and be creatively freed from the bonds of big developers or too hard to make games without the financial backing of said developers. Keep the great content coming. I think you know um what you're looking for if you're a studio in Blueoint's position is probably stability and survival. >> Yeah. So, you know, the concept of saying, hey, you're going to publishers and say, hey, I've got this great new idea for a game. First of all, you actually need to create something to show them, which is going to require money. Um, I don't think it's probably the the preferable route forward to Bluepoint at at this point. Um, I'm just hoping for um the best possible outcome for that studio at the moment because I just can't I just still can't quite believe what's happened there. I'm sure there's probably behind the scenes stories that um would explain everything, but I can't quite understand how a studio can be acquired and then closed when they haven't even had the opportunity to ship a game, a game. Crazy stuff. >> Mhm. >> Um let's move on. Okay, so Death Stranding 2 on the beach is heading to PC and uh we know that Nexus is involved and we now have uh some interesting news. We have the recommended specifications and we also have um interesting news that the upscaling technology that Guerilla developed for I believe the PlayStation 5 Pro version of um the Horizon games um is actually going to be included within um the PC version of Death Stranding 2 is and we actually now have a name for that technology. It's called Pico. Um Oliver, what do you make of this? >> Yeah. Um, I think this is really interesting. That pico element, I'll touch on that in a moment. That's maybe the most interesting element of this. But just in terms of the specs, I think the specs are maybe a little bit steeper than I imagined, but not too crazy for a PC game, presuming they're accurate. The one kind of question lingering over these specs is to what extent do they imply upscaling because they don't indicate upscaling in the settings, but they also don't indicate that they aren't using upscaling in the settings. So, it's a bit confusing there. But at least if we put that aside, the specs suggest that when you look at the high and very high settings, probably there's not going to be an enormous visual boost for PC players. I don't really see that here in the requirements necessarily. It does scale reasonably well at the low end. It does look like like there's 16 GB of system memory that's recommended for all settings. That's quite nice. At the very low end, the GTX 1660, that's the minimum GPU spec that only has 6 GB of RAM, which is quite nice. So, I think that's that's just a title that's fairly efficient in terms of its VRAM usage. And then even when you look at like the recommended specs, the 3070 only has 8 GB of VRAM. So, this is a title that probably can run with like, you know, presumably PS5 similar settings at that high preset with 8 GB of memory. That's quite attractive. That's quite appealing there. In terms of Pico upscaler, I'm very curious to see how it fares. It's the progressive image compositor. They did not have a name for it for the past year and a half or so of it of its existence. Certainly when I spoke to them um when I spoke to them at the uh PS5 Pro reveal event, they did not have a name for it. Um but on PS5 Pro with Horizon, I thought the results were like absolutely incredible and this does seem to be the same tech or maybe similar tech. But given that they've disclosed that Pico was used for the PS5 release of Death Stranding 2 as well, um I'm not sure the results in Death Stranding 2 are quite as clean as Horizon. Judging from John's review, it still looks very good, but it's not quite as clean. Maybe on the PS5 Pro, it's cleaned up just that little bit more and maybe brought up closer to the standard, but I'm still not necessarily seeing, at least in John's footage repair earlier, the kind of super clean precision that we saw on PS5 Pro in the Horizon titles. So, yeah, just a couple thoughts there. I think the idea that they're shipping Pico as a GPU agnostic solution, it's it's very intriguing and I'm certainly interested to see perhaps comparisons with PS5 and evaluations against other upscalers, but it's not necessarily something that I would point to and say this is like, you know, the second coming of console image quality like I saw on on Horizon on PS5 Pro. It's a little bit less than that, I would suspect. Um my sort of take on the specs is this looks like a sort of cut and paste of the standard Nixus PS5 port um spec sheet. It pretty much is [laughter] exactly the same as prior ones. And um there always seems to be a certain degree of um uh the hardware seems to be um higher spec than you would expect compared to PlayStation 5. So, for example, the high uh which is the recommended setting. Previously on Nexus games, give or take a few settings, that is the console equivalent and a 3070 is significantly more powerful in terms of um performance uh than a PlayStation 5, but you know, maybe that is talking about native resolution. Um the 8 GB of RAM situation. Well, I guess that all really depends on um uh the texture setting is that I guess that would be the highest setting and the resolution. I guess maybe it would work at 1440. There's been some weird stuff happening with um VRAM management on Nixis games, which um Alex is uh constantly reminding me about on whenever this this machine crops up. So yeah, I'm going to be interested to see how all of that plays out. Um, the the Pico Upscaler, I thought that was