Digital Foundry Direct Weekly

In our first spin-off Q+A show, it's pretty clear what the community is discussing: what's going on with Unreal Engine 5 games in terms of image quality and performance? Are compromised experiences now "part of the furniture" or can/will something be done? Beyond that, we discuss how YouTube quality issues impact our work, whether gaming laptops serve any purpose in the era of the handheld, whethe...

It's a big State of Play reaction video as Sony spills the beans on a colossal range of games across a 72 minute magnum opus. John, Oliver and Rich share their thoughts on all the key games that were revealed or showcased in more depth before moving on to other matters. Rich gets a look at DLSS dynamic multi frame-gen and starts to get more of an idea of where graphics technology is heading, while...

In a slightly extended 250th episode, Rich is joined by Oliver, Alex and John for a huge discussion across a range of topics. Valve's still not able to tell us when Steam Machine is coming out, but the projected Q1 release now seems to be H1 instead. Meanwhile, AMD's Dr Lisa Su says that the next-gen Xbox SoC is on track for a 2027 console release... but will the console actually release in 2027?...

A bit of a quiet week, where even the launch of the new CPU gaming champion doesn't quite live up to its billing. Rich talks 9850X3D, John talks 9800X3D system building, while a custom-built handheld PS4 perhaps gives us a hint of the PlayStation handheld to come. John's been playing the Banjo-Kazooie decompilation project and memories are shared on the event of Duke Nukem 3D's 30th birthday. And...

The best gaming showcase event returns - Xbox Developer_underscore_Direct has a proven track record of delivering excellent presentations of impressive games, and the latest is no exception. Rich, John and Oliver discuss Forza Horizon 6, Fable, Beast of Reincarnation and Kiln, before moving onto a brace of Switch 2 enhanced titles, plus a look at the Xbox versions of Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergr...

Another week, another controversy surrounding Monster Hunter Wilds PC performance - but perhaps this time we're looking at more of a silly bug than a game-breaking issue. John clues us in on a remarkable port of Super Mario 64 for the Sega Dreamcast (!), offers up opinions on Code Vein 2 on PS5 and shares his excitement for the latest Resident Evil Requiem disclosures. There's comment on the RTX 5...

Direct from Las Vegas, A Redbull-powered Alex Battaglia and Oliver Mackenzie share their thoughts on everything they saw at the Consumer Electronics Show 2026, while also discussing all of the big announcements. Nvidia, AMD and Intel announcements, the latest TVs and monitors and... the weirdness. Plus, what is Crimson Desert and why should be excited about it? 0:00:00 Introduction 0:01:07 News 1:...

In the last DF Direct video of the year, Rich, Oliver and Alex join forces to discusses their experiences of the best gaming hardware of 2025. Handhelds dominate, and while Switch 2's mega sales cannot be denied, Rich makes the case for the crazy GPD Win 5, while Oliver opts for the SteamOS-based Lenovo Legion Go S. Beyond portables, it's all about the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, RTX 5090, the Blackwell and...

Need we saw more? As we draw to the end of another remarkable year in video games, the Digital Foundry team sit down to pore over the technological showcases of the last 12 months in an attempt to answer the immortal question: What were the best game graphics of the year? 0:00:00 Introduction0:02:09 Honourable Mentions: Kirby Air Riders, Mario Kart World, Star Wars Outlaws (Switch 2), Fast Fusion...

A critical mass of rumours is strongly suggesting that Half-Life 3 will be a launch title for Steam Machine - but how does that work when the RAM crisis is making any kind of hardware launch so challenging? Meanwhile, Oliver pops in to talk about an actual patch for the woeful Switch 1 port of Batman: Arkham Knight, while Tom makes a similarly cameo-sized appearance to talk about Skyrim's anti-lat...

It's that time of the year! The Digital Foundry team discuss the big reveals and the games that caught their eye at The Game Awards, with the traditional complaints about the volume of CG trailers. Beyond that, Rich shares his impressions on the first PS3 emulator for PlayStation 5, Alex gets to grips with the wobbly performance of FSR Redstone frame generation and Oliver shares some eyebrow-raisi...

Nintendo didn't release Metroid Prime 4 Switch 1 review code to journalists, so how does it stack up against Switch 2? Rich does some digging. Meanwhile, the team lament the end of the iconic Crucial RAM, but there's better news about the return of some kind of 32-bit PhysX support for RTX 50-series GPUs. Oliver talks Sonic Racing Crossworlds on Switch 2, John's impressed by TimeSplitters Rewind -...

