Gamepass definitely needs a cheap "streaming only" tier for that thing to work. I ain't paying ultimate tier to only get the streaming experience. It COULD work as a really cheap, low barrier entry drug for people lacking hardware
The average Joe buying a firestick to check out gamepass is not going to pay for ultimate. A cheap 10 a month for cloud would better for those customers
If the quality is there then the price is not an issue, with GeforceNow it literally save me money gaming on it during the summer due to lower electricity bill from not having to turn AC on as often.
@@pronstorestiffi _The concept of a_ DF Direct episode in the here and now is pretty bespoke. I'll be curious to see how the rest of the episode unfolds...
Excellent point. I think that is the crux of gamepass, no matter what you want, so much is bundled together that you are ultimately paying for sh.t you don't want.
It’s a difficult thing. 1) Running cloud servers is higher cost than having consumers run their own hardware, even though the hardware is subsidized $100-200. What would the price of a cloud only option needs to be? Would it be lower enough to matter? 2) If you sell a cloud only option, is there a path to those consumers transitioning to console? I’m not sure what the answers to these questions are.
It’s a difficult thing. 1) Running cloud servers is higher cost than having consumers run their own hardware, even though the hardware is subsidized $100-200. What would the price of a cloud only option needs to be? Would it be lower enough to matter? 2) If you sell a cloud only option, is there a path to those consumers transitioning to console? I’m not sure what the answers to these questions are.
Thanks for making Mondays more bearable! I'm able to work through most of what I get assigned to me on Monday making the rest of week more manageable.😀
With the Black Myth WuKong shots, is it possible the stuff you're noticing is caustics caught looking odd in a static screenshot that in game would be in motion and make more sense? Effects like that especially can, without context, be hard to interpret.
I don't think it can ever be under $350. I also don't think it needs to be. People are happily paying $600+ for handhelds. I think the console could aim for the same price point.
@@mechanicalmonk2020 All things tech rely on chip manufacturing in Taiwan and right now the future is totally uncertain. I’d assume that Valve understands that and is waiting till the dust settles. The importance of understanding this is huge. Shits gonna get crazy brother.
@@mechanicalmonk2020not that many people are buying these at 500 - 750 compared to the broad market. Modern consoles have proven a medium pc can be made for 450 at cost but it's the at cost but that you need big sales to absorb. That said a valve based console with stream integration..id buy it for console a price
I still have a few games on the Windows Xbox app that I can neither complete install, nor uninstall, and just pop up everytime as failing "install" everytime I open the app.
They should straight up refactor or reboot their Microsoft Store and UWP system as most under it do have problems with their dependencies for different systems. When you have to use an offici Microsoft command line executable to make the xbox app work then clearly they have a major problem. That is near or straight up eartly Linux 2000s of complexity@@FrawgfithAmblose
I know this is totally a „it works on my machine“ comment, but what is your setup? I haven’t had any technical issues with the Xbox app for years. I think the app is only ok in terms of just experience, but I don’t have any of the technical issues that others seem to have, and I use it a lot. Ryzen 5700x, Radeon 6600, 32 GB DDR4 RAM, 2TB NVME m2, b550m motherboard. I’m on Windows 11.
Xbox is not trying to convert console players to streaming, they are trying to get NEW players that don't want the box or can't afford it, hence the "you don't need an xbox to…" phrase.
That is a notable idea Xbox seems to often bring up. The concept of expanding the AAA gaming market beyond the current console/PC market. The best way to do this is seemingly cloud stuff.
@@ContrastCopy RT not having enough hardware support to run it isn't the same thing as data caps, people not having wcces to high speed internet and living in apartment complexs with a lot of wifi causing interference.
@@ContrastCopy but technology is already there with GeForce Now and has been for a couple of years, Microsoft should've put more effort into streaming tech. The idea is good but Xbox implementation isn't.
I would love for Kid Icarus to return. I absolutely adored Uprising on the 3DS, it's one of my favorite games. I hope we at least get a remaster of that game, but a sequel would be awesome too ❤❤❤
That's a very good point , hopefully they do a separate video of it running and show the fire stick running with the ethernet adapter and the latency with that
I’ll need the authorities in the UK to finish laying down high speed internet before I can even contemplate streaming lol. Don’t have fibre at all in my area yet
@@kevikiruUs living in poorer countries ironically have better internet because our infrastructure was set up when better options were available (fibre), whereas the richer countries don't get the upgrade since they had already set it up with slow broadband cables and there's not enough push to replace it.
@@leonro That is very true. The same with mobile. We went from no landline in homes to affordable mobile pay as you go call & internet and mobile banking faster than most developed countries
I think paid games are often way better than f2p games in my own experience. I've played a variety of high quality games on gamepass that aren't even made by microsoft.
why do people keep presuming streaming is aimed at the core gaming market? it's tiny, this is aimed squarely where the real money is. the billions of casuals who won't care that it's an inferior experience to local hardware. Serious, why is this so hard to understand?
AFAIK Nvidia's Displaced Micro Mesh is supported on all hardware as its cross vendor, they say that its "accelerated" on Ada Lovelace but don't get into specifics on ho its accelerated. DMM has been added to Simplygon which is an asset optimization suite provided by Microsoft.
53:26 - I wonder if an original Xbox with upgraded CPU could even out the choppy performance in KotOR 1&2, or if it's GPU bottlenecks. I remember having single digit framerates in some busier areas (especially the last section of the first game on the 'Star Forge').
I had it with the Xbox App on PC when I pressed the cancel button on a gigantic game update download and instead of stopping the download it turns out that means UNINSTALL THE WHOLE PROGRAM to Microsoft...
As some who used OnLive back in the day, I am still waiting for streaming to get to the point of being near indiscernible from local playback. It has been a long, long journey!
I loved OnLive! All I had was a laptop with integrated graphics and mediocre WiFi for the time, and it was the only way I was able to play real games at the time. I got so mad at Sony for acquiring it and making it worse lol
@@speedracer2please Pretty much the same situation I was in when I used it! I wanted to play Just Cause 2, but my laptop only had Intel HD Graphics 2000, so I discovered OnLive and played it through there!
I remember when MS promised they wouldn't raise prices on GamePass. I unsubbed after Starfield came out because I realized there hadn't been a game in over a year that I enjoyed on the service. Still isn't one. It's a scam, IMO. Just a bunch of subpar games for a never-ending fee with the ultimate goal of destroying what little ownership we have of our games. Just like how uber destroyed the taxi industry. You come in cheap, destroy competition, then raise prices. Always the same plan. F Microsoft. wukong looks amazing
I think gamepass is great for indie games. I played so many games that I would have otherwise never tried. Such as the Ori games, outer wilds, superliminal and some others.
Alex is the worst hes the one who tried to pretend halo infinite only looked bad as it was In shadow when the trailer had sections in full blown lit situations He's happy to shill for Microsoft if he can think of a way to do it
For The First Descendant on PC perhaps you can check the amount of System Event Log Kernel Errors while playing it. Does it have to do with the anti cheat software?
