DF Direct Weekly #280: John on GTA 6, State of Play Disappoints, Helix "Family of Devices"

0:00Hey everyone, it's Adam, post of Ted's podcast, rethinking with Adam Grant, and this episode is powered by AT&T Business. When you're building a business, momentum is everything. There's nothing worse than hitting your stride, only to have a spinning loading icon bring everything to a halt. When navigating competing priorities, reliability isn't a luxury. It's a foundation. AT&T Business is built to work so you can spend less time troubleshooting and more time focusing on what actually matters. Powered by AT&T Business, built to work, get today at business.att.com. Mod.com is changing the way people battle excessive fatigue. Ever hit a wall in the middle of the day, and the third coffee just doesn't do it anymore? Here's what's actually happening. Coffee only briefly blocks a denocene, the chemical that tires you out. When it stops working, your system is flooded and you crash. Medaphinell is a prescription treatment that works in a completely different way.

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2:02So anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history, and respond fast. No more, wait, who talked to this customer last? And if you're worried about after hours lead slipping through, Quo's optional built-in AI agent can answer questions and even book appointments while your team's offline. It's the number one rated business phone system on G2, and over 90,000 businesses already trust it to stay reachable. Money is on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free. Plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash tech. That's q-u-o dot com slash tech. Hi there, I'm warm and unconditional welcome back to DFTW Weekly. Our weekly show, hence the name, discussing the latest gaming and technology news. First up, going to a giganticly dense workload and a pretty vast slate of videos. Do you actually release the Q&A show last week? But we did actually tape it. And because we are knee deep in various projects right now, including our DLSS five coverage,

3:06this direct is a little different. We're adding some new content on top of what we taped Q&A. So expect more questions from supporters in what has become a mainline direct. And for those of you watching on video, maybe the panel will look slightly different. That's because of editing. Oh, and speaking of videos. For some weeks now, DFTW Weekly has been available on Apple podcasts in video form. So with that said, though, if you're looking for DFTW, no ads at all, check out patreon.com slash digital foundry for a private ad free RSS feed feed. High quality video down as well, for the we do, including direct early access to direct to anyway, a pack show for you today, including comment free on state of play. John's thoughts on GTA six extended look reaction to ash as charmer's BBC interview and the latest hints dropped on whatever new Xbox strategy. Why actually be joining me to discuss first of all, it's got to be John in and hello. Why hello there, which good to see you doing better. I know it's been a tough week. So yeah, absolutely.

4:06We are on Saturday morning. Good morning. And of course, Oliver McKenzie. Hello. Yes, George, it's a bit of a DFTW, direct classical this week with the topics and the questions. I hope people enjoy a bit of a return to form. Brilliant. Okay. Yes. Lots to get through. So let's crack on. Okay. So let's talk about our first news topic of the week. And it is Sony's state of play and pretty massive presentation. They put out there because I've been on world this week. I haven't had the chance to check it out. So I'm going to be relying on you guys to tell me all about it. That said, John, I think the sort of overall reaction, first of all, to the entire presentation was that you were not particularly impressed not so much with the games, but with the fact that there wasn't really any kind of new stuff as such. Yes, I think that's fair to say, Rich. Like when you break it down what was shown here, I can't say that it was actually bad, per se. I think there's plenty of good games being shown in here.

5:06But I think fundamentally it was a kind of a boring state of play. And that nearly everything here is already known. It's most of it's just the typical trailer E stuff that we've seen. There are a few standouts which we'll talk about, including Metro 2039 and Mani or two, which looks entertaining. But yeah, like if this is the state of play, things aren't looking very good. And it does feel like we're in the state where even though it feels like the PS5's barely gotten started, it's actually kind of closing in, I guess, on the end. And because of the gamble Sony made with the live service stuff that's ultimately all failed for the most part, they're kind of left in this lurch where they just don't have much to show. And you can certainly feel it here. Right. Where it's just, you know, they're bringing out the leg, the Lego thing, oh my gosh, like, I guess I joked earlier.

6:08They're like trying to catch up with Microsoft's 2013 Xbox One reveal. I mean, they're, you know, they've already angered people with the disc stuff, but then they start to, they start the state of play with a movie trailer, which is kind of like in the Hollywood version of TV TV TV. And then they've even got the Lego PlayStation, which Xbox, of course, just recently did something like this. But the Lego PlayStation is especially funny to me. I don't know if you guys have noticed, but inside you open it up, there's a bunch of apescape references in there. And they, there's a lot of apescape stuff around this Lego system. Yet the Lego PlayStation, they've built here, doesn't include a dual shock, which I just found funny because that game requires one. Even go far enough to include it. So to me, that shows like a lack of understanding or like missing the details. So to speak, you know, just not a big deal, but it's, it's funny. But should we talk about some of the individual games, I guess, on this list?

7:10Yeah, there's quite a few. Where do we want to start, guys? Metro 2039 has a new trailer that was the most exciting thing for me, especially from a technical perspective from this showing. Even though it's obviously a game that we already know and we've already seen, actually Rich and I've already played quite a bit of it because of the recent demo. We've had a chance to show that off on the channel. But you know, looks to be running in pretty good form, pretty cromulent form as Rich might say. Seems to be using RTGi from what I can tell. Can't tell if it's using RTGi reflections at all, but looks quite good. Recent attempt at 60 FPS, there are some drops here and there in the presentation. But you know, it does not seem like it's, it's that far off from the target. It seems like something that's probably relatively realistic for this particular title. And yeah, it looks good. We have about three minutes of footage here, mostly showing kind of quarter shooting. Stuff that's pretty familiar to me and Rich, I imagine, is we saw a lot of kind of similar-ish-looking content, perhaps in that demo that we experienced.

8:15But yeah, this is promising and I think the more promising part of it Rich is that they've commented and they say they're doing 4K60, 4K60 FPS performance modes. On PS5, PS5 Pro and Series X, that's answers a question that we had with the preview, which is are they actually going to hit 60 FPS with this game? And apparently they're going to do it on everything, but the beleaguered point-sized Series S, which is something that we probably have come to expect at this point that Series X might be dropped from some of these more demanding titles when it comes to 60 FPS modes. But yeah, pretty positive showing nothing to complain about here, really. Yeah, I mean, I saw the 60 FPS stuff and I was really happy about that because if we go all the way back to the very, very beginning of the marketing campaign for 2039, Alex spotted like a frame time counter running on one of the development kits in the background. So say 30 milliseconds and it's kind of like this kind of like a bit of an Easter egg to prepare us for 30 FPS game, but no, they've done a performance mode.

9:16I guess it is running on the PS5 Pro, so it's going to be the best possible presentation, one way, imagine of how this 60 FPS mode will present, but it looked okay, pretty good. Comparable, I mean, maybe a sort of touch blurrier than what we were playing on the preview build a few weeks back, but nevertheless, it's really good. Agreed. Yeah, so there's a couple of things to say about Metro for me. First of all, traditionally, if we look at the Metro to console release cycle, we have new Metro game comes out near the end of a console's life. It's 30 frames per second. Then the next generation arrives and they release a 60 FPS version of the game on the new machines and then they begin building their next generation game. And then guess what, it's back to 30 that happened to one of basically this is the first time they've done the thing where they're doing the game late in the generation.