Pro only, but it was on PS5 as well for Death Stranding 2. >> On Horizon, it's not in the base console. >> On Death Stranding 2, at least from this document, it's on both. >> Oh, interesting. I'm going to be interested to see how that plums in and how the quality compares to the to the upscalers because, you know, when we saw the Horizon um implementation with PS5 Pro, it was kind of like, okay, this is this is a serious contender to DLSS, the concept of a home bro homegrown version uh shipping on PC, I think is really interesting, but it is probably sort of deeply inshed with the engine, so it was probably worth doing anyway. Um, I think it works with all of the frame generation techniques as well. Um, so yeah, it would be an interesting alternative there. Also interesting to see how well it performs on um, older hardware. U, bearing in mind that we've got support for anything as low as a 1660. Yeah, interesting stuff. Um, John, what are you looking for? I mean, >> I'm certainly looking forward to that and I'm curious to see how Pico specifically performs on PC and what the millisecond cost is per frame versus other solutions. Um, just just to get a better idea there. But yeah, it is interesting how it definitely didn't quite look uh as good as what Horizon Forbidden West offered, which as you guys suggested is just incredible and unusually good for a console. So, >> but I mean, yeah, I I as as a fan of Death Stranding 2, I'm excited to see this arrive on PC and uh supporting all the usual features, but the ones that matter, such as 32 and 21x9 widescreen, [clears throat] >> uh which is something I deeply enjoy. [laughter] So, um, but yeah, hopefully it doesn't have some of the the Nixie issues that we sometimes see where they, you know, I feel like they've had more releases that are not quite as good as you would have expected from them, possibly down to uh being overloaded with projects. I'm not sure. >> Right. I think the last couple of releases, I mean, Marvel Spider-Man, we talked about that last week. Marvel Spider-Man 2. Um, >> you know, it was to the point where we looked at it at launch and decided not to review it because we thought it would be patched and repatched again, but it's still not great even now. >> Um, and um, The Last of Us Part Two actually got quite good reviews except from Alex who's basically saying, "Hey, look, you know, this is originally a PlayStation 4 game. I expected it to perform better on PC and there were some sort of CPU issues related to that as well." Um, and yes, you know, VRAM management, um, they've got a solution in play for 8 GB cards, but it kind of weird thing, well, weird things happen if you push texture resolution too high in certain scenarios. And um, I think the the sort of background solution they've got there, I hope it's going to be revamped at some point and hopefully for this release. I think the other thing to bear in mind is that although um it really does look as though this is a Nixisled um port um ultimately I do believe that they surely are reporting back to Kajjima Productions here on the quality of >> Right. Right. Right. >> And that's a completely separate entity who have got their own standards. So I would hope that >> pretty high standards too. >> Yeah. I mean I am if you go back to the Death Stranding one port which was just fantastic on PC in terms of performance not so much in terms of scalability beyond console because there wasn't much but you know in terms of like um performance it was first class so I'm hoping that you know this isn't a Nixis port as such but a proper collaboration I mean it kind of makes sense to involve Nixis of course because they've ported the other Desera games so why not you know but um if there is uh Kjima oversight on that. I think that's going to be really really good. Um I guess we'll just need to wait and see. We will be reviewing that. But let's >> crack on. >> Yes, let's crack on. [laughter] >> So after the disappointment of Xenolade Chronicles X Definitive Edition, Switch 2 Edition. Um there is a new Switch 2 edition coming. It is Mario Wonder. There was a Treehouse presentation yesterday, Oliver. >> Um we have now seen the game in action. What do you think? >> Well, I will defer to John's thoughts in the game itself because I I know that he's excited about this game and its the potential for new content, uh, I'm sure, in this title, but I was primarily interested just in the raw resolution metrics because obviously we've seen a little bit of a mixed track record from Nintendo in recent months. Xenolade Chronicles X has that bizarre AI upscaler single frame nonsense going on that makes it look kind of bizarre. And then we saw with uh Animal Crossing that that title indeed did not actually have a resolution upgrade over Switch [laughter] one instead had some kind of image treatment upgrade but not in the way that we would like which is DLSS. Some kind of spatial nonsense going on there. Not too attractive. But with this title at least Nintendo is suggesting >> on their website. I can read this off to you now. Experience the Flower Kingdom up up to 4K resolution when docked to a compatible TV. enjoy smoother frame rates and faster load times for a snappier feel. And then they put in a little parenthetically, 4K resolution is available in supported games and frame rates are capped at 60 fps for 4K output. So I actually counted this footage, pixel counted this footage. It's extremely easy to pixel count. I counted a number of shots. It's 4K in every single shot. Native 4K, no anti-aliasing. So super