Hard disagree as to the contention that most gamers are moving to gaming just on phones or PCs. Yes, phones cater to the most casual gamers, but PCs only cater to the most technically savvy gamers. There's a large middle ground of gamers that like the convenience that consoles provide. Evidence? The success of the Switch, PS4, and PS5. Just cause MS can't get their shit together in the console market, doesn't mean there is no such market. Also, another hard disagree that PC gamers are all more savvy and smarter with their money than console gamers. Evidence? People who have Steam libraries filled top to bottom with games they bought but have never played. PC gamers and Console gamers are both stupid when it comes to their money; just stupid in different ways.
30:48 - Alex, as a primary PC user, you know that PC gaming is primarily digital now so I'm not sure what your point of ownership vs "renting" the software is. Even with "ownership" of PC and console digital games, as we all know, you don't actually own digital games, only a limited license to play on a particular service so long as that service allows you to - PSN, Microsoft, Steam, Epic, Origin, EA, etc.
Well there is GOG where you do keep the games with their installers as executables. And if you are going to say "But hard drives will die eventually" well everything even disk will die eventually, which is why Backups exist to remedy it.
I think the main difference on the PC is that there are multiple options in how we can get our games, they can also be backed up. On consoles, if the store front goes down, you're pretty much screwed and will have lost access to all your digital bought games. The risk is a lot higher on consoles and probably why there is so much more resistance to digital gaming on consoles compared to PC gaming.
1:22:25 Wifi works fine on the OLED when installing the OEM driver. There are guides online on how to find it. The audio jack also works with the driver in the APU driver package. The only thing that still doesn't work is bluetooth and the built in speakers. Bluetooth USB adapters also work fine though.
You don't need to buy used months later to spend less on console. You can buy on stores that offer the best prices and then even sell it if you want. You can buy physical games with friends and share it and also you can share your account with a friend to share buy digital games. There are so many ways to spend less on console.
RTX3080-> RTX4070... What pisses me off the most here, isn't JUST that there's over a 2x increase which obvioulsy means FRAME GENERATION but that... the frame gen is obviously coming from a 2x increase of about 34FPS (*huh?) which is too low as you get a lot of added and temporal artifacts. Besides, they are sort of shooting themselves in the foot. Sure, buy the RTX40 series but if you start lowering the bar to 30FPS before frame gen and pushing upscaling more then people may care less about buying a HIGH END graphics card. *How did I get 34FPS? You just take HALF the roughly 68FPS shown for the RTX4070. There's a cost to frame gen, so the RTX4070 without FG might get, say, 40FPS. But the actual TRUE frames it can now handle is lower as there's a processing cost. So just take HALF of what the end result is. Generally speaking you should be starting Frame Gen at a much higher FPS. I'm honestly not sure how much the added lag affects a game that I'd assume has critical timing. Probably not idea.
Exactly. They are forcing everyone onto the 4000 series. My 40 teraflop 3090 ti should be able to handle that lol. Aside from the water, it looks last gen.
Used to have that issue every once in awhile with installing and playing games with the Gamepass app. Might have been a hardware networking issue in that it got fixed when moving to AM5 on a fresh system
"You don't need an Xbox" is the best first party console hardware marketing since the Wii U days where it'd show a family switching off from the Wii U on the TV to watch sports, leaving the poor lonely guy to play on his controller screen. Maybe the new Xbox ad might be even better, "you don't need our product" is like one step up from "everything else on TV is more interesting than our product", although Microsoft ALSO tried that one on the early Xbox One days. Just amazing props to everyone involved.
I think people are reading too much into this or they don't understand it and in some cases it gets used in console wars. To me this is no different than Nvidia advertising GeForce Now, where the whole point is you don't need their GPU's to game on PC. It's just offering an additional option to those who'd find it appealing. One is not a replacing another.
@@TerraWare The difference is NVIDIA is still investing heavily into their own GPUs. MSFT doesn’t appear to be doing the same for its consoles, and it feels like they’re actively tossing the console aside and just don’t care.
the console market hasn't grown in 15 years. game sales are down 20% on console compared to 10 years ago while subscriptions are up 30% and microtransactions are up 160%. It's not rocket science. The console market has been dying for a long time. Except for nintendo but they aren't even close to the big players in income.
Disagree- lots of things will change and ai will speed up all changes. Computers themselves will be ai Terminals, and games will be generated by the ai in real time, from supercomputers in data centers.
Game Pass is still the definitive way for most players to play CoD on PC and Xbox. Why? Because if you've played CoD, you know how the cycle goes, you play it for a month or two and then you are done. Even on the Day One Tier, that's still cheaper than the full game. That said, I prefer supporting devs fully, not with subscriptions since the true benefit of Game Pass for devs in the smaller dev teams/indie games, but I'd say...those selections on Game Pass are generally pretty bad and I wouldn't want to support them either way, gotta let my wallet do the talking, whether it is a big studio or an indie one.
1:49:21 I think a big reason for lack for FSR upscaler iteration is because they diverted all resources to Frame Gen while the others were still improving the upscaling part.
PC game pass has always had way less games than on Xbox. I have a Series S still because of this, and modern game devs still can't figure out crossplay.
I’ve subbed to game pass ultimate for over 3 years now and I’ve never streamed a game. I always download. Although come September I’ll be cancelling my subscription due to the cost of getting COD (a game series I couldn’t care less about) on gamepass - closing Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks and the price increase. It’s no longer worth it for me to be letting the subscription constantly roll over month after month without any thought. I’ll be an on and off again subscriber in future.
xCloud performance is not solely dependent on WiFi speeds; it also heavily relies on the client's device capabilities. Contrary to popular belief, cloud gaming is not just streaming a video like TH-cam or Netflix. It requires robust h264 decoding performance. Testing on various devices using Edge, Kiwi, and Safari browsers showed that PCs and Macs (both AMD and Intel) had the best decode times (1-4ms), followed by iPhones and Samsung Galaxy devices with Exynos chips (4ms). Android phones with Snapdragon and MediaTek chips had slower times (26-30ms), with the worst performance observed on Android TV (112ms). xCloud performance and quality could be enhanced if Xbox will increase the bitrate limit and adding support for h265
No one is going to use that xbox firestick feature. They have to have a controller too. That's about 60.00. Who is the market? People who understand what this feature is and how to use it would buy a series s. The people they are trying to capture need a person in their house to explain it to them. It's a bad buisness model.
@@mattmaas5790 if you have the controller- you probably have the console. If you have to buy one- you can find a series s w controller for well under 200.00.
Great Direct guys.. Looking forward to your analysis of Black Myth Wukong. Btw Rich, the topic around 53:30 min, I just noticed there's no link to that Xbox modder's channel in the "video description below". 🤭
I am partial to the GPD Win 4. They have the best pointer device in a handheld and having a physical flip out keyboard is a game changer. Expensive, too. Also relatively hard to get, I think. I believe the Aya equivalent, while not as well built is more readily available.
It's a shame Namco (Bandai), spent development time porting Ace Combat 7 to the Switch, when they could have ported it to the PSVR 2, and made it so much improved, including having the entire game playable from the HMD.
I really can’t see the angle where giving more options is in any way bad. Someone would have to go and change a setting, notice its bad, then forget how to do what they just did. Even children wouldn’t make that mistake.