10:16And they're actually still going for 60, which is in line with most of this generation. And it does look appreciably better, I'd say, than what we saw in Exodus. I really like the visuals here. And I'm the other thing that I guess excites me is that they finally seem to have dropped all the artium stuff. Like as I said before, I really didn't like the storytelling, especially in Exodus. It was so boring in ruin, what was otherwise an interesting game. Like it's just they tried to do the Gordon Freeman thing, but with like 20 times more dialogue. And it's just I found it very boring, standing around, everybody's talking like, I tell him, what are you doing? Are we going, you know, this kind of stuff over and over and over and over again. And I it took me out of it so bad. This does not seem to have that. It seems like a new theme, new characters, it looks darker. I like the locales are showing here more. I mean, this really looks cool. Like I'm very interested in seeing where to go with it.

11:18So yeah, cool stuff there. I will definitely keep an eye out on this one. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I knew for a game, a properly new for a game is a once in a generation type thing. And especially barely remind the circumstances under which this one has been developed. And the fact that oh my god, yeah, and the fact that they've actually taken the locale back to Moscow. It's going to be some interesting stuff. I think it was in that game, interesting commentary. I guess we have to wait and see how interesting thing my dad saw the video for this and actually asked me like, so how can I play this? This looks really good. I don't know what it is. He doesn't play many games. He played Battlefield 1. He occasionally plays games, but somehow the themes and the look of this really caught his attention. And I found that interesting, but unfortunately, he's still as an Xbox One S. So, okay, might not work there. Well, there's always the cloud. True. True. Okay, so beyond Metro 2039, John, we did get to see more of Final Fantasy 7 revelations, the end of the of the trilogy.

12:26So to speak curious about your thoughts on that one. Yes, following Final Fantasy 7 reloaded. We have Final Fantasy 7 revelations and the two part is here. Well, actually three part. What can I say? This was a lot as as always. And I'm very curious to see what happens here. And there was there was also a piece of news announced this week that makes it kind of a bummer. But they're finally wrapping this up and it's been. When it arrives, it will have been seven years, I guess, since the first seven remake launch, which feels very fitting. Just as it would have been fitting for them to release on three discs because it's the third one. And it's that's the number of discs the original game came on, but unfortunately, does not seem to be happening. They are doing the digital thing again, which yeah, you know, not not happy about that guys, especially for an in progress series. I think it's going to I think it's going to hurt them at a time when they need the people that are most committed to this to dive in.

13:30Doing the third part of a game like this, it's it's tricky, right? Because there's not if you've not kept up with the other games. Just jumping into this feels very difficult. And I don't know that it would work necessarily. So I don't know. But still, I do like that they've evolved things a little bit. They brought in like a new essentially like the job system. I don't know what they call it in this one, but it is that. And it does seem like it's going to be, you know, there's some new stuff in there and it's just going to be wrapping everything up. But it's hard to say how it all could together. It's just man. All of you, you were a big fan of the other ones. And I wasn't as well. Although I would say rebirth, I think was a bit too long at points. And my goodness, do they love them some mini games? I hope there's like 50 more mini games. So it would just be amazing. Yeah, I mean, I don't it's not it's not a solely digital title. It is that shipped on a desk, but it's got an additional download.

14:36Right. So yeah, that's and that's what we take it. Yeah, there's no there's no reason for that. Well, frankly, pardon my French. Certainly a PS5. I think they could have done a multi-disk special on Xbox. Yes, easily easily. It's what trick here because you don't have the expanding capacity blueries. But and on Switch, of course, it's just a charming little game key card. Although I don't know what alternative they really have on that. They don't really have an alternative. No, just no way. But you know, I think this I mean on the positive side doing all the crazy stuff they've got going on with the aerial exploration, the actual like parachuting down to individual locations. That's something that we had in a very abstract form, the original Final Fantasy 7. But to see it realized here at this fidelity is pretty cool. I think probably there is some significant technical advancement over the prior games in that respect. But you know, I did cover the shader injector mod not to not too long ago about a month ago for Final Fantasy 7 rebirth.

15:39And the developer of that mod, he really did seem to resolve a lot of the lighting issues that were seen at this particular title. And he has some other really exciting things in the works that I think people will see soon with the version 3.0 of that mod, which, which is really cool stuff that I've been getting a bit of a sneak peek at. But in terms of just fixing like the kind of specular under occlusion and just improving the GI quality overall, improving lots of things with that games rendering. You know, I had a conversation with him and there's no real indication that those issues are resolved at all for this title. And that's especially disappointing because like one guy, seemingly disparate, I managed to, you know, I mean, manage to fix these problems over the course of months. So it does not seem like it would not be feasible for a squaring annex to achieve something a similar uplift in their own title. I do feel at this point though that sticking with Unreal Engine 4 for rebirths, in a lot of sense, for revelation it does feel like, okay, you're behind the times a little bit in the game, does feel a little bit underserved by its core technology. Not just graphically, but also with respect to just like the, I mean, the pop-in, the traversal, the way the character connects with the environment, things like that, it just doesn't quite feel up to par.

16:48You feel like there are a lot of games that are going to release these days that look really, really high quality. And this game is high quality in many respects, but that core technology is, I think, really seeming a bit along the tooth, which might be appropriate actually for some platforms like this is probably a great choice of tech for the Switch 2, right? But for other platforms, not quite as fetching in the stage. I think all of it's, they've made the right choice though, they needed to get this out in a reasonable amount of time and essentially cap it off. And I think it reinvesting in a lot more newer technology. And to get the visual upgrades you'd want would probably mean shifting to UE5. And I just don't think that it makes sense. And I probably would have added significant cost and development time to this. I think they just want to finish it. And I applaud them for just saying, all right, we've reached our baseline for what we want to do here. We're just going to cap off the trilogy with this. And it works because then it's also consistent with the last game.

17:48And it allows them to allows the player to revisit that world without any sort of like weird inconsistencies while leveraging the assets and the visuals they've already created. So yeah, it'd be nice to have more, but I'm okay with that approach. I think it's not an reasonable respect to the broader market just for me personally. Just by all I see is you. Taking issues slightly. But yeah, I agree. I mean, outside of some of the minor issues, you know, the smaller issues they could overcome, I do agree that switching their stream mid flight to the, you know, the larger than five might not be such a wise choice. But personally, you know, I could have taken it away. I've seen that, but I understand that probably for the broader market, not sensible. Do you think there's something to be said for a trilogy of games where there is a sort of broadly consistent look to the aesthetic from start to finish? That's kind of what we're getting here almost with this sort of continual use of Unreal Engine 4. I mean, what do you think about that, John? No, I think it's, it makes sense. And the only reason it maybe feels a little bit odd is that Final Fantasy VII itself encompasses so many different types of environments.

18:56And I think this engine specifically handles the mid-gar interior, like, you sort of like metallic stuff way better than the natural outdoor environments. Yeah. And they never fully got that going as well as it could have in rebirth. So, yeah, the large map stuff does feel a little bit dated, but I feel like, you know, they made those decisions with rebirth. Yeah. It makes sense to stick with it here, to complete the trilogy. And then you have a very consistent looking game across all. I do feel like there's a lot of continuity with rebirth, but I would, I would underline John's point that like in remake, they're really using, they're using light maps all over the place, you know. And then in rebirth, they substitute probes. And the result in terms of lighting looks dramatically different, I think, between those two titles. And also, remake just feels like a different game to play because you're in these smaller areas in these tighter corridors. The movement to me feels better in that context than in the open world, we're dealing with all these obstructions.