crisp, super clean, just the absolute best that you can expect from a game like this. It's maxing out the display's capabilities at 4K 60, but they are kind of suggesting here with their language, with their talk of smoother performance and their talk of, well, 4K output is limited to 60 fps. Maybe they're kind of suggesting in the margins there, there could [clears throat] be 120 fps mode. I don't know. They're detailing that at the moment. They're just detailing that 4K 60 mode. And indeed, in this treehouse footage, they're playing the 4K 60 mode. And they did they did not talk at all about the game's uh resolution or performance metrics in that showing. It's just about the game content. But um even if there is no 120 FPS mode, which is a possibility, again, just reading through this language, it's not dispositive one way or the other. This is basically the best you could expect. I mean, it's also probably what you would realistically expect because the Switch one version was like 1080p 60. This is uh basically what you'd expect, but it's it's quite a pretty looking game. It's a very beautiful looking game rendered at this crisp high resolution here. >> Mhm. John. Yeah, I I put a lot of work into that review video back in the day if you recall. Really focusing drilling down through the animation frames and like all the techniques they use because I do think this is the best looking 2D Mario game they've done since like the mid90s and it's genuinely gorgeous. It was awesome on the original Switch and I like having this idea of a more definitive version that's designed to take advantage of modern displays and also has additional content which I will very happily enjoy. Yeah, the the thing about the frame rate also caught my attention, Oliver. So, you mentioned that and >> I suspicious. >> I don't want to get my I don't want to get my hopes up, but man, 120 fps would be so nice cuz it feels platform games just really feel good at these super high frame rates or higher frame rates, right? >> Mhm. >> So, obviously though, you couldn't get that at 4K. Uh, so you're giving up something there. But still, like this game looks great at 1080p anyway. So, if it's 1080p or 1440120, I I wouldn't care. I'd be happy. I'd probably go with the 120 mode in that case. >> Interesting. Yeah. I mean, um, when you've got a game that is using sort of lateral scrolling, uh, the extra frame rate really does stick out. Really does super super smooth. Uh, that would be very, very exciting, I think. And if you think about it, it was native 1080p in its original Switch One form, right, John? >> Right. It was. Yeah. >> I mean, you should in terms of like the CPU and the GPU bump, 120 should should be easy for >> that. So, I think 120 should be a no-brainer, and the only way it wouldn't happen is if there's something inherent to the way they designed the game at the engine level that would make it not work, right? >> Like, there is a possibility there's some technical reason why it's not possible, but I don't believe that would be due to hardware limitations. If it's not there, it's probably just an engine thing or something about the original design of the game, >> right? Mhm. Yeah, that would make sense. Um, if you looked at the new content lineup, does it excite you? It's mostly what's going on there. >> That's hard to gauge yet. I don't know. Like, it's interesting because it seems it seems to be so focused on multiplayer stuff, >> right? >> Which isn't that exciting to me, but we'll see how it plays out in single player form, whatever is there. I mean, I'll play it with my son and give it [clears throat] a shot. >> Yeah, >> I think we have fun playing co-op games together. I'm not sure about the name either. like in the UK. I feel like if you if you don't pay too close attention, you just read that title, you might think it's something else. [laughter] But it does seem like a co-op focused experience and kind of built around like timed challenges and training courses and things like this. Not really that kind of traditional level based experience. Maybe more, I don't know, dare I say like repeatable activities and things like this. So yeah, I think Nintendo looking at their expansion for Kirby and the Forgotten Land, that was also a little bit of an unconventional approach to adding new content to old areas and things like this. So this isn't like a full-on, you know, expansion pack necessarily. It's something that is a very kind of targeted I think I suspect targeted co-op experience with a bit of replay value in it, which I get cuz the original game was so perfect, so perfectly balanced in design. You don't want to risk like upsetting that balance. So, I can understand why they might feel better about adding something that's different rather than trying to replicate the original with a new world or something. >> I think the visuals look great. I think there's something to be said about, you know, proper native 4K for this kind of content. And uh >> true, >> it, you know, it looks pin sharp. The assets look beautiful, >> super super smooth. Just a great presentation all around. So, I don't think it's too long and we need to wait for this. So, I'm looking forward to seeing how it's all going to pan out. But I think, you know, for those who haven't played the game, it's probably going to be a great time to uh jump in cuz it does look absolutely fantastic. Let's move on. Okay, so interesting story that has emerged. It appears that Sony Interactive Entertainment has filed a new patent concerning machine learning based upscaling, which