I suspect they're trying to make the console's unusable (or abandon support until they are) so they can keep pushing this nonsense. You have a voice in the community. We need your help!🤞 There's an xbox problem that a lot of us have been trying to get help with, and getting ignored. The game capture (to external hard drives) feature has been broken since the April update. Would you pretty please look into and maybe report on this? It lets you record two, maybe three 10 min videos. A few "record what happened" videos. Then it just stops working. It'll say it started recording but wont. Then the captures page will continuously freeze. And the only way to fix it is to shut the console down, unplug for 5 mins, plug back in, wait a min, and try again. And even then it only works for like 2 recordings. It's not just me. Just look up "xbox game capture not working" posts since April, specifically Lizgon_one's posts because they include screenshots, workarounds, and examples. We've submitted reports, added feedback, and are being ignored by Xbox, please help? 🙏🤞🤞
If MS move to streaming only, they basically are saying to places like Australia that it's a low priority market. Universally, our internet just isn't good enough for it consistently. That's why PS Now or Stadia never launched here.
DF talk about glass half empty. I guess you decided a while back your stance on Xbox since the whole starfield review copy snub. .. You lack any vision or fail to realize any of the potential positives. Gamepass is still a tremendous value with a$3 monthly increase. Have you not been paying attention to the world economy and inflation? It's unfortunately a requirement for the service survival and it's a damn good one. Now let's talk about cloud gaming.... This isn't about getting rid of the consoles. They need that for their core gamer. It's the larger audience that don't have an Xbox or can't afford one. Do you know how much an Xbox or PlayStation console costs in South America? Most can't come close to affording it. What about when you travel? Can't take your console with you. Jump on the cloud and play away! It's a brilliant move and it will get better over time. As for gamepass and PC experience. I use it everyday. Maybe good it a try. Your experience from 2 years ago may not be the same experience you have today. I use it everyday without issue with out crashing and download games just fine. Thank you Oliver for being the only one looking at any of the positives here! And well done Microsoft for bringing us more games more content and services and in more ways! The next decade in gaming is looking bright!
> Gamepass is still a tremendous value with a$3 monthly increase. So just ignoring the price increase plus removal of benefits from certain tiers? Which ties into the argument that the system was never sustainable and actually hurt MS in the long run. > been paying attention to the world economy and inflation? If only there was a second hand market allowing you to buy used consoles cheaper then new. And used physical games for a fraction of the price MS is charging in their digital store. If only MS wasn't pushing towards an all digital future far faster then any other console maker. > Do you know how much an Xbox or PlayStation console costs in South America? Most can't come close to affording it. So what makes you think they will have access to high speed internet, and other assorted tech needed to stream games online? > Jump on the cloud and play away! I've never met a hotel wifi that could effectively run netflix let alone stream a game.
@@gothpunkboy89HS internet is readily available in South America. The issue with consoles is related to taxes and duties. It's literally double or triple the price of the equivalent in the US. Gamepass like any streaming service will need to change and adapt to the market no different than Amazon/Netflix has otherwise it won't exist. Not to mention the cost of adding the Activision line up, it's great value propositioning in my opinion, and as far as game ownership goes, I agree it's great to own the games but the disks however the pros outweigh the cons and the PC market already knows this. A disk is also just collecting dust once your console goes offline which owning the disk or not won't help you when the servers shut down on your favorite game from 6 years ago because reality check, most have an online requirement nowadays.
as someone who goes to great lengths to minimize input latency while gaming, i'm absolutely dreading the inevitable shift towards streaming. it will never - NEVER - have good input latency (like sub 20ms.) at that point, i'm out for good.
Tried pc game pass but to often ran into install issues games not starting or just buggy. I’ll stick with steam. It makes no sense when micro is a software company 🤦. Way to many steam sales and discounts to pay for a sub on gamepass. Nothing sucks more than activating a code an not knowing when a game you want to play will even be accessible
If the Xbox Series S isn’t potato enough for you, there’s fire stick streaming! 🤣 But I digress: $79 *sounds* appealing until you realize you also have to maintain a Game Pass Ultimate subscription every month (at $20/mo) to play a limited number of games available on the service (only the ones that support streaming) and the performance of them will be somewhere between bad and abysmal. I don’t care how catchy their marketing phrase is, this isn’t going to grow their brand with this level of performance and cost.
Depending on the type of game streaming can be quite viable. Obviously something like a competitive twitch shooter isn't going to be enjoyable no matter how fast and perfect your connection is, but I've streamed games through my home wifi from my main system to a laptop on the other side of the house and it quickly made me realize what games work and what games don't. Pretty much anything that's fine to play on a controller is playable with 30-40ms of latency. But I don't know how I'd feel about playing at the visual quality of a Series S.
News 2 about Gamepass price increase, I'm pretty sure on console you get Xbox live gold or whatever it's called now aswell? Whereas PC you obviously don't pay to play online so that's the price difference?
That may be part of it. But I think it's mostly just that console users are locked into that ecosystem, so they can get away with charging more. Same reason why there have been some games that launch at 70 or 60 bucks on console, but are 10 dollars cheaper on PC at 60 or 50 dollars, respectively. The only reason for that is that you can get away with it when people are locked to that one console and store. I'd assume it's mostly the same reason for subscription prices. Of course, consoles are sold at a loss, but they make up for it and a lot more with this kinda stuff. PC users would be turned away by such prices since they have more options. So they have to keep it cheaper to get some engagement.
@@sawdust8691most pc users don't really want to use anything other than steam, so they have to make gamepass really appealing for people to be willing to switch to the Microsoft store.
I stopped Game Pass app streaming and went with console streaming instead. Two reasons, quick resume allows me to get back in the game waay faster since I don't have to wait for my save data to sync from the cloud and it allows me to play my library of games instead of just Game Pass only games
I agree with Rich there is no big upside for Valve to do another Steam desktop. I much sooner would expect them to come up with some sort of docking station with dedicated GPU for a 2nd gen SteamDeck. Just like people are speculating the Index succesor; Deckard will integrate with Steamdeck (v2?) In some way. Offering up something inbetween the mobile chipset standalone vr of quest and the PCVR. It would could be enough to offer up an untethered HL:A experience at high enough res and framerate, without any compression or latency. Add in a docking station that just pushes resolution? Maybe from 720 tp 1440 or something? At comparable performance. It would be quite the ecosystem and it might end up relatively affordable.
@@walter_the_wobot2349 I would be CPU bottlenecked for sure. But perhaps with some GPU grunt and some tricks like upscaling and frame gen a docking station with dedicated GPU could take games to a place where it feels close enough to a PS5 like 4k/60. Which is of coarse also hardly ever native 4k. I think price is key here, it 3 cost half or less the price of a console and it shouldnt be mandatory for Steam Deck (v2) buyers. I think it could make sense to people who buy are handheld first and foremost, but wanna get the most out of it. I think the Steam platform is highly competitive in terms of price and content and with the right hardware solution I can see it take up a space in the living room larger than Xbox is currently doing. But I dunno, Im spitballing, love to hear why none of this will ever happen...