19:57I agree. So, I don't know, just leaves it like not a great taste in the mouth that when it came to expanding their scope, they didn't dovetail that with a push into new technologies to work. I think the remake is the best looking at these titles overall in terms of the way that I agree with you. So, that's unfortunate, right? I think it's just a function of the environment. But also, I mean, again, this is not necessary. I mean, this is basically the same as the original game on PlayStation. Right. Right. Right. I would argue where the mid-guard disc, the first, that first whole act, which is quite lengthy, was arguably the best looking was visually in the game. And once you get out to the world map, I always thought it started to get a little less consistent. It was just a huge scope. And I think this rebirth or remake, whatever project has really shown how difficult it is to do old-style JRPGs style games at this sort of quality.

20:57It's almost like unrealistically difficult because they take players to so many unique things in places, which doesn't work. And we kind of got into weirdly enough this in the middle of your solid four podcast, which we recorded, which you guys check out on the Super Show, where we talked to 2.5 hours about middle of your solid four. But one of the takeaways there was that they basically built five games where each act is like its own contained thing. And there's the density of mechanics is so freaking high that the game itself is unable to fully utilize them. And it's just it's interesting to see that sort of like just amount of stuff being used. And I feel like a game like that for all its faults would never be approved today because it's almost wasteful to make that much unique content that's only used to that degree where everything today feels like has to be systems driven. And like, oh, we made this thing. We're going to use it for 100 hours now.

21:59And you kind of feel that a little bit in the final fantasy seven remake stuff where it's been super extended out. I mean, the game was already long, but like they really had to pull it out because they couldn't really justify building a more condensed game with that much variety. And it almost unrealistic in terms of just creation of assets necessary to do so. So I don't know. We're in an interesting spot with that kind of thing. Well, let's kind of end up the discussion here. I've been sort of. I'll hold this week when this state of play drops. I was basically in bed clutching my hair did extreme discomfort. So I've just been checking through some of the stuff that was actually revealed at this state of play, you know, Wolverine launch trailer. I guess we have our review for that in due course. Lots of DLC, a crimson desert DLC. That's going to be interesting. I mean, those guys are relentless. They just keep pumping out the updates. Amazing stuff. We were sort of chatting slash joking a bit about Mani to two before we sat down to record this. I've just watched the trailer and hoodie crap.

23:07It's like a sort of twisted version of echo the dolphin almost. Which is kind of what jaws unleashed was. I think it was the same developers possibly. And then there was this as well. I actually have not played man eater, but man eater to his trailer here makes me want to try this because this looks so stupid and ridiculous, but in a very fun way. Like he's like picking up stuff with his teeth and then like flinging it across the ocean like slamming into other things and it's like evil piranha and he's like almost like wall writing billboards and jumping through. Like things it's just this looks like good fun. I actually thought this is one of the highlights of the whole show. Gosh, he jumps out of the water with an explosive barrel and like throws it into a ship and blows it up. How cool was that? This is dumb looking but awesome. Now correct. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but that did appear to be a giant enemy club. Which there was. It's awesome. I wonder if it can be flipped onto it's barely for massive damage. That's the question.

24:12Oh, and I just I just confirmed with jaws unleashed was indeed done by the echo of the dolphin. I thought wow. That was the 2006 era one, which it just said to say instead of peaceful echo, we're going to place jaws. And I guess that's where man eater went with the same idea then. I'm just loving this concept because echo the dolphin is like one of the other the sort it's so terrible exactly to go from that to this. The same developer man. That's that's pretty pretty amazing. Any final thoughts from you about this state of direct Oliver? No, not I mean not too many. I don't have too many thoughts because they don't think the presentation necessarily warrants it to be honest with you. Okay, I think this this was just probably the worst presentation from a platform holder. I've seen it my time in digital foundry major presentation at least when you think about like state of plays, the Microsoft shows both developer direct and their Xbox showcase, even including things like possibly summer games fast.

25:15The Achilles, you know, the award show and even things like games calm maybe like it just it was showing off a lot of stuff that we've seen before stuff that we've seen even like final fantasy seven revelation. We already had pretty dense gameplay from that title. I don't think we've seen a ton that's new necessarily from this presentation. Not to you know downplay the merits of games like until dawn to or whatever, but we've already seen those titles in significant form in prior show when you say but announced they've been shown we've seen gameplanes and cinematics so to me it was just not really a very compelling showcase and I was really hoping hope against all better know for something from like naughty dog to cap off the presentation if they just shown off one big new title. A minute or two three minutes something doesn't have to be huge that would have been a real exciting point for me that would have made the show worth a while. I don't think you actually need to have a whole pen that's new in these shows, but you do need to have something real to kind of sink your teeth into and I feel like we did not get that with the showcase.

26:21Three to pay try enough. But as I iterated earlier though I mean it's not a great showcase it was kind of boring but there was still a game shown we talked about some I think Gundam Rogue orbit looks really cool. I saw that games calm as well and it just like looks sick it's like an awesome Gundam style like character action game. It's like really hyped up armoured core six but obviously more like you know character action instead but some of the aesthetic reminding me of that so that actually looks really promising. Also like rhapsody and scarlet which could be good even though like that trailer was so full of UE5 isms did make me chuck a little bit like from the you know you've got the boiling and the GI noise and some of the blurriness and instability all those things are there but conceptually it looked kind of cool like the themes almost like a weird 1920's New York version of bayonet. You will which hey I don't know what it is with this time period because we also get stranger than heaven coming along which yeah you know so pay whatever it looks cool but beyond that it's like okay there's new game plus for soros and soros is great but it's like okay.

27:39Grandshires most seven more stuff I mean it's cool it's still supported but not exciting you know they announced keeper for PlayStation which I loved keeper I played it last year it was a really good game it's the game where you play as a lighthouse but it goes to very weird places and it's a cool double fine release that was largely ignored so hopefully people check it out now and rich one for you. You can now play dino crisis to on the PlayStation 5 okay I know how you feel about dino crisis you are looking to induce another mic we I'm just funny. Well you don't like dino crisis I think we're live to inform that it sucks. Oh yes okay fair. Alex and the air play. Okay well that's the end of that now let's move on to some. Hey everyone it's Chris Kalebo here host of the side hustle school podcast this episode is powered by AT&T business in my early days I did some of my best work in part cars or coffee shops.

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29:47Okay so we're going to start with GTA 6 perhaps inevitably and we've got this question here from Wild Wild Westy hello chaps I'd love to hear John's reaction to the GTA 6 extended look and after years of feeling that there's still more to squeeze out of the PS5 and series consoles is this finally the ceiling so to imagine anything topping it on current hardware. Furthermore if the pro version is only going to improve some of the image quality but will not be capable of higher than 30 FPS due to CPU limitations as was suggested in the special direct do you think people will find this acceptable given the high cost of the console so yeah that was one of the regrets of you actually being at gamescom john's that you couldn't join us in the GTA 6 discussion and I'm very interested in hearing your views about the presentation. So I see yeah well I wanted to start you meant with the last thing there you mentioned about the frame rate because it being 30 it I chuckled because when you actually think about it if this is a stable 30 frames per second it will have been the smoothest GTA launch in history yes by a fair margin and I think that shows says everything we need to know about whether people actually care in this case I think most people prefer 60 they want higher frame rates.