some people believe could be part of the upcoming PSSR 2.0. zero. Um I'm suspecting it's probably more for a PlayStation 6 style scenario, but [snorts] um this is quite an interesting thing. Um there's talk of actually adjusting the um the quality of the upscaling based on available frame time. The idea being that rather than scaling resolution as such with dynamic resolution scaling, you instead scale the precision of the machine learning based upscaling. Now it's an interesting idea. Um, I'm kind of curious what you make of this, Oliver, because um, I thought the whole point of AI upscaling was actually to produce those upscaled frames with a very, very short frame time already, so you have more time to spend on actually rendering the frame. So, you know, that's so I'm kind of curious as to what this means. That's the fundamental problem with this approach or at least maybe not problem is the right term. maybe limitation of this approach would be the right term but maybe I'll touch on that in a second if I can go through just the basics the technical basics here the kind of idea they sketch out in this patent is they want a stabilized frame rate without cutting pixel counts and given that super resolution is expensive or at least it can be why not drop super resolution quality instead of the RS makes some sense there and the idea is basically they store in terms of how they do technically they're going to store multiple versions of the upscaler at different precisions and swap them out align with the current frame time needs or keep a single model and quantize the model's weights in real time if the load increases too much. And then they then they describe this whole convoluted system for doing that and managing load and averaging load and checking that out and doing all this complicated stuff. The problem with it is I'm I don't really see the utility for this in a lot of cases when you could just vary resolution use DRS instead >> because that's a really effective tool. Like if you have a game and you have like a let's say a 720p to 1440p uh resolution window in your game, which would be like, you know, a little bit of a big window, but that's something we might see in a current generation game. You're going to reclaim like 8 milliseconds, a ton of GPU time going from 1440p to 720p internal. Even if you're still upscaling to 1440p at the end with some kind of um temporal upscaler, you can reclaim a lot of time. And with this, the amount of frame time that's implicated by an upscaling process like PSSR1 is is said to be about 2 milliseconds to go from 1080p to 4K. 2 milliseconds is not a lot. And even if we're talking about PSSR2, again, perhaps the budgets have ballooned for that. I don't I suspect they haven't based on a number of factors, but I I I would assume that it's not um not a gigantic amount of frame time, especially when you're talking about a 60 fps game. So, if we're talking about slicing off two milliseconds or 2.5 milliseconds or 1 millisecond, I don't think it's that meaningful. I could potentially see this being more useful though at ultra high frame rates. So, if we're talking about a game that's natively at 120 fps, you know, 2 milliseconds is like a quarter of your frame time. >> Yes. >> You know, ve very few games, I mean, no games, to my knowledge, at least that I've reviewed have have used PSSR at at 120 FPS, whatever. That's just too expensive. Um, maybe it's less expensive if you're doing it to like 1440p, but it's still pretty expensive. So maybe getting like a a pretty steadily lower quality version of that upscaler. That could be a good deal. That would be kind of like with the the approach we see with Nintendo shipping the light DLSS model and the full fat CNN DLSS model. You know, those are different approaches for different kinds of upscaling scenarios. We could see something similar here. Another area where I could see this being useful is games that aren't limited primarily by, you know, pixel throughput. They're more compute limited. They're more RT limited games like Middle Gear Sol Delta where maybe it actually makes more sense to cut time out of the upscaler than to try to reduce pixel count dynamically to adjust load. Maybe that makes more sense. I also think in some scenarios we see in some games that DRS can interact unfavorably with upscaling. It can produce some odd artifacts. So maybe again I don't know what the artifacts from this approach would look like. Um but maybe the approach this approach um quantizing the model reducing the precision and whatever that might actually produce a better result in the moment or maybe you're seeing like larger additional artifacts and instability in the image but the image is not changing so fundamentally in the way that you can see sometimes in the way that upscalers like FSR can interact with large DRS swings and kind of make the image look unstable and fuzzy and jitter all over the place. That doesn't happen in every game, but in some games, I think we see a deliberately constrained DRS range to [snorts] prevent some of that behavior going on because I do observe it in some console titles. So, yeah, just a few thoughts. I think it's weird cuz I saw this and I see the framing in in various articles about this technique and uh people are talking it up as if it's some, you know, God's gift to console image quality or God's gift to console performance. I don't really see that. It's like you're playing with 2 milliseconds of frame time. So, how much you're going to do with it? I mean, you could do something interesting, but not