I have to agree, just have a Steam Deck 2 but with official dedicated gpu support with a dock, that would offer most of the performance advantages of a dgpu and honestly, it's the best of both worlds, portable gaming on the go but with weaker hardware, and much more performance once docked on the big screen. Looking at what some of the rivals are doing with dgpu support, it's offering pretty much higher end PC gaming, so a dock could work for a Steam Deck 2, but it would be better if it's official support that's plug and play, I think that's far better than having a Steam Machine. Also, I'm not sure how it works with dgpu support on these portable devices, but wouldn't having a dgpu on a dock, free up the APU to focus on cpu performance? Also, because the dgpu has it's own memory, wouldn't it also mean there is more system memory to play with? Being that, the memory isn't being shared out between cpu and gpu, if so, this is a far better way of doing it then a Steam Machine, as I can imagine a lot of people that buy a Steam Deck would also be willing to buy a dgpu for it, and in most cases, that could do away with needing a gaming PC, especially if it's a good dock that allows you to connect many things to it.
@@paul1979uk2000 I like a lot of the points you make, it sounds potentially even sweeter than my own fantasy :D. I think the dock with Steam Deck 2 and the DGPU should also feature wired and/or wireless connection to the Valve Deckard to offer up a taste of higher end PC VR. You would end up with a killer handheld, a console that could be ps5 level, perhaps more and a standalone VR experience miles ahead of Quest 3 in terms of fidelity and a PCVR like experience on par or beyond PS VR 2. All with convenience of using one future proof storefront with great 'backwards compatibility'. If Valve starts throwing in some HL:A level exclusives... phew!
@@paul1979uk2000 Your take is even more positive than mine, but you make it sound quite feasible, I think it's also about price. Personally if I could dock the Steamdeck 2 and get quality at the level of PS5 for an affordable price that would be a sell for me. But an option with a pricier option with a beefier GPU, more competitive with a dedicated game PC, would also be an attractive option. I'm also interested what Steam Deck 2 and a dock with DGPU could mean for VR. There are rumors the next Valve HMD might use the Steam Deck 2 for a more performant/powerful stand alone experience than the Meta Quests. Having the SD2 docked could add a more PCVR like possibility, even tho I'm not sure the processor in the Steam Deck could ever churn out high enough framerates for high end VR.
Funny how Xbox cpu replacement was talked about. I watched a couple of his videos before and that is a crazy mod. I would love to see Rich do a PS3 RSX overclock video. I plan on doing the OC myself, but have been waiting for the next CFW.
Dear DF team. Why are some 60fps 3rd person experiences smoother than others? Was quite pleased to discover how well Ghost of Tsushima runs at 60fps. This being the case, after trying to get it to run at 120 fps (4k) ,( unsuccessfully) since most 3rd person games at 60 fps ( to me at least) feels like wading through a pool of graphical sludge.
Alderon Games, an Australian-based developer behind the dinosaur-themed multiplayer survival game Path of Titans, announced "we are swapping all our servers to AMD" because "Intel is selling defective" CPUs - specifically 13th and 14th Gen models.
Great weekly! but man its really difficult sometimes to hear what Oliemack is saying. Dont know why. Maybe too fast and his tone is too low or something? Its not really clear sometimes
Why do we have Game Mode on TV's today? I understand that TV's in the past were limited in what they could deliver, but I would have thought that Game Mode would have been figured out by now and eliminated. Just make a display with Game Mode in mind. If TV manufacturers can not figure it out, for whatever reason, then why have we not seen a dedicated Game Mode button on our remotes? Many displays automatically detect a signal depending on the hardware, and turns on Game Mode, but the these streaming FireTV's do not have that ability. Having to scroll through TV settings to turn Game Mode On or Off is an absolute pain in the butt, and would like to know what in the heck is going on. I find it kinda ridiculous. Is it a marketing thing? I'd love to see Digital Foundry cover this Game Mode technology, and if Game Mode is here to stay 20+ years from now.
Regarding FSR3 FG: IMHO it’s also present in the recent Robocop-Game on consoles. So the First Decendant is actually the third game to support FG on consoles 🤔
Alex almost falling asleep during the Xbox streaming discussion (no suprise there lol) , wait till it comes to the PC space and a choice between £1k plus for a card plus the cpu etc. or a lot cheaper streaming service with all the bells and whistles for a fraction of the cost
I love the idea of older systems getting a Frankenstein upgrade treatment and seeing what it does for the system. Be it any actual visible improvement on games or if it completely messes some up due to settings made for said system originally. I remember how, for my PS2 way back, it had an official upgrade option via an added GPU to play FFXI on it. I always, as a child, thought it boosted other games at times, be it more consistent frames or loading. Mind I was a child and didn't know crap and gave it to my cousin decade plus ago for her kids. I remember attachments for "enhancements" for Dreamcast and GameCube as well. Not full on soldering more ram, boosting clocks, etc, though😅.
I think it makes more sense for them to do that once the mid-gen PS5 Pro is released, at least that way they know what to target and what's needed on the PC side.
I think they just means along with all the other ways to play Microsoft games and not necessarily replacing the console. Who really knows except Microsoft on what they want Xbox to be 10 or 30 years from now. What Game Pass will be like 10 or 20 years from now.
Microsoft seem lost with Xbox right now, they don’t seem clear about what their competitive advantages are (I guess they consider Azure and cloud to be their advantage?) and what they want Xbox the brand to be. It seems like they are just an also ran vs Sony right now with regard to ‘gaming’.
It feels like gaming is in a transition point and Xbox is trying to be the first to figure out where the industry is going. Even PlayStation seems to be acknowledging their limits in growth so it doesn’t really make sense to copy what they’re doing. That said Xbox is doing a shit job with finding their competitive advantage
@@Gvines723 Yes, agreed, console growth has stopped and PC will have a limit too I suspect. Can’t keep developing $200m games if there’s only 30m Xbox Series consoles to sell to.
People don’t get what Xbox is doing. One of the things I like about this Fire Stick app is that I have a 24” TV at my bedroom which I only use 30-60 min before sleeping to watch something. Now I could easily play a game relaxing down on bed, and bitrate or whathever WONT MATTER when the tv is so far away and so small. Even better I could play a turn-based game like Final Fantasy or Gears Tactics and then latency won’t matter either.
WOW Thank you so much for the shout-out, this means a lot! You guys are the best!
Curious how much a service like that costs. I would imagine a lot. Very involved.
You have got a new sub 👍🏻
Gotta hook Alex up with one of those Xboxes for some testing
After drinking for each "in the here and now " I can say that I am not in the here and now anymore
😂
You're now "in the where and when".
Gamepass definitely needs a cheap "streaming only" tier for that thing to work. I ain't paying ultimate tier to only get the streaming experience. It COULD work as a really cheap, low barrier entry drug for people lacking hardware
agreed
The average Joe buying a firestick to check out gamepass is not going to pay for ultimate. A cheap 10 a month for cloud would better for those customers
@@spankrocketgaming294average Joe's literally spend hundreds of dollars on game systems and games, why would $20 be too much
@@spankrocketgaming294 Exactly
If the quality is there then the price is not an issue, with GeforceNow it literally save me money gaming on it during the summer due to lower electricity bill from not having to turn AC on as often.
1:19:51, 1:22:56, 1:23:44, 1:23:54 "Rich says in-the-here-and-now" drinking game.
What's the richards "bespoke " count at this video ?
Pick any episode and take a shot each time somebody says they're curious.
I'll be curious to see how the rest of the unfolds...