31:01But when you see something like this you see what it's doing I think a stable 30 is fine if it had been an unstable 30 maybe then I would have had a serious issue at this point but I don't expect that given what they did with red in redemption to but yeah this presentation wow rich you know I often take a view where I like to focus on the less hyped big stuff some of the time yeah I enjoy being counter to the most popular stuff but I'm not going to hide my enthusiasm for this because this was the this looks like a game it cost a billion dollars and you can tell there's there's just a lot going on both technically and artistically as well as everything else like there's just you can see the amount of love that's been poured into every facet of the game to create something and it really shows how much pressure they must have been under to deliver something because it looks like GTA that you would expect but taken to sort of the next like I guess visual level and interactive level but I guess the first thing that sticks out to me is I remember 20 odd years ago I remember sort of thinking about the tanker chapter in Metal Gear Solid 2 there's a lot of granularity in that game and I always had this dream like what if you could apply that sort of granularity

32:23but like on a large scale you could go in all these buildings and like you'd have the bar with the breakable bottles and the ice cubes that melt and all those sorts of little interactions that's kind of what I'm seeing here it feels like they've poured so much attention into every little tiny detail and that's I'm pretty interested in just sort of poking and prodding at the world they've built to see just how far they've gone because you can see that's where a lot of the cost I think comes from is that there's just like this unbelievable amount of granular detail that's been implemented across the entire game that we've seen in this presentation at least and that's cool just just to see what's possible I would say and I'm very interested to see that because that's always been kind of rock stars for today and we don't really for a while there's a lot of developers trying to make GTA likes and I feel like that genre has kind of dried up like how many crime based open world city games really are being made like this anymore not that many.

33:36No, and it's I think partially like it's expensive but also actually reaching this level is extremely difficult and very few developers can do it and rocks are a privately traded company is able to actually do this which is interesting. So beyond that then there's the presentation itself which fundamentally delivers exactly what I've been asking for from game presentations for a long time and it's interesting how a lot of the most popular games have done this before the idea is here's snippets of gameplay often uncut for significant portions of time interspersed with little bits of gameplay between the major moments and they've essentially told like a little mini story about what the experience of this game is going to be like and what these characters are like without any narration they didn't resort to like CGI trailers or like super quick like one second cuts it was really showing everything sort of like as you might experience it and they really managed to make something that was actually engaging to watch and I think that's pretty outstanding and not easy to achieve.

34:54But to me it just especially on the heels of games calm with opening night live where you have all the keely trailers so many of which are just these and I get it they're not going to be nobody's going to get the budget to show 30 minutes of gameplay at O and L right like I get that but still it just shows how much more effective this type of presentation can be and it really hit home in addition I think like just the rock star the way they do casting and acting. And the writing I always find like compelling I guess I would say in a way that's just like different than a lot of other games like just the random chatter the things characters are saying it's compelling in a way similar to a film and this is not like a movie but it has that thing where you actually want to listen to what the characters are saying. And it's written in a way that's really fun and just enjoyable to go with they've really committed to the bit and in fact I like that they've decided to really take sort of a serious tone here like there's going to be bits of comedy as always but it's like modern day America in Florida and there's really not much you can do satire wise at this point like the real real life has gone so far in that direction.

36:12I think we were all concerned like how does rock star even deal with that but they've done it with a very careful hand from what I can tell there's a little bits of humor I love the bit where she opens the trunk and there's like the streamer in there like oh no chat what's up you know it is like got the little emojis in the text on the side the trunk challenge the trunk is the truck challenge. That stuff is awesome it's very funny so yeah the whole presentation just really it was compelling I liked it a lot so but then we get to some of the tech stuff and you guys talked a lot about this I don't want to go too long but there's a few things that really stood out to me right away that I was really surprised to see first of all it's the best hair sim I've ever seen in a game and by far none not just the quality of the strands but the deep shadows in the hair itself. It's so difficult to do combined with just the insane movement and physics driven simulation of it when Lucie gets knocked down the stairs in that rather brutal fashion the way she's like picking her head up off the floor and you see the hair sort of spilling and collecting on the floor like that that's I don't think we've ever seen hair like that before in any game like we've had plenty of physics driven hair but nothing that behaves like this.

37:34And it's it's really impressive and it really changes the way you feel about things and then other details like the what like all the iron ring there's so much attention to detail and that including little things like that dog when you first walk in you see sort of like the the mirror like the animal eyes if you will where like the light of the environment sort of reflects off the dogs eyeballs in a really realistic way I would like that kind of little tiny detail very cool to see. Also I was really impressed with how the depth of field used in this game seem to be really robust and like actually simulated rather than just like usually you would have like sort of almost like cutouts of the foreground and background and you get like sort of those like blurry artifacts around things like the quality of the depth of field the book you get the field here is is so filmic and feels realistic like they're really trying to simulate the properties of a camera. And it's a it's kind of a subtle thing but it's also like wow like they actually committed to this a very expensive rendering effect to ensure that it was very, very cleanly presented without those typical artifacts which is also cool.

38:46Then of course just the general lighting there's so much ray tracing going on in this and yeah there is definitely evidence of limitations and lack of rays and some denoising issues, especially with reflections, but I think it ties it all together in a very convincing way combined with the RTGI to just make the shadowing the lighting everything feel more tangible and realistic here in a way that I would say actually isn't too dissimilar to. The higher settings and cyberpunk 2077 which by the way is the game this kind of reminded me of most technically like this felt like like the next leap beyond cyberpunk if you will, which was another like high profile example. Not that the lighting here is as good as the path traced cyberpunk but it's not worlds away either and it's pretty nuts to see this on a console just all there's just so much subtle lighting shading and like all the crevices and all the air. You expect light to pour in and bounce around it's all there and they did it a lot like just like you see like you're in a dark hallway towards the end of the video and you see like the the shot so you're in a blue room and then there's a stairwell with light pouring in and not only is that light look very natural point to the door but the way the shadows from that like start very sharp and become more diffuse as they move away like it's and just all the the shadows.

40:12All the the diffuse shadows and the man does there's so much detail there with how they've done this that just ties it all together and it's the kind of thing I think people that aren't as technically minded well they won't even really think about it it'll just feel natural and it's the spark that even if you don't understand what you're seeing it'll just make the game feel more grounded and realistic and beautiful. And I think that's it was it's worth the cost in this case in my opinion if even if they have to go with 30 FPS another thing I really like is just the way it also captures all the little tiny light sources. Like everybody in the world has a mobile phone out which is very funny and realistic actually and all those phone screens especially in the dark project just a little bit of light is that very soft glow of the screen. On the character and you're like that looks great that's a really cool there's the water the animation the physics stuff like just. Gosh there's so much I mean I could go on and on I shouldn't go on and on because you guys have talked a lot about it but I was just I really love that and of course.