a not a whole lot. That's what makes it a gift, Oliver. [laughter] >> Yeah. I don't know. >> What do you think, John? >> Man, I mean, you pretty much tackled everything. [laughter] Sorry. >> Yeah, I think that's a fair comment. I think the the main thing is, of course, that um uh yes, 2 milliseconds in a 16 millisecond frame for 60 fps is um you know, it's it's it's still fairly substantial, I think. But >> is a lot. But when your frame time is 8.3 milliseconds, suddenly your 2 milliseconds is like somewhat more substantial. The question is surely you would have something like um uh you would just use the lower precision model at 120 frames per second similar to the what tiny DLSS is doing on switch 2 uh to enable like 60 fps upscaling. Um the concept of it switching precision um how valuable is it? It's it's not I still don't think it's going to um replace dynamic resolution scaling as such. Um yeah, I don't know. [laughter] Okay. The funny thing is about patents, of course, is that um a lot of it is just theoretical stuff that they just want to cover their bases for in terms of um protection. Uh most patents aren't actually ever actioned as such. I mean, I know um some uh people that worked at first party um uh platforms that, you know, they've got a lot of patents, but none of the stuff actually ever made, you know, a shipping product. >> Mhm. >> So, but nevertheless, it isn't clearly it's something that's had some time put into it. This would be an inordinate amount of work, I'm sure. But perhaps we could do that test in I think God of War Ragnarok where it ships with TAA and it ships with PSSR. And maybe with this new PSSR, you could go in and you could actually try to measure if there is any frame time cost variance between PSSR at different uh levels of frame times, different levels of performance or something that that would be like a very, you know, cuz I mean this might actually make something slightly more complicated from our end just in terms of computing that PSSR frame time. Not that it's of terrible interest to anyone but us just because of the uh you know potential variance there. But again I I I I kind of suspect this is not implemented in the new PSSR. I suspect this is just you know covering their bases establishing a new patent without prior art. Um this is a novel technique perhaps that could be more useful in the future with other kinds of like more intensive uh ray reconstruction like variants that you might see in the future. um a more intensive neural networks that are are reconstructing larger parts of the image that are doing more the image. Uh maybe it's more relevant there, but at least PSSR I don't think it's making a huge difference, >> right? I think the other thing of course is that the success of dynamic resolution scaling in this particular console generation. I mean, Microsoft came in saying they had uh the most powerful console, and they did on paper, and yet, you know, in titles where there is um a resolution advantage, it is typically higher DR um DRS counts. And can you really tell the difference against the PlayStation 5 version? It's it's it's kind of yes. if you're doing like sideby-side comparisons and you know we're taking a good close look at the footage. But in the um uh in the actual heat of the action, there's not really that much difference at all. And uh that kind of is slightly uh concerning from my perspective looking forward to the next generation Xbox which is this you know super high-end um APU um which is apparently considerably more powerful than the PlayStation 6 equivalent but is it just going to be history repeating itself? Will it actually produce a meaningful difference? I think I'm with Alex on this where if you've got like a more potent GPU, you should be using it for extra features as opposed to extra resolution in this particular era. I don't know what you think, John. >> Yeah. No, I I tend to agree with you on that. That's that's a that's about it. I don't really have much to add to this one at this point, though. So, [laughter] >> let's move on then. Okay. To round off this direct, we're going to have a content discussion and we're going to be talking about the game of the moment, Resident Evil 9 Recquam. And um yeah, this was a game where uh we had the the the review code relatively early. Um PC came in a bit later. Um it was a project that was um quite difficult to deal with because there was some shifting embargos and conditions and stuff like that. So we didn't actually have any content ready for the embargo because the content we were planning suddenly didn't uh fit the embargo conditions anymore. Um obviously there's a lot more surrounding that. there's the um Switch 2 discussion that's that's come up about that. I think people are very very excited by that particular uh conversion of the game and also the fact that it is using the new version of uh PSSR in the PlayStation 5 Pro version. And I actually think that's probably where we should begin, John, because um obviously we've got content out. We were briefed by Sony ahead of time that the new PSSR was coming to Resident Evil Recquum, but what we didn't quite realize was that it was actually in the review code that we were already given. >> And it was kind of like, well, you know, we were sort of saying to Sony, >> hm, this is, you know, um, it's already looking really, really great in the review code we've got. [laughter] >> Um, are you sure it's PSSR1 or the first generation version? And there was a bit of back and forth on that, but it actually turns out that um it is using