You didn't say how much to drink during the drinking game so I woke up in the hospital, thanks a lot
@@FrawgfithAmblose GTA style hospital wake?
Spoilers! 😂
I like DF Directs in the here and now.
I find them to be quite _compelling_
They truly are cromulent
@@pronstorestiffi _The concept of a_ DF Direct episode in the here and now is pretty bespoke. I'll be curious to see how the rest of the episode unfolds...
Yes, but there is a caveat
Alex is such a pc shill/fanboy. It’s kind of annoying honestly seeing him whine about a system he admittedly has no knowledge about
I'm just baffled that Xbox now has a tier of "Game Pass" that doesn't include Game Pass
Always love rich's facebook marketplace updates.
1:38:45 Rich answers a satirical Windows CE question earnestly lol
"Fordy frames per second in qualidy mode"
Why MS would launch this without a cloud streaming only tier for their service I have no idea.
Excellent point. I think that is the crux of gamepass, no matter what you want, so much is bundled together that you are ultimately paying for sh.t you don't want.
I imagine cloud streaming is actually more expensive for them than just the regular service. They have to run the games instead of just hosting them.
It’s a difficult thing.
1) Running cloud servers is higher cost than having consumers run their own hardware, even though the hardware is subsidized $100-200. What would the price of a cloud only option needs to be? Would it be lower enough to matter?
2) If you sell a cloud only option, is there a path to those consumers transitioning to console?
I’m not sure what the answers to these questions are.
It’s a difficult thing.
1) Running cloud servers is higher cost than having consumers run their own hardware, even though the hardware is subsidized $100-200. What would the price of a cloud only option needs to be? Would it be lower enough to matter?
2) If you sell a cloud only option, is there a path to those consumers transitioning to console?
I’m not sure what the answers to these questions are.
Money.
Thanks for making Mondays more bearable! I'm able to work through most of what I get assigned to me on Monday making the rest of week more manageable.😀
With the Black Myth WuKong shots, is it possible the stuff you're noticing is caustics caught looking odd in a static screenshot that in game would be in motion and make more sense? Effects like that especially can, without context, be hard to interpret.
At this point I could really see Valve capture a large part of the console market with something minimal, sleek, and UNDER $350
I don't think it can ever be under $350.
I also don't think it needs to be. People are happily paying $600+ for handhelds. I think the console could aim for the same price point.
@@mechanicalmonk2020 All things tech rely on chip manufacturing in Taiwan and right now the future is totally uncertain.
I’d assume that Valve understands that and is waiting till the dust settles.
The importance of understanding this is huge. Shits gonna get crazy brother.
@@mechanicalmonk2020not that many people are buying these at 500 - 750 compared to the broad market. Modern consoles have proven a medium pc can be made for 450 at cost but it's the at cost but that you need big sales to absorb. That said a valve based console with stream integration..id buy it for console a price
I still have a few games on the Windows Xbox app that I can neither complete install, nor uninstall, and just pop up everytime as failing "install" everytime I open the app.
The app sucks lol. So many problems
Every app msft makes is so clunky, bad and an obnoxious eyesore
They should straight up refactor or reboot their Microsoft Store and UWP system as most under it do have problems with their dependencies for different systems. When you have to use an offici Microsoft command line executable to make the xbox app work then clearly they have a major problem. That is near or straight up eartly Linux 2000s of complexity@@FrawgfithAmblose
Welcome to the club.
I know this is totally a „it works on my machine“ comment, but what is your setup? I haven’t had any technical issues with the Xbox app for years. I think the app is only ok in terms of just experience, but I don’t have any of the technical issues that others seem to have, and I use it a lot.
Ryzen 5700x, Radeon 6600, 32 GB DDR4 RAM, 2TB NVME m2, b550m motherboard. I’m on Windows 11.
Xbox is not trying to convert console players to streaming, they are trying to get NEW players that don't want the box or can't afford it, hence the "you don't need an xbox to…" phrase.
That is a notable idea Xbox seems to often bring up. The concept of expanding the AAA gaming market beyond the current console/PC market. The best way to do this is seemingly cloud stuff.
@@ContrastCopy Except cloud stuff has all sorts of problems and issues.
@@gothpunkboy89 all tech has to start somewhere
@@ContrastCopy RT not having enough hardware support to run it isn't the same thing as data caps, people not having wcces to high speed internet and living in apartment complexs with a lot of wifi causing interference.
@@ContrastCopy but technology is already there with GeForce Now and has been for a couple of years, Microsoft should've put more effort into streaming tech. The idea is good but Xbox implementation isn't.
I would love for Kid Icarus to return. I absolutely adored Uprising on the 3DS, it's one of my favorite games. I hope we at least get a remaster of that game, but a sequel would be awesome too ❤❤❤
"Weekly Microsoft beatdown" 😂
Stop! Stop! He’s already dead!
@alex the Fire Stick plugs into HDMI, not USB. There is USB for power, but the image signal goes through HDMI.
That's a very good point , hopefully they do a separate video of it running and show the fire stick running with the ethernet adapter and the latency with that
Yup that was a big WTF with rich not correcting that immediately... It's not like he had plug it to HDMI
Oops.. I tried plugging mine into an svideo input and broke everything!
I’ll need the authorities in the UK to finish laying down high speed internet before I can even contemplate streaming lol. Don’t have fibre at all in my area yet
Me neither, have had to go the Starlink route.
That's sad. I am in rural Kenya and I do have it. But only because I'm near Nairobi and a small town
I have fibre and frankly the Xbox Cloud gaming is just not that good. Absolutely not worth £15 a month.
@@kevikiruUs living in poorer countries ironically have better internet because our infrastructure was set up when better options were available (fibre), whereas the richer countries don't get the upgrade since they had already set it up with slow broadband cables and there's not enough push to replace it.
@@leonro That is very true. The same with mobile. We went from no landline in homes to affordable mobile pay as you go call & internet and mobile banking faster than most developed countries
*XBOX ON FIRE*
*STICK TESTED*
sounds fun 😂
It’s really heart warming to see all these big corpos get their pay bumps lately.. now where’s ours?
It's also expensive. Game pass is not cheap.
I don't see how mobile players would pay for that. Platform already have high quality F2P games.
I think paid games are often way better than f2p games in my own experience. I've played a variety of high quality games on gamepass that aren't even made by microsoft.
@@mattmaas5790mobile players have very little incentive when they already have plenty of fun with the games they play
Richard living next to a Facebook Marketplace chainsaw seller must be remembered for future lore
why do people keep presuming streaming is aimed at the core gaming market? it's tiny, this is aimed squarely where the real money is. the billions of casuals who won't care that it's an inferior experience to local hardware. Serious, why is this so hard to understand?
AFAIK Nvidia's Displaced Micro Mesh is supported on all hardware as its cross vendor, they say that its "accelerated" on Ada Lovelace but don't get into specifics on ho its accelerated. DMM has been added to Simplygon which is an asset optimization suite provided by Microsoft.
It seems to be a form of tesselation / displacement mapping specifically for ray-tracing.
Shame that John wasn't here for the Xbox CPU talk.
Agreed
When was the Xbox cpu talk?