41:20On the presentation as well like. The use of music is just one of the things that these guys just really really know how to do well like they bring in the right tracks the right time from all different genres and it's just they create this mood it's really really compelling and it is compelling it's like they've really managed to bring the types of feelings you get from watching a good film but into a game without making the game like a film if that makes sense. Or just a hallmark of that sort of attention to detail here that really makes it compelling to watch and I think that's why people are like super into it. The only I mean the really only the only complaint I have here at all out of glasses it's a little bit soft 1440 pish I guess and they have this some. Jutter problem and cutscenes which is plagued every single rock star game for like decades where just camera movement in general like movement of things in the cutscenes looks kind of like not completely smooth not that it's dropping frames it's just there's something wrong with the way it moves.

42:29I don't know why they do this they've always done this. I'm surprised they haven't tried to address that I don't understand why it would be intentional but it's still there so but it's a small blemish in what's another wise study presentation. Absolutely I'm all of the things I add since we talked about this at length last week. No just that it's a shame we couldn't have John on and I can I'm sure you can see why because John has a lot of thoughts about the game very interesting thoughts about this game and I unfortunately had to modify very sadly had to modify the little graphic I made for the for the GTA discussions. I was only have two people which would be a little bit upset when I was doing it because it's always been a three person panel but yeah I mean just in terms of like what this means for current generation consoles I think this is probably the peak for current generation consoles I would agree with that but I would stipulate that like you know I think they're incredible like in games this generation that look amazing right in games are upcoming like Marvel 1943 rise of Hyderabad be one games like Hellblade 2 tons of titles up there but

43:34GTA 6 has a bigger scope than any game I can think of this generation realistically that has been released and it's also looking like this running like this all these crazy systems everything seem to work together without huge issues I mean this is like an extreme challenge on current generation consoles I feel like that is the real element of this that is like super impressive above beyond the visual accomplishment which itself is extremely impressive just handling this all on a current generation console. Without too many visible seams that's pretty crazy here to get in a wide open world I think that's the real exception with this title but yeah I mean obviously it looks absolutely incredible I don't know if people are going to be accepting of this title of 30 FPS there's been a lot of controversy about that I think in general people are probably willing to cut it a lot more slacken up your pedals but there's been a lot of discussion about like what if PS5 Pro is only 30 FPS I think those people will get over their concerns but I do think that's something that rocks there will have to fit in the game. I think it's a big issue because it has become a console standard to have every game at 60 FPS for this title though that we can see that's probably not realistic on a number of levels and I was actually reviewing Alex's video on GTA 5 the PC version from last year and he was noting that if you dial up all the ray tracing in that game right on a rise in 53600 the frame rates are like in the 50s so it's not even in that game even even in this like super old game with very aged systems.

45:03You're unable to achieve a consistent 60 FPS with all the ray tracing worked up and so there go you think well GTA 6 with a ray tracing worked up probably not a super kind game to call the CPUs. Right interesting point that you had earlier John which I like to pick up on yeah you're quite right that basically the industry has given up doing open world crime games. You know whatever happened to you know sleeping dogs that series that disappeared even Sony's own the getaway they never came back from that after the scenes real came and went they tried to get it failed it's gone. Watch dogs of course that failed as well they didn't bring that back so yeah that's quite interesting bring back the getaway I see that's so you need to do that. Yes okay awesome. Yes we've on. Okay so lots of comments here about the interview that Ashashama gave to the BBC regarding project helix and the quote unquote family of devices that's quickly get through the questions.

46:08Paul are bikina says good morning found human exclamation point Xbox is Ashashama says project helix will be a quote unquote family of devices do you think this is just for quote referring to the quote unquote premium device past the existing handheld so is there more to it. Asher wants to focus on affordability and this might mean she wants to have a more quote unquote mainstream device to completely other consoles whether it's a good idea or not. Probably wouldn't have made it in time to be aligned with a ps6 since this is a recent pivot but it looks like ps6 is also delayed to see skip them enough time to come up with something else. Diehard x86 hello fellas with ashes affordable quote unquote family of helix devices what are the chances they could simply offer low power CPUs GPUs in the RDNA five line. Isn't that the point of the bridge die and the move away from the traditional monolithic chipset design question is is that enough to offer more affordable to offer a more affordable device is without filming bus with memory and storage size speeds thank you and have a good one.

47:10Teasing hilarity hello sorry hi ho found human exclamation point regarding asher shamas comments on a helix families is perhaps an acknowledgement that their original plans won't result in an affordable device perhaps they are pivoting to have the original Magnus part as a halo device and other less capable but cheaper devices in a similar vein to series s cheers and best wishes for the week exclamation point i'm going to go first on this one. I think maybe there's a chance we're reading too much into this because it's very easy to come up with a family of devices there's going to be the projects helix reference. Design which i think you know that's the next generation consul it's the gn 10 cons console almost certainly there will be handhelds probably partner handhelds like we've seen with a sus. Once there's rd a five s o c's out there that was scaled down for handheld i'm sure we're going to see it and of course there is such a device and there is such an s o c within the PlayStation port portable that's coming so you know it's.

48:15Evidently doable so where does the family go beyond that and i think the answer is well an extension of what they're doing right now which is to say the Xbox cloud. i'm pretty sure that those s o c's for magnus will be repurposed into the cloud just as the project scarlet silicon was. From Xbox series x so that's your family in my opinion now it is perfectly doable. um that um the yeah the design of the projects helix die which basically has a separate die feel like cpu and stuff like that and then a gpu die they could just swap in another gpu from the rd a five line and make a cheaper. Xbox the problem with that of course is that yeah i'm sure that the die is expensive but it's not you know it's not a primary cost concern compared to what's happening to storage and memory. So what i'm thinking now is you know what to make of the comments that asha shama is saying about efficiency and economy because you know how are they going to do that you know is fundamentally a memory and a storage crisis at this point not so much.

49:29fabrication crisis Oliver got any theories. um not too many outside of maybe cutting down on the memory. situation I know there are obviously a number of different memory configurations you could ship on like a 1992 bit bus. You know maybe you go to something like. 24 gig something in that range possibly. I think it gets a lot more complicated when you consider the fact that PC games will generally not be addressing it as a unified memory configuration but. At some point something has to give and i'm not sure if 36 gigabytes is a reasonable amount of memory to ship in 2027 or 2028. But more broadly i don't totally know. At what point the plans may have shifted or to the extent to which they've shifted if this was always something was planned because microsoft's earlier messaging. Was really like when you listen to saramon she was really messaging about premium devices here asha saying what we're going to have a range of efficient and affordable devices. i don't know to what extent that's changed because i think the technical underpinnings of this effort seem to have always been there it does not seem like a huge technical shift.

50:34It seems like a big strategy shift possibly a big software shift we don't know at the moment but um you know does not actually seem like something that's not viable from a technical perspective. economically it's a lot more challenging though because you look at the cost of these handhelds. It is expensive to what extent does microsoft subsidize you know these are difficult questions that we're going to have to address in the coming months or years as they plan to roll out the Xbox he looks family devices. i'm wondering if this is actually news wasn't it wasn't it the case that server bond did an announcement video. About the deal with AMD. And wasn't it kind of bored in terms of the devices that were covered by that announcement. Yeah that's true that's true that's true i mean when she did that announcement with some I think along to Lisa Sue when she did announcement she was talking about multiple devices but i guess it just a matter of like emphasis shifting moving products in the market at different times i don't really know exactly what microsoft's push will look like. Especially if it just like PC is a platform PC can run everything i you know at some point the semantics about what is or what is not a helix device or what is or what is not a console kind of by you and things become much much less and kind of hard to differentiate but yeah i would agree with that.