In this week's Direct, Rich gets to grips with Ghost of Yōtei's unlocked frame-rate and balanced mode upgrades, discovering some excellent results. The team discuss the seemingly soon arrival of a PC port for Death Stranding 2, while mulling over Ubisoft's details on its upcoming Assassin's Creed Shadows Switch 2 port. John's highly excited by eXoWin9X and there's a celebratory round of applause f...

A meaty new episode of DF Direct Weekly kicks off with a Valve double-header - reaction to news that Steam Machine may be heading for PC pricing, plus news of Linux FSR 4 support via Proton... including old GPUs. Meanwhile, Angry Alex is back and he's measured just how bad Windows performance in AC Shadows is impacted by a rogue update. Red Dead Redemption 1 returns once again, Oliver has opinions...

Valve's reveal of the Steam Machine has proven phenomenally popular to the point where our coverage is by far and away the biggest DF video of the year. But there's more information emerging post-embargo we had to share, plus plenty of discussion points to wade through. How much will it cost? Does this really cause problems for Microsoft? What is the actual make-up of the Zen 4 CPU? And is a spec...

While the new Steam Machine PC/console hybrid has taken centrestage, it's not the only major hardware launch revealed by Valve today. Steam Frame is a state-of-the-art VR headset that not only streams games from your PC but can actually run them on the headset itself, with an x86 to ARM translation layer working in addition to Proton. Oliver's been hands-on and shares his impressions with John in...

It's the hardware we've been waiting for. Built on SteamOS, Valve's brand-new Steam Machine runs the same games that Steam Deck does, with 6x the graphics horsepower - all built into a super-cute, premium, cube-like design. Oliver visited Valve HQ to go hands-on with both the new PC/console hybrid and the new Steam Controller, reporting back with impressions, specs and insights from the engineers...

Aside from the monumental release of our brand new website, it was looking like a quiet week until the gigaton news that Grand Theft Auto 6 was delayed again quote-unquote dropped. The team discuss the implications in this week's Direct, before moving onto PS Portal cloud streaming impressions and the AMD marketing debacle that is the RDNA 1/2 driver situation. Silent Hill 2 is all but certain to...

At the time of uploading this video, it has been one year to the day since PlayStation 5 Pro was available to buy. In a DF Direct Special, John, Oliver and Tom compare notes on a massive range of Pro-enhanced titles, putting them into buckets: successful, good but not great and straight-out bad. And with that out of the way, it's time to talk about the overall effectiveness of the system in delive...

A new patch has "dropped" for Metal Gear Solid Delta and there are big performance and feature improvements in some areas, but is the game actually fixed? Meanwhile, Oliver gets to grips with Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 and comes away disappointed, while John is highly impressed with Lumines Arise. The team try to work their way through a puzzling interview from Microsoft's Satya Nadella,...

A gigantic new episode of DF Direct Weekly sees the team's reaction to the big Halo Campaign Evolved reveal - and some unfortunate Unreal Engine 5 issues already coming into view. Meanwhile, what does Microsoft actually mean by its "very premium, very high-end" next-gen comments and is the Xbox Ally X interface really the best way forward? Meanwhile, John and some familiar faces reveal our next bi...

ROG Xbox Ally X is "in the house" and Rich describes his first couple of days in the review process. Alex answers the big question as to whether new PC games stutter more than older ones, while Oliver gets to grips with Black Myth Wukong's latest patch on PlayStation, complete with Lumen-free performance mode. Finally, next-gen Xbox and PlayStation spec leaks are gathering pace - so what do we mak...

In this week's DF Direct, Microsoft deny rumours that its next-gen console has been cancelled - but to what extent are its statements credible in the wake of the infamous "four games" messaging? The existence of ports of Red Dead Redemption 2 for PS5, Xbox and Switch 2 are confirmed by the most reliable leaker in the business, while John shares his impressions of Yooka-Replaylee. And to what exten...

Could this be the foundational GPU technology for the PlayStation 6? Mark Cerny's latest Project Amethyst update describes the building blocks of future graphics technology, with a strong focus on ray tracing and machine learning capabilities, along with bandwidth-enhancing features designed to reduce the need on massive memory controllers. John, Rich and Oliver discuss the tech and share more inf...

The latest DF Direct is dominated by discussion of Microsoft's gigantic price hikes for Game Pass - proof positive that the previous prices were unsustainable, or a greedy cash grab from Xbox? And who exactly wants the new content added to the top-end tier? Meanwhile, the team share their thoughts on the new Austin Evans PS5 teardown video, while Rich reports on a brace of native Steam Deck ports:...