@@Brendo9553:26 check the chapters
@@mbsfaridi oh John! 🤦♂️ still not associated names to faces haha yeah, I’d like to have heard his commentary
@@Brendo95 ???
RIP xbox, thanks for the 360…that was good
lol they keep defending Microsoft but sure don’t have a rational explanation as to why.
"The MSI is trash" - little slip there, since MSI is a sponsor!? Such a human and honest mistake...
53:26 - I wonder if an original Xbox with upgraded CPU could even out the choppy performance in KotOR 1&2, or if it's GPU bottlenecks. I remember having single digit framerates in some busier areas (especially the last section of the first game on the 'Star Forge').
You’re kidding?? That sucks
I had it with the Xbox App on PC when I pressed the cancel button on a gigantic game update download and instead of stopping the download it turns out that means UNINSTALL THE WHOLE PROGRAM to Microsoft...
Same thing happens on Xbox.
It’s really annoying.
Almost every time I fall into that trap.
And I don’t see why it exists.
@@aLeXBatHD Wow really? That's absurd!
Faster CPU on OG Xbox also gonna help with homebrew emulation scene. Similarly with upgraded 256mb RAM
As some who used OnLive back in the day, I am still waiting for streaming to get to the point of being near indiscernible from local playback. It has been a long, long journey!
I loved OnLive! All I had was a laptop with integrated graphics and mediocre WiFi for the time, and it was the only way I was able to play real games at the time. I got so mad at Sony for acquiring it and making it worse lol
@@speedracer2please Pretty much the same situation I was in when I used it! I wanted to play Just Cause 2, but my laptop only had Intel HD Graphics 2000, so I discovered OnLive and played it through there!
Oh yes! I used to play UT3 on there. Honestly, it was really impressive for the time.
lol I watched the Xbox chip upgrade not that long ago and here DF is talking about...
I remember when MS promised they wouldn't raise prices on GamePass. I unsubbed after Starfield came out because I realized there hadn't been a game in over a year that I enjoyed on the service. Still isn't one. It's a scam, IMO. Just a bunch of subpar games for a never-ending fee with the ultimate goal of destroying what little ownership we have of our games. Just like how uber destroyed the taxi industry. You come in cheap, destroy competition, then raise prices. Always the same plan. F Microsoft. wukong looks amazing
I think gamepass is great for indie games. I played so many games that I would have otherwise never tried. Such as the Ori games, outer wilds, superliminal and some others.
Question, why doesn’t Alex have his own spin off show for PC folk? Why does he torture himself each week? I want him to flourish
Alex is the worst hes the one who tried to pretend halo infinite only looked bad as it was In shadow when the trailer had sections in full blown lit situations
He's happy to shill for Microsoft if he can think of a way to do it
@@weplayvrgamesalex was 100% correct in that video.
For The First Descendant on PC perhaps you can check the amount of System Event Log Kernel Errors while playing it. Does it have to do with the anti cheat software?
Hard disagree as to the contention that most gamers are moving to gaming just on phones or PCs. Yes, phones cater to the most casual gamers, but PCs only cater to the most technically savvy gamers. There's a large middle ground of gamers that like the convenience that consoles provide. Evidence? The success of the Switch, PS4, and PS5. Just cause MS can't get their shit together in the console market, doesn't mean there is no such market.
Also, another hard disagree that PC gamers are all more savvy and smarter with their money than console gamers. Evidence? People who have Steam libraries filled top to bottom with games they bought but have never played. PC gamers and Console gamers are both stupid when it comes to their money; just stupid in different ways.
30:48 - Alex, as a primary PC user, you know that PC gaming is primarily digital now so I'm not sure what your point of ownership vs "renting" the software is. Even with "ownership" of PC and console digital games, as we all know, you don't actually own digital games, only a limited license to play on a particular service so long as that service allows you to - PSN, Microsoft, Steam, Epic, Origin, EA, etc.
You don't rent from torrents
Drm free games from GoG store is ownership. And ofcourse games fished from the seas.
Well there is GOG where you do keep the games with their installers as executables.
And if you are going to say "But hard drives will die eventually" well everything even disk will die eventually, which is why Backups exist to remedy it.
I think the main difference on the PC is that there are multiple options in how we can get our games, they can also be backed up.
On consoles, if the store front goes down, you're pretty much screwed and will have lost access to all your digital bought games.
The risk is a lot higher on consoles and probably why there is so much more resistance to digital gaming on consoles compared to PC gaming.
@@paul1979uk2000You can save your PS5 games to external hard drives. Plug that hard drive into a PC and burn to blu-ray for safe keeping.....
1:22:25 Wifi works fine on the OLED when installing the OEM driver. There are guides online on how to find it. The audio jack also works with the driver in the APU driver package. The only thing that still doesn't work is bluetooth and the built in speakers. Bluetooth USB adapters also work fine though.
Oliver used to be inside a Gamecube. Now he seems to have a giant PS5 like structure behind of him (at the left side of the screen).
The new Xbox:
Now adorably non-existent!
I appreciate that John's question devolved into water cooler "how's the weather" lmaoo
Man, having a neighbor pick up home chainsaw merchandising, as Rich is a videographer and streamer, sounds like a hellish twist of fate.
You don't need to buy used months later to spend less on console. You can buy on stores that offer the best prices and then even sell it if you want. You can buy physical games with friends and share it and also you can share your account with a friend to share buy digital games. There are so many ways to spend less on console.
First hand I can say, streaming locally from an Xbox(1X and series X) to a switch, vita, or phone is a pretty great experience.
👍 for that last question...
RTX3080-> RTX4070...
What pisses me off the most here, isn't JUST that there's over a 2x increase which obvioulsy means FRAME GENERATION but that... the frame gen is obviously coming from a 2x increase of about 34FPS (*huh?) which is too low as you get a lot of added and temporal artifacts. Besides, they are sort of shooting themselves in the foot. Sure, buy the RTX40 series but if you start lowering the bar to 30FPS before frame gen and pushing upscaling more then people may care less about buying a HIGH END graphics card.
*How did I get 34FPS?
You just take HALF the roughly 68FPS shown for the RTX4070. There's a cost to frame gen, so the RTX4070 without FG might get, say, 40FPS. But the actual TRUE frames it can now handle is lower as there's a processing cost. So just take HALF of what the end result is. Generally speaking you should be starting Frame Gen at a much higher FPS. I'm honestly not sure how much the added lag affects a game that I'd assume has critical timing. Probably not idea.
Exactly. They are forcing everyone onto the 4000 series. My 40 teraflop 3090 ti should be able to handle that lol. Aside from the water, it looks last gen.
Used to have that issue every once in awhile with installing and playing games with the Gamepass app. Might have been a hardware networking issue in that it got fixed when moving to AM5 on a fresh system
"You don't need an Xbox" is the best first party console hardware marketing since the Wii U days where it'd show a family switching off from the Wii U on the TV to watch sports, leaving the poor lonely guy to play on his controller screen. Maybe the new Xbox ad might be even better, "you don't need our product" is like one step up from "everything else on TV is more interesting than our product", although Microsoft ALSO tried that one on the early Xbox One days.
Just amazing props to everyone involved.
I think people are reading too much into this or they don't understand it and in some cases it gets used in console wars. To me this is no different than Nvidia advertising GeForce Now, where the whole point is you don't need their GPU's to game on PC. It's just offering an additional option to those who'd find it appealing. One is not a replacing another.