51:54Yeah another thought i just had is that i'm assuming i think that you know that the more's law is dead when it's correct we found one Oliver but wasn't it the case that the GPU die on projects helix is effectively one of the RD enough a RD no five discrete GPU dies right exactly the same tile that's the rumor i think it's 82 there's 81 80 zero 82 and i think maybe 83 as well there a number of 80. So i think that's the most important thing to do is to see serious GPUs and RD and in the RD 5 GPU line and the idea is that maybe these can be mixed and matched i don't know if that's infinitely extensible i don't know if they could do like an 80 zero to Xbox helix but it is the case that these could probably be mixed and matched according to what the device spec entails. Right i mean i'm just thinking that you know if you want to proliferate Xbox devices out there then you know you could in theory i mean anything that's got an RD na five graphics card could in theory become an Xbox device maybe require some sort of bespoke bespoke licensing for that to happen.

53:00You know but it could be the case that maybe cyber power you know we've been thinking previously about the likes of a suit semis i etc but what about you know the pre built companies like cyber power maybe they could produce their own. Xbox devices so to speak that are effectively pre built devices with an RD na five discrete GPU yeah lots of lots of potentials there i don't know a john it games calm you actually man asher for a few minutes. Is there any did you get the sense that there's any sort of four or maybe even five to 60 chess going on here in terms of like how they get a position next generation. Oh it was it's a brief enough chat that i can't really say anything that we didn't get in too much into that but. I was you know mostly just talking a little bit about the business in this situation around Xbox currently and then i was supposed to Jason Ronald at length about all the backwards compatibility and digital just you know the digital stuff so no real news report there's just.

54:05To me I felt like this whole thing was just sort of a continuation of what we already kind of knew that helix would be as family of devices and not just a single device. I thought that was kind of just what the point of it was when we first heard talk talk about this and I think we've been kind of aware of this for at least two years now is that right rich. Yeah I think so yeah so the kind of more PC style focus of it and yeah yeah I mean I think you're right. But given that I guess the one interesting thing here is that given that it is likely to be a family of devices and they're moving towards sort of the PC as a platform in which Xbox and PC merge presumably that does at least leave them a little more flexibility in terms of. The pain points specifically memory and storage like with your developing a PlayStation six you kind of have to hammer down specifications earlier I would say because it is a specific fixed platform helix doesn't seem like it's going to be that.

55:10And it needs to be more general purpose but still gaming oriented device and I would say that you know if there's going to be a family of devices that would imply that there's going to be a range of configurations for things like memory so that's probably I don't but there's also got to be kind of a minimum for those things like you can't just keep action that down to get the cost down too low. So I'm curious to see how low they can actually go and what that ends up looking like. Yeah but I assume that also means they want to sell a very expensive model and that all but then again it's like. What do you think about this? It's like if let's say our ideas of this becoming essentially like a piece an extension of the PC is true. What would be the purpose I guess of a helix that has like half the memory of the high end one you think it would be sort of like a series S situation where essentially they would define specific presets that are specific to each model.

56:15And they kind of decided all right if you have model X it's going to run with this you know version a but if you have model Y we run version B kind of thing. That's going to be super super tricky and I think they need a reference device and yeah I do think that beyond that it's going to be whatever your PC solution is. I think the problem is is that the bigger your family of devices the more curation is going to be needed and I'm not sure if it's up for that. It's right now where you know we're seeing this play out in real time in the PC space right because we've got the situation where one might imagine that the vast bulk of people playing the latest triple a games have got an 8GB GPUs. 8GB GPU and we're sitting here you know I'm having sitting there working out how to actually get an optimal experience on 8GB GPU when really the developer should be doing that and they're not. So that's happening in the PC space right now you know to what extent will developers care about the fact that it's an Xbox you know that's that's the tricky thing.

57:18Exactly. But the thing is though it's like it does still feel like Microsoft's in this position where more than Sony they need something they need to shift to a new sort of generation sort of speak because Xbox series is you know it is what it is in terms of success. It is not the sales juggernaut I think that so the Nintendo have had recently and therefore it's in their best interest to try to push forward and move on if they can. And so Sony on the other hand I mean with a PS6 that's arguing is arguably one of their biggest risks in the sense that not only are they moving from a very successful PS5 generation which they've done before but they're doing it while they've angered a lot of people. And made a lot of decisions around the console and the types of in the way that they run their business that I think is leading to some some resentment and I'm curious to see if that affects anything because we have seen before that you price it too high you get a little bit too arrogant you end up with a PS3 situation and while they were able to save it.

58:26But the first couple years at least were pretty rough on the PS3 this could be worse so I'm not really sure what's going to happen there and I think but of course as noted it's like the RAM crisis is a serious problem caused partially by Microsoft itself of course but I just don't know how you launch new hardware at this point at all. And certainly I don't know how you do that while shifting game development in that direction which is why we've kind of been talking that we think cross-gen will be the longest it's ever been because it's just we're starting to run into a real affordability crisis with all of this stuff. And now people kind of have to hang on to what they've got as best as possible to a certain degree. Yeah in the BBC interview Asha Sharma was talking quite a lot about different business models and she was mentioning that there's 13 different ways that you can buy an iPhone and so I think you can pretty much see the way it's going so you know I wouldn't be surprised to see an evolution of the game pass model to include a hardware subscription or Oliver's famous example by on Klanah.

59:42Well the buy it on Klanah stuff is not so much speculation is that it is lived reality because on the Microsoft store right now you can buy an Xbox on Klanah. So yeah I just love to see if this solution is just by O'Claude. This is a funny aside though I got to say for a big broadcaster like the BBC I was slightly amused that when they actually showed gameplay at one point about seven minutes 30 seconds into the video they show Halo combat evolved the remaster or campaign evolved actually that's why I messed it up because one BBC route Halo combat evolved rather than Halo campaign evolved so they got the name wrong and the actual footage looks like a real game. Looks like it was captured at 480p but it's obviously the new one so it's like dreadfully blurry horrible footage and they got the name wrong and I'm just like come on now. It's the BBC they're better than this.

1:00:42The questions were pretty good though I thought you on. No they actually actually didn't really want to answer them. Oh I think the interviewer and the camera person did good work was just whoever edited the video that did that part messed it up but I really like I also really like the camera they use or the lens they used for the interview or get that very shallow depth of field and only oshes and focus I'm a big fan of that look especially at a busy convention when it's so happening which I had a lens like that. Okay noted. Let's move on. Question here from Pi Studios hello fellow disc enjoy as exclamation point do you think the Microsoft may regret this this digital program long term in the past people who played a game on game pass but by digitally on the Microsoft store once it was removed from the service especially for PC players where some games do not let you transfer the file from MS store to the steam version but now if a game you want to keep playing gets removed you can buy a disk used off eBay for Dirt cheap compared to digital options.