the new version of PSSR. It does look fantastic. And um I've been quite interested to see the reaction to our content on that, John, specifically that we never actually said it was a particular version of PSSR because we kind of knew it was a new one but couldn't say at that point because we were under IDA. >> We had to dance around it. But like even even without that like it was pretty obvious and instantly unloading it up I was like wow the image quality is like really good in this like this is awesome looking. Uh, and so I did a pixel count and it came out to be just above 1080p. And I was like, seems really this. Okay, it's got to be one of these upsamplers. And we started debating like, is this is this the new PSSR? Like this seems that that kind of checks out, right? And we didn't know for a bit until we had that confirmation. But right from the beginning, if I had known, I would have just if I hadn't known, I would have guessed, yeah, this is probably new PSSR. >> It's tricky though, right? because it's it's operating at the sort of um 1080p or slightly above 1080p sweet spot where you know typically upscalers do work well and the first generation PSSR you know there've been some titles running at similar resolutions >> okay >> that look that look pretty good right so there was always that sort of element of doubt in there where you couldn't actually call it until you had confirmation >> yeah the other thing is we didn't have the PC version right away and that was key because Um, so I noticed some slight blotchiness and like some issues in ray tracing which is something that PSSR has exhibited a lot right and I but I wasn't sure I was like is this the PSSR or is this the Dinoiser and then on and we couldn't check any other version because as we found out no other console has rateracing at all right >> right >> so uh >> I think the other thing of course is that u when you look at the gulf in image quality between PS5 and PS5 Pro. Um, >> it's it's it's it's gigantic, but they didn't really help themselves by using what looks like FSR1. Um, >> yeah, that that's a little they I feel like there could have been something better there. But the key is with the with the noise in the RT that turned out to be once we got it on PC, it's like, oh, Capcom's Denoiser, that's the way it looks, right? PC has the same problem. If you're not using ray reconstruction, which as usual, if you're using the path tracer, ray reconstruction is part of that package. You have to use it, right? So, and obviously ray reconstruction >> runs circles around their dinoiser cuz that's what it does. It's really freaking good. So, it looks much more stable. But yeah, so we we went through all of that and figured out everything. And the FSR1 thing was sort of like an educated guest based guest based on the fact that the PC only offers FSR1, modern FSR and DLSS, right, >> as upscalers. >> I think it's quite interesting that the audience uh were actually um quite excited by the footage and kind of suggesting that it was a new version of BSSR, whereas we were pretty much the only people in the press to to bring it up. and it was fun to see the reactions and I I I love all the guessing people were doing and I'm just like yep you guys got it. You know it [laughter] like that's that's cool. That's smart. People are paying attention to this stuff. They they're excited and they see it. They can see the results for themselves. Like this looks really good, >> right? And the footage, I think, speaks for itself. It's super clean and sharp. It has a level of stability and like clarity that was usually not there in a lot of the PSSR titles, right? >> Yeah. Um, let's talk about the Nintendo Switch 2 version of it. Um, the video we've done there is doing big numbers. I'm really, really happy about that. I thought we got some good content out there. Um, Oliver is continuing discussion about what we should be comparing the Switch to version to. [laughter] >> I'm familiar. Oh, every time now, now I'm engaging with these comments. I'm reading them for the purposes of this section. So perhaps I'm getting my uh my mental faculties drained slightly. But uh no, scrolling through my Twitter today and and YouTube, a lot of the feedback seems to be fairly constructive. Seems to be a lot of people who are asking for framework caps, which is a reasonable takeaway from the video. It's certainly something that I tried to emphasize in the video because I think some capping solutions would greatly improve the situation on Switch 2. Um, and then there's a lot of commentary from people who really don't like Nintendo consoles who think the video proves Switch 2 was a world apart from PS5 and then corresponding commentary from people with the complete opposite view that PS5 and Switch 2 are virtually identical. So that's that's always funny because like they're just they're just characterizations of the same underlying data. Like no one is really disputing the uh veracity of the of the details in the video, the information in the video. They're just spinning it in two totally different ways. They live in two totally different realities, which I think is funny. The uh whole debate about what is the appropriate console to compare to. And indeed, the consensus answer, it seems for many people who are seem to be big fans of of Switch, and I'm a big fan of Switch myself, but seem to be very partisan about it, is that uh the PS5 is the correct platform to compare to and not the Series S. And I've certainly heard arguments both ways. In that video, we did it, we actually covered