🤣
@@TerraWare The difference is NVIDIA is still investing heavily into their own GPUs. MSFT doesn’t appear to be doing the same for its consoles, and it feels like they’re actively tossing the console aside and just don’t care.
@@bluejay4812They announced development of a next Gen XBOX a few months ago and just released new models of the current consoles.
the console market hasn't grown in 15 years. game sales are down 20% on console compared to 10 years ago while subscriptions are up 30% and microtransactions are up 160%. It's not rocket science. The console market has been dying for a long time. Except for nintendo but they aren't even close to the big players in income.
They are never going to get rid of consoles, not for a long time anyway, as cloud streaming is unstable even on some of the better devices
Disagree- lots of things will change and ai will speed up all changes. Computers themselves will be ai Terminals, and games will be generated by the ai in real time, from supercomputers in data centers.
Agreed, consoles are here to stay.
Game Pass is still the definitive way for most players to play CoD on PC and Xbox. Why? Because if you've played CoD, you know how the cycle goes, you play it for a month or two and then you are done. Even on the Day One Tier, that's still cheaper than the full game. That said, I prefer supporting devs fully, not with subscriptions since the true benefit of Game Pass for devs in the smaller dev teams/indie games, but I'd say...those selections on Game Pass are generally pretty bad and I wouldn't want to support them either way, gotta let my wallet do the talking, whether it is a big studio or an indie one.
All modes in console games need all visual options. Same games on future consoles it will help to have those forward looking features.
1:49:21 I think a big reason for lack for FSR upscaler iteration is because they diverted all resources to Frame Gen while the others were still improving the upscaling part.
Makes sense. So the question is when we will get UE5 (TSR) frame gen and XeSS frame gen.
PC game pass has always had way less games than on Xbox. I have a Series S still because of this, and modern game devs still can't figure out crossplay.
I’ve subbed to game pass ultimate for over 3 years now and I’ve never streamed a game. I always download. Although come September I’ll be cancelling my subscription due to the cost of getting COD (a game series I couldn’t care less about) on gamepass - closing Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks and the price increase. It’s no longer worth it for me to be letting the subscription constantly roll over month after month without any thought. I’ll be an on and off again subscriber in future.
xCloud performance is not solely dependent on WiFi speeds; it also heavily relies on the client's device capabilities. Contrary to popular belief, cloud gaming is not just streaming a video like TH-cam or Netflix. It requires robust h264 decoding performance. Testing on various devices using Edge, Kiwi, and Safari browsers showed that PCs and Macs (both AMD and Intel) had the best decode times (1-4ms), followed by iPhones and Samsung Galaxy devices with Exynos chips (4ms). Android phones with Snapdragon and MediaTek chips had slower times (26-30ms), with the worst performance observed on Android TV (112ms). xCloud performance and quality could be enhanced if Xbox will increase the bitrate limit and adding support for h265
Reach out to the Xbox mod guy to collaborate
Oli shouting out Elite Beat Agents made me smile.
No one is going to use that xbox firestick feature. They have to have a controller too. That's about 60.00. Who is the market? People who understand what this feature is and how to use it would buy a series s. The people they are trying to capture need a person in their house to explain it to them. It's a bad buisness model.
??? Lots of people have controllers bud. Their dad or brother might have one. $40 controller is less $500 console!
@@mattmaas5790 if you have the controller- you probably have the console. If you have to buy one- you can find a series s w controller for well under 200.00.
@@mattmaas5790 😂😂😂😂
Great Direct guys.. Looking forward to your analysis of Black Myth Wukong. Btw Rich, the topic around 53:30 min, I just noticed there's no link to that Xbox modder's channel in the "video description below". 🤭
Fair point, I forgot. I've added it now. Enjoy!
@@DigitalFoundryEnjoy 'it'!
I use the XMX version of XeSS on an A770 and it's so much better than FSR that it makes FSR look broken.
The biggest weakness towards game streaming is poor infrastructure in developing countries.
I am partial to the GPD Win 4. They have the best pointer device in a handheld and having a physical flip out keyboard is a game changer. Expensive, too. Also relatively hard to get, I think. I believe the Aya equivalent, while not as well built is more readily available.
It's a shame Namco (Bandai), spent development time porting Ace Combat 7 to the Switch, when they could have ported it to the PSVR 2, and made it so much improved, including having the entire game playable from the HMD.
I really can’t see the angle where giving more options is in any way bad. Someone would have to go and change a setting, notice its bad, then forget how to do what they just did. Even children wouldn’t make that mistake.
"Microsoft's handheld device is probably going to be really good."
Oh, really. I remember people saying the same thing about Windows Phone.
I suspect they're trying to make the console's unusable (or abandon support until they are) so they can keep pushing this nonsense.
You have a voice in the community. We need your help!🤞 There's an xbox problem that a lot of us have been trying to get help with, and getting ignored. The game capture (to external hard drives) feature has been broken since the April update. Would you pretty please look into and maybe report on this?
It lets you record two, maybe three 10 min videos. A few "record what happened" videos. Then it just stops working. It'll say it started recording but wont. Then the captures page will continuously freeze. And the only way to fix it is to shut the console down, unplug for 5 mins, plug back in, wait a min, and try again. And even then it only works for like 2 recordings. It's not just me. Just look up "xbox game capture not working" posts since April, specifically Lizgon_one's posts because they include screenshots, workarounds, and examples. We've submitted reports, added feedback, and are being ignored by Xbox, please help? 🙏🤞🤞
If MS move to streaming only, they basically are saying to places like Australia that it's a low priority market. Universally, our internet just isn't good enough for it consistently. That's why PS Now or Stadia never launched here.
DF talk about glass half empty. I guess you decided a while back your stance on Xbox since the whole starfield review copy snub. .. You lack any vision or fail to realize any of the potential positives. Gamepass is still a tremendous value with a$3 monthly increase. Have you not been paying attention to the world economy and inflation? It's unfortunately a requirement for the service survival and it's a damn good one. Now let's talk about cloud gaming.... This isn't about getting rid of the consoles. They need that for their core gamer. It's the larger audience that don't have an Xbox or can't afford one. Do you know how much an Xbox or PlayStation console costs in South America? Most can't come close to affording it. What about when you travel? Can't take your console with you. Jump on the cloud and play away! It's a brilliant move and it will get better over time. As for gamepass and PC experience. I use it everyday. Maybe good it a try. Your experience from 2 years ago may not be the same experience you have today. I use it everyday without issue with out crashing and download games just fine. Thank you Oliver for being the only one looking at any of the positives here! And well done Microsoft for bringing us more games more content and services and in more ways! The next decade in gaming is looking bright!
> Gamepass is still a tremendous value with a$3 monthly increase.
So just ignoring the price increase plus removal of benefits from certain tiers? Which ties into the argument that the system was never sustainable and actually hurt MS in the long run.
> been paying attention to the world economy and inflation?
If only there was a second hand market allowing you to buy used consoles cheaper then new. And used physical games for a fraction of the price MS is charging in their digital store. If only MS wasn't pushing towards an all digital future far faster then any other console maker.