1:01:43Not to mention you could have a series S and instead of buying full price digital games you can buy a dirt cheap Xbox one effectively use it as an external disk drive. Do you think they may place restrictions on this feature in the future to combat this sort of usage. I don't think so I think this is no planned and I think they've they've run the numbers and they're perfectly happy about all of this and I think it's basically a tactic to promote retention within the ecosystem because you know as we've discussed at length. There's a very strong argument for console users to pivot to PC or something different at the end of this generation and I suppose keeping hold of the existing user basis best you can using as many different initiatives as you can is a pretty good move. Absolutely in their current position doing all of these sorts of consumer favoring sort of moves I think makes a lot of sense and it's just smart business on their side and I don't think whatever sales they would have gotten from people purchasing his back catalog titles would necessarily have made up that much I guess.

1:02:55So this just feels like a win for everyone and sort of at a pivotal moment when people are really angry about the disk situation not that this solves things going forward mind you I don't believe we will be seeing helix game shipping on disk either but at least allowing disk users to retain access to older titles as well as retain the convenience of being able to purchase those older titles on disk at lower prices often and using the amount of new hardware kind of. Encourages people to just have an Xbox more than anything at this point in that sense right anything that encourages people to want to give that platform a shot I think is good for them and this is just a nice value add that it's likely only to bring positive results even if it's not a huge thing it still shows that they're trying to retain the audience best they can. And again I think the in the digital space once you look at just the general ownership and long term maintenance of an account I think people do start to think about like how reliable is this long term and I think Nintendo show themselves to not be that reliable with digital stuff in the past obviously playstation accounts are easily hacked and lost and you can lose your entire digital library.

1:04:13I feel like Microsoft actually has a better track record with this stuff in terms of retaining accounts and all the purchases on your account they've done a better job than the other console manufacturers and I think this is just part of that plan to sort of try their best to say you know keep a positive consumer focus you know policy in place so I think it's good yeah I. The only the only limitation really seems to be right now based on what we've seen is licensing again it seems like they have to go through the licensing process despite them existing on discs but because it's like a license transfer they can't just allow it on all games and so any game game that has sort of license material seems like it requires them to go back which is why we've not seen things like the forts titles on this program which I think is really good for them to go back to the game. Forza is always sort of always gets caught up in this all the racing games like yourself is done always get caught up in these sorts of things yeah absolutely all of what do you think about this yeah I don't think it's that much of an issue if people have this option because I still think people are going to be buying digital at very high ratios and not use games so much that's just inevitable especially I mean we talk about playstation but on Xbox it's a higher ratio altogether in the favor of digital I believe that's my.

1:05:41Understanding for physical titles for premium triple a titles I think this is much more about protecting their next generation console and making it more attractive and encouraging and franchise users to stay kind of like Johnny indicated that's I think that's much more the direction of travel here I think it's about trying to hold on to that core user base that established user base that has been fleeing for greener pastures elsewhere this generation to some degree and telling them hey you're going to have a home of the game. Next generation consoles even though they aren't talking about positron about the digital program in the context necessarily of next generation consoles I think under girls everything that's going on here right there preparing away for you to transfer your licenses so that will work on console without ultimately without having a disk drive right but it's unfortunately limitations I know that you guys forwarded a little image of a guy stacking some games up pointing out all the games that did not work with this positron program.

1:06:41This Xbox this digital program and there are a lot of games of a prep is even a majority of games he tested did work but then a lot of games that didn't a lot of racing titles for surprise and writers Republic on clancy games kingdom hearts for some reason I don't know why I guess I do know why is that's full of license content ace on that seven on very unfortunately I'm a bunch of games guitar hero. Lots of titles there lots of titles there skylanders so yeah very unfortunate situation of license content I don't know the extent to which they're going to improve that but that that is a bit of a bummer if this is truly limited in that sense this is actually not going to be as comprehensive as initially contemplated. Yeah that was one report I think what's really interesting about this is that there's now kind of like a crowdfunding not crowdfunding a crowd sourcing effort to actually figure out which games work and which games don't work and Microsoft has indicated that further titles maybe added during this beta period so interested to see how all of that place out I'm still waiting to find out if I can.

1:07:49I'm going to explain and Xbox series disc digital entitlement using an Xbox one console maybe you can you can confirm now is it I saw a bunch of people doing this exact test and apparently it does indeed work that's excellent use that is really good news yeah because you know we talked about it in the last year and I'm just still harbing a resentment that Microsoft put out what was you know at large really comparing the whole console for a really nice price point and if you were one of the guys who had the cheaper console from the prior generation or a few discs just kind of like didn't work anymore if the majority of you do now fantastic I think I even read that original Xbox one's work like the VCR monitor everything. That's pretty good we haven't confirmed this yet mind you but just reading around various social media forums read it stuff like that it does seem like that's the case. Hey everyone it's Adam post of Ted's podcast rethinking with Adam Grant and this episode is powered by AT&T business when you're building a business momentum is everything there's nothing worse than hitting your stride only to have a spinning loading icon bring everything to a halt when navigating competing priorities

1:09:05reliability isn't a luxury it's a foundation AT&T business is built to work so you can spend less time troubleshooting and more time focusing on what actually matters powered by AT&T business built to work get today business dot ATT dot com. Granger knows if you're a procurement manager at an industrial manufacturing facility you're balancing inventory and budget while sourcing critical supplies across the operation too much inventory cost climb too little production slows the range is two billion dollars and on hand inventory helps you get what you need when you need it so you can help keep budgets balanced and lines moving call 1 800 Granger click ranger dot com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. Nice very nice okay good stuff let's move on question here from foulies God see so Liverpool Liverpool fan Bobby Fowler is it an East Enders fan anyway UK jokes there high team you guys have suggested that the new PlayStation portable won't be able to play PlayStation 5 games fully but many of the current PC handhelds can easily play triple eight games will be at a lower scale they might be at low settings and they may even need upscaling but I thought it was a good idea to play in the game.

1:10:20I thought that was supposed to be one of the selling points I'm not even talking about the rise and AI chips but the likes of Z to extreme alongside a low resolution 1080p screen with potential upscaling out of thought they should be able to meet the majority of games that are out today understand they may not be as high quality. I'm maybe limited to 30 FPS but most outside the digital found the circle of fans with barely notice extreme point I'm sure people would buy and be more than satisfied that they can quote unquote play PS 5 games on the go. Yeah I think maybe it's like misunderstanding of our comments there we were basically saying that you know basically we if we kind of right here your entire library digital library PlayStation 4 games should just play on it by because the horse power be there but the horse power isn't there to just play your PS 5 games they will need to be adapted. It's in exactly the way that you're mentioning here I guess with the difference being that because it is a fixed platform device the developers will need to target it specifically hopefully with some very impressive results as we've seen with switch to but the point is you will need to have that adaptation process you know the PlayStation 5 at the moment 6 nanometer processor it's drawing up to 200 watts in total and the play.