it primarily on PS5 and a little bit on Series S, but I might have inverted it. Actually, I'm not quite sure what I would have done, but I might have inverted it if I actually had access to the Series S code because they were uh device locked on series S for this game, which is unusual on the series consoles. So, my my consoles were not approved, John's were. So, it did not end up working out on my side. In any case, that whole debate, I I do find it interesting. I do find it kind of charming, but in the end, you know, I mean, I I don't know what way you want to look at it. I mean, it's certainly worse than Series S in some key respects in terms of performance, but better in terms of image quality. That's exciting. And then relative to PS5, it is similar in some respects. It's losing out on all the metrics, but it kind of looks similar enough, which maybe speaks to that kind of uh Twitter, YouTube on the phone problem that we spoke of uh some weeks ago. But, you know, it also indicates the game is actually really good on Switch 2. I think it does look quite beautiful on Switch 2. Certainly a more attractive game than um than I thought it would be. And the graphics were a point of high praise it seems throughout the entire ecosystem of people who were responding to our videos saying that the game looks beautiful. So I definitely find myself in agreement with the Peanut Gallery on that one. But yeah, um the only thing I would would really com on beyond that is like the embargo situation resulted in some weird pacing for our videos. And I know some people were complaining, oh, why don't you have a video on embargo day? We did have videos ready for embargo day, but they weren't did not were not compliant with the embargo conditions. And then of course on the 27th, the release of the PSSR piece. Again, these are all kinds of things that are outside of our hands. But I thought we tried to make it work and I thought we tried to release lots of content. And I think it I mean hopefully I don't know how well it's gone. Hopefully it's hopefully it's gone well. Uh as as I say this, not knowing exactly how well everything has gone, but um yeah, just kind of a weird set of conditions in this game. and then a kind of interesting uh commentary on this game, but not entirely negative commentary on this game either. >> Yeah, I think in terms of the embargo stuff, it it was just um incompatible with the content we wanted to put out. So, we could have put out a video on embargo day, but it would have been unsatisfactory to us as creators. I think that's fair enough, John. Right. >> Oh, yeah. I mean, that to me that was important. Like, [snorts] we did talk about that and yeah, when you don't go on that initial day, you definitely lose out on on some views. I would say to a degree, but like I really wanted to do that full video, right? And like cutting it down >> wouldn't have been I think it would have hurt what we did, right? So >> Mhm. >> we came up with that strategy of doing two videos in one day. [laughter] >> Yeah, it typically um can have an impact on on the content we do put out, but in this case, I think people were just super super hungry for information. Uh my views on the Switch 2 situation, well, there's a couple of things. First of all, um I think DLSS has basically been a gamecher for Switch 2. If you can if you can put out a a game with a 540p internal resolution that is looking better than a game running at 720p on a Series S, um that's just phenomenal. I mean, some of the shots that you guys had like um you know um far off distance shots uh where even then the lower base resolution of Switch 2 looked better via DLSS. the concept of a 360p resolution looking good on a handheld screen with DLSS going up to 720p again mindbending. It's just like really really good. Um it really does sort of um rebalance expectations of the performance level of the machine. Um, in terms of the whole what should you be comparing against, I think it's basically the relevant platforms that we choose that we want to show, right? And I think um, for PlayStation 5, it's an interesting one because um, a lot of the audience want to see how it compares to what is effectively um, the standard set for the generation, but you've got to be cognizant of the fact that you haven't got an RTX 2070 Super in your Switch 2. Um, so there are going to be cutbacks. So it's down to basically stuff like DLSS and stuff like how the developer um makes nips and tucks um that that is actually sort of the focus there. But Series S is the most natural comparison point in terms of a machine that that sorry it really does have significantly more raw horsepower than the Switch 2. You know it is pushing more pixels, it is pushing more frames. Um but at the same time because of DLSS there is that kind of um really interesting comparison point there in terms of how the games actually present versus what the technical specifications suggest. Um yeah that was really really interesting. I think I thought it was a really good piece of content there. We still haven't got our PC stuff out yet but that is coming. We're going to be taking a look at path tracing optimize settings console comparisons all of all of that. Um, but yeah, I was really really happy with our uh Resident Evil Reququum stuff and there's there's quite a lot more to come actually. Um, final thoughts on that, John? >> Um, I mean, yeah, I'm beyond all the stuff we reviewed. I think the game is just freaking awesome. One of the best. It's It's definitely one of the best Resident Evil games, I would