> Do you know how much an Xbox or PlayStation console costs in South America? Most can't come close to affording it.
So what makes you think they will have access to high speed internet, and other assorted tech needed to stream games online?
> Jump on the cloud and play away!
I've never met a hotel wifi that could effectively run netflix let alone stream a game.
@@gothpunkboy89HS internet is readily available in South America. The issue with consoles is related to taxes and duties. It's literally double or triple the price of the equivalent in the US. Gamepass like any streaming service will need to change and adapt to the market no different than Amazon/Netflix has otherwise it won't exist. Not to mention the cost of adding the Activision line up, it's great value propositioning in my opinion, and as far as game ownership goes, I agree it's great to own the games but the disks however the pros outweigh the cons and the PC market already knows this. A disk is also just collecting dust once your console goes offline which owning the disk or not won't help you when the servers shut down on your favorite game from 6 years ago because reality check, most have an online requirement nowadays.
£240 annual gamespass . not good
Don't buy it in the UK. 80 pound for 3 years of you find a cheap country
Lool "allow the user to test their own limits of what's acceptable"
as someone who goes to great lengths to minimize input latency while gaming, i'm absolutely dreading the inevitable shift towards streaming. it will never - NEVER - have good input latency (like sub 20ms.) at that point, i'm out for good.
Out of the blue! Maybe John can make a DF Retro edition covering Sharp SF1 - a TV with built-in Super Famicom
Black Myth Wukong is heavier than cyberpunk? That's crazy. Cyberpunk is a fully openworld city. This is pretty linear.
Tried pc game pass but to often ran into install issues games not starting or just buggy. I’ll stick with steam. It makes no sense when micro is a software company 🤦. Way to many steam sales and discounts to pay for a sub on gamepass. Nothing sucks more than activating a code an not knowing when a game you want to play will even be accessible
If the Xbox Series S isn’t potato enough for you, there’s fire stick streaming! 🤣
But I digress: $79 *sounds* appealing until you realize you also have to maintain a Game Pass Ultimate subscription every month (at $20/mo) to play a limited number of games available on the service (only the ones that support streaming) and the performance of them will be somewhere between bad and abysmal.
I don’t care how catchy their marketing phrase is, this isn’t going to grow their brand with this level of performance and cost.
Depending on the type of game streaming can be quite viable. Obviously something like a competitive twitch shooter isn't going to be enjoyable no matter how fast and perfect your connection is, but I've streamed games through my home wifi from my main system to a laptop on the other side of the house and it quickly made me realize what games work and what games don't. Pretty much anything that's fine to play on a controller is playable with 30-40ms of latency. But I don't know how I'd feel about playing at the visual quality of a Series S.
News 2 about Gamepass price increase, I'm pretty sure on console you get Xbox live gold or whatever it's called now aswell? Whereas PC you obviously don't pay to play online so that's the price difference?
That may be part of it. But I think it's mostly just that console users are locked into that ecosystem, so they can get away with charging more.
Same reason why there have been some games that launch at 70 or 60 bucks on console, but are 10 dollars cheaper on PC at 60 or 50 dollars, respectively.
The only reason for that is that you can get away with it when people are locked to that one console and store.
I'd assume it's mostly the same reason for subscription prices. Of course, consoles are sold at a loss, but they make up for it and a lot more with this kinda stuff.
PC users would be turned away by such prices since they have more options. So they have to keep it cheaper to get some engagement.
@@sawdust8691most pc users don't really want to use anything other than steam, so they have to make gamepass really appealing for people to be willing to switch to the Microsoft store.
I stopped Game Pass app streaming and went with console streaming instead. Two reasons, quick resume allows me to get back in the game waay faster since I don't have to wait for my save data to sync from the cloud and it allows me to play my library of games instead of just Game Pass only games
I agree with Rich there is no big upside for Valve to do another Steam desktop. I much sooner would expect them to come up with some sort of docking station with dedicated GPU for a 2nd gen SteamDeck. Just like people are speculating the Index succesor; Deckard will integrate with Steamdeck (v2?) In some way. Offering up something inbetween the mobile chipset standalone vr of quest and the PCVR. It would could be enough to offer up an untethered HL:A experience at high enough res and framerate, without any compression or latency.
Add in a docking station that just pushes resolution? Maybe from 720 tp 1440 or something? At comparable performance. It would be quite the ecosystem and it might end up relatively affordable.
I love to play on a large OLED as well. If they did as you’re saying, wouldn’t the cpu be too weak to run AAA games at 4K/60?
@@walter_the_wobot2349 I would be CPU bottlenecked for sure. But perhaps with some GPU grunt and some tricks like upscaling and frame gen a docking station with dedicated GPU could take games to a place where it feels close enough to a PS5 like 4k/60. Which is of coarse also hardly ever native 4k. I think price is key here, it 3 cost half or less the price of a console and it shouldnt be mandatory for Steam Deck (v2) buyers.
I think it could make sense to people who buy are handheld first and foremost, but wanna get the most out of it. I think the Steam platform is highly competitive in terms of price and content and with the right hardware solution I can see it take up a space in the living room larger than Xbox is currently doing.
But I dunno, Im spitballing, love to hear why none of this will ever happen...
I have to agree, just have a Steam Deck 2 but with official dedicated gpu support with a dock, that would offer most of the performance advantages of a dgpu and honestly, it's the best of both worlds, portable gaming on the go but with weaker hardware, and much more performance once docked on the big screen.
Looking at what some of the rivals are doing with dgpu support, it's offering pretty much higher end PC gaming, so a dock could work for a Steam Deck 2, but it would be better if it's official support that's plug and play, I think that's far better than having a Steam Machine.
Also, I'm not sure how it works with dgpu support on these portable devices, but wouldn't having a dgpu on a dock, free up the APU to focus on cpu performance? Also, because the dgpu has it's own memory, wouldn't it also mean there is more system memory to play with? Being that, the memory isn't being shared out between cpu and gpu, if so, this is a far better way of doing it then a Steam Machine, as I can imagine a lot of people that buy a Steam Deck would also be willing to buy a dgpu for it, and in most cases, that could do away with needing a gaming PC, especially if it's a good dock that allows you to connect many things to it.
@@paul1979uk2000 I like a lot of the points you make, it sounds potentially even sweeter than my own fantasy :D. I think the dock with Steam Deck 2 and the DGPU should also feature wired and/or wireless connection to the Valve Deckard to offer up a taste of higher end PC VR. You would end up with a killer handheld, a console that could be ps5 level, perhaps more and a standalone VR experience miles ahead of Quest 3 in terms of fidelity and a PCVR like experience on par or beyond PS VR 2. All with convenience of using one future proof storefront with great 'backwards compatibility'. If Valve starts throwing in some HL:A level exclusives... phew!
@@paul1979uk2000 Your take is even more positive than mine, but you make it sound quite feasible, I think it's also about price. Personally if I could dock the Steamdeck 2 and get quality at the level of PS5 for an affordable price that would be a sell for me. But an option with a pricier option with a beefier GPU, more competitive with a dedicated game PC, would also be an attractive option.
I'm also interested what Steam Deck 2 and a dock with DGPU could mean for VR. There are rumors the next Valve HMD might use the Steam Deck 2 for a more performant/powerful stand alone experience than the Meