Digital Foundry Direct Weekly

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:...

Yes, it's another episode of DF Direct Weekly and yes, once again it's two hours of content discussing the latest gaming and technology news. Marvel's Wolverine, Saros, Flight Sim 2024 and Deus Ex Remastered cover off what we want to talk about from the latest Sony State of Play, while there's reaction to what was essentially the non-reveal of Forza Horizon 6. We catch up with the state of Silent...

In the latest exciting episode of DF Direct Weekly, Alex and Oliver share impressions on the PC and PS5 versions of Dying Light: The Beast in the wake of review code problems stopping us from delivering a full review. Meanwhile, the shocking news of an Intel/Nvidia partnership demands attention from the team, before Rich shares his experiences of testing the leaked FSR4 INT8 version on RDNA 3 hard...

In this week's gigantic DF Direct, Alex shares first impressions of Borderlands 4 PC performance, Oliver pops up for a guest appearance as the team summarise Nintendo's latest Direct, Rich enthuses about GeForce Now's new 5080 tier, while cloud coverage continues with a hands-on look at Microsoft xCloud's new 1440p streaming. Meanwhile, there's a cautious welcome for reports that PS6 will features...

In the latest DF Direct, we finally get some idea of Switch 2's ray tracing capabilities via Star Wars Outlaws - and the team likes what they see. Meanwhile, details emerge of just how much slower Switch 2 carts are compared to internal storage and MicroSD Express - and it's a touch concerning. A reported storage downgrade for PlayStation 5 isn't exactly great news, and neither is the final death...

In the latest DF Direct, Rich and Alex share their hands-on experiences of the Xbox/Asus ROG Ally X and non-X, while the team react to Epic's Tim Sweeney seemingly laying the blame on developers for sub-optimal Unreal Engine 5 games. Alex discusses a couple of his favourite SIGGRAPH graphics presentations. Finally, John's massively enthused by Shader Glass and is here to tell you why.0:00:00 Intro...

With Rich unable to escape infection at #gamescom2025, it's down to John and Alex to share their impressions from the show, with Oliver completing the panel. The team share their thoughts on the Switch 2 ports of Elden Ring and Final Fantasy 7 Remake in the wake of very negative and very positive reactions from the showfloor. Alex is optimistic about Microsoft's proposed fix for StutterStruggle, w...

In the calm before the storm of Gamescom 2025, gaming and technology news is thin on the ground - and there's some degree of disappointment beyond the brilliance of the Battlefield 6 open beta. Drag x Drive on Switch 2 underwhelms, AMD releases an RX 9060 that you can't buy - and isn't really that much different to the 9060 XT. Light relief comes in the form of a monstrous modded RTX 4090 "handhel...