1:11:41PlayStation handheld you know it's probably not going to be doing more than 30 is max with a 15 watt TDB processor so there's a big golf there but you can actually bridge that gap in exactly the way you're saying with a lot of the games and also of course bear in mind a lot of the games the first party PlayStation 5 games have PlayStation 4 versions you know God of War back nook GT 7 those would just kind of work already you know if we correct about the capabilities of this device so yeah hopefully that that sort of clarify. So I think that's why it's not going to be a big deal for you guys what we're attempting to to suggest there but the concepts of you know okay I've got a PlayStation 5 game on my digital library I'm just going to load it up on my handheld and play it. It's a bit more complicated than that and the same goes for these eco mode things where we're having a bit of a rethink about the eco mode being a kind of spearhead for handheld our sources are kind of suggesting that's not the case. John pretty much sums it up I think.

1:12:42Yeah I mean that's pretty much right isn't it and fundamentally the problem is just that PS 5 games are made for PS 5 PC games are inherently tweakable so you can do whatever you want on a PC handheld including running games that aren't technically supported so to speak. You can do it may not be great but Sony isn't going to want those sorts of sub-park experiences on their hardware so there's no way to just make PS 5 games blanket available for a new machine like this it just wouldn't work I would say and so there needs to be work done to make it happen how all this works in practice I don't know but yeah I'll certainly be curious to see. Yeah I mean I completely agree with Rich it'll run all your PS 4 library I presume it base PS 4 settings but that should be fine considering I think it'll probably have a 20p screen that'll probably suit the device pretty well and I'd be curious to see the extent to which I might run those games with that I don't know higher performance or something that'd be really curious to see as well.

1:13:46For PS 5 games it will require custom authored custom tweaked versions of your PS 5 games to run in that device at least in a performant manner maybe you could run the original PS 5 good I don't know why if Sony would want you to do that but perhaps you could on a technical level but I think it'll only be available for optimized games and then your PS 6 games will run on PS 6 I don't know how Sony will brand this there's kind of a bit of confusion here about what does it mean to have a PS 5 game PS 6 game for the PS 3. I don't know how Sony will handle that as a matter of branding but fundamentally I think it's a device that will play all your PS 4 games just fine some of your PS 5 games you know probably the majority of the Sony first party sweet and then some third party titles really some recently that would be kind of the default expectation for most titles and then not really PS 6 that's what I'm expecting but yeah there are range of compromises they could obviously employ to make those games run on this console but it won't be the same as a full fat PS 5 version necessarily.

1:14:47Yeah I'm inclined to agree with all of that let's move on. Malit 2000 asks in our final question to show high DF crew exclamation point you think there's a world where we will ever get the ability to implement a global game rate cap on switch to or other console platforms I recently bought tails of a eyes on switch to and while I knew the game had a 30 FPS cap going in the frame pacing on a 30 FPS cap is completely aborant. Aborant. In handheld mode for the game if I had bought it on steam deck I could likely solve it with a few clicks but as it stands and with Nintendo's trickery fun policy I'm basically screwed out of enjoying the game I purchased if I could just do the same in the switch to settings I'd have a lot more confidence in future purchases on the eShop. Elden Ring looks to have a similar issue on switch to where a 30 FPS cap would be most welcome judging by the reviews thanks and keep up the stellar work exclamation point. Do you want an interesting question right the whole concept of having a system level 30 FPS cap or frame rate caps of your choosing I mean it does work on steam deck.

1:15:51I think it's a really nice option to have there's a lot of options on steam deck though where it's basically a nod if not you know explicit support for some of the features that you could expect from a PC and the steam deck is fundamentally a PC. What do you think about the concept of it applying to a console. It would be amazing if it was available but I don't think any I don't think so to your attend will do it. Could happen on on a helix device maybe but even windows doesn't really have a clean way of doing this like the way that this is handled on steam OS is the best it is extremely good and it solves so many problems and it's of unfortunate that it's not a feature you can really get anywhere else right now not like that and but Nintendo especially since they mentioned like I don't see a world in which Nintendo exposes a setting like that to the player like there's just no way they don't want those things to be out there in that way.

1:16:54It's up to the developer so we're back to just. You're kind of stuck with whatever the developers do and in this case here that sucks when you get a game with a cap like that and the free pacing to bust it. It's the same as it's always been on consoles there's really nothing you can do to fix it you just stuck with it. Yeah yeah all of a what do you make about this question here I don't think it's going to happen because. This is very uncommon for consoles to have these kinds of options in the first place I mean we've seen a little bit of it on the side with things like the handheld boost mode and what on the set of things like PS are two toggles but I don't think they're going to do this and I don't think Nintendo is doing anything wrong here necessarily like this is not something that most. Games need to have implemented it's just a matter of developers hard and switched to I think they're turning to target 30 FPS for obvious reasons and not 60 FPS and obviously handling 30 FPS on a 60 Hertz screen or 120 Hertz screen is a bit more complicated than handling 60 Hertz on a 60 Hertz screen and people just mess it up in various forms Elden ring runs a long time understanding games like Tales of Rise have busted frame rate caps and this is like a continuing issue with switched to where.

1:18:08I don't know we do see a lot of games that are like totally busted and switched unit really dampens my enthusiasm for some of these ports in the console in general when the kind of baseline expectation that you actually have a properly frame paste frame presentation in your you know really exciting new port on that when that expectation is well it so I just think developers need to get the memo here more than and I know needs to force their hand because I actually I don't this is not something that's new or novel I mean. Having a correctly frame paste frame paste cap this is decades old concept right I think John be acutely aware this new be acutely where this is not a new concept but I mean I remember when the stuff first started popping up in games like Halo 3 was an example right nobody knew what the heck I was talking about and I didn't know what to call it. Just like there's something wrong with this I can't it doesn't look right and at the time I just described it as this looks like like in bad SLI setup right basically that was the only thing that looks similar to my eye was like it's reminds me of SLI.

1:19:18And yeah at the same time you know going back all the way to 1994 the dawn of the 3D of consoles PlayStation comes out with the Ridge Vase a day one with a game Ridge Vase that's basically running properly frame paste 30 frames per second to the point where people were so kind of impressed with it they thought it was running at 60 at the time which is quite obviously. Yeah that's the way it is yeah quite like the idea of having a having a frame make cap on the console but you know it's kind of like swings and roundabouts because the whole point of a console is basically that the developer is essentially curating the experience for you does that encroach on that I mean by and large that strategy has worked out OK over the years it's just these there's sometimes these weird outliers that don't really work out particularly well. Yeah I'm kind of on the fence about this but I do think the steam deck is essentially solving the problem but it's doing it because well it's a PC and you kind of expect that tweak ability yeah.

1:20:20There is some opportunities I think that Xbox with helix if it is going to be as wedded to PC is it may or may not be at this point but yeah interesting nonetheless. So that was the last piece of content within this particular direct so therefore the end of the show like subscribe share if you enjoyed it ring the bell on YouTube for things that may or may not happen principally the concept of instant notifications when you videos posted. But really if you want to support our endeavors go to patreon.com slash digital found me as mentioned earlier high quality video downloads of everything we do. Early access to DFTWRX including a private ad free RSS feed that applies to the super show as well ad free website and amazing community including access to the team via discord pretty awesome that's all from us for now thanks for watching and supporting digital foundry and we'll see you soon. Hey everyone it's Chris Kelleboh here host of the side hustle school podcast this episode is powered by AT&T business in my early days I did some of my best work in part cars or coffee shops.

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