say. Now, it's going to take time to settle to see where it falls, but uh my top games, I mean, I I still would put Resident Evil 4, both the original and then the remake, the very top of my list with Resident Evil 2 remake, the Resident Evil 1 remake. Those are up there as well. I I loved uh RE7 as well, but Reququum is definitely in that ballpark, which is to say a lot. It's really really cool and it's a big game and they they do some cool stuff and I like revisiting certain areas from the past with a new coat of paint so to speak >> uh or an old coat of paint I guess more accurately. It's it's cool. It's really fun. So yeah, great game, great tech, and I'm consistently amazed at how Capcom's able to produce so many games so consistently at such a high quality, you know, while seemingly keeping budgets in check and being happy with the results. I mean, the issues with Monster Hunter Wilds is was a rare miss on their side, I think, >> right? And they know it. >> Um, they that doesn't happen much with Capcom, and I think they're going to strive to ensure that doesn't happen as much as possible. So yeah, good good work from them. >> Okay, final thoughts, Oliver? >> Yeah, with Monster Hunter Wilds, that was a game that was kind of unattractive on a number of levels and it had all kinds of performance problems. And one one thing that I liked about that game was that it had a good PS5 Pro version, at least in so far as they, you know, put PSSR in there, which was actually a better solution than their like TA plus FSR1, which is a recurring theme, and it had the RT reflections. That was quite nice. But then you look at the PS5 Pro implementation in this game and it's like wow, you know, first PSSR2 title, RT reflections, RTGI looking superb, looking head and shoulders, I would say above every other console platform. Still, you know, the PC with path tracing is is a good level above it, but still like this is representing the peak of what you can expect from a console experience in this game. And it's just really satisfying to to look at. And I agree, the game itself is quite entertaining. Um, I'm quite taken by it, especially the gray segments. which I particularly liked. I would actually agree with John that Resident Evil 4, in particular, the original Resident Evil 4, would be my favorite Resident Evil title. And Resident Evil 7 would be kind of uh somewhat behind there in terms of my second. But I think of of the Resident Evil games I've played, this would definitely be like a strong number three. At least from the content that I've played so far, it's quite an entertaining game that blends expertly third person, first person, um survival horror, action horror, whatever. It's just a really superb game that I think people like and it also looks terrific on just about anything you can run it on, including a Switch, too. Before we finish, I do want to get one quick PSA. Go check out Arcade Archives 2: Rave Racer that just hit yesterday or the day before. It's amazing. It's one of the best arcade racing games ever made. It's been locked to to the arcade for decades. There was a Power VR port promised back in the day that never uh came out, which would have been cool, but didn't happen. I play this every time I see it in the arcade, and I've always wanted like an official home release. And yeah, I don't know if you guys have played it, but it is awesome. It's so fun. It's like Ridge Racer just amped up to the max. Like the speed, the tracks, like everything about it. It's so good. And it's out now. It's worth buying. It's not expensive. Just go get it. I'll get it on Switch, too. That looks really cool, actually. >> Do it. Do it. [laughter] >> Good stuff. Um, well, that was the end of DF Direct Weekly 253. Please do like, subscribe, and share if you enjoyed it. Ring bells for notifications for you and potential algorithmic boosts for us, but please do consider the DF supporter program. Join us. Join our amazing community. high quality video downloads of everything we do. Early access opportunities, early access to DF Direct Weekly, the chance to help shape the show. Lots of amazing stuff going on there. But that's all from us on this one. We'll see you soon.

Many thanks to Innocn for sponsoring this video. The Innocn GA27T1M monitor is a 27-inch, 1440p 320Hz MiniLED display with HDR and G-Sync support. Check it out here: https://geni.us/DigitalFoundry-GA27T1M In this week's Direct, new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma tells us that "the plan's the plan until it's not the plan" - so is there actually a new strategy at all? Meanwhile, with Bluepoint cut loose from Sony, could the firm deliver the remasters/remakes that Xbox needs? The team discuss Death Stranding 2 specs and the "quietening" of PlayStation PC releases more generally before moving on to reaction to the Mario Wonder Switch 2 Edition reveal? There's a new PSSR patent worth talking about and... finally... what did we know about RE Requiem's new PSSR tech pre-review? Examine the DF Website: https://digitalfoundry.net Go here to check out DF merch! https://store.digitalfoundry.net Subscribe for more Digital Foundry: http://bit.ly/DFSubscribe 0:00:00 Introduction 0:00:34 Sponsored by the Innocn GA27T1M monitor 0:02:03 News 1: Where Next For Xbox? Asha Sharma First Interview 0:32:16 News 2: Should Microsoft hire Bluepoint? 0:43:50 News 3: Death Stranding 2 PC specs drop 0:52:24 News 4: Super Mario Wonder Switch 2 Edition previewed 0:58:50 News 5: Could new Sony upscaler tech replace DRS? 1:08:08 Content discussion: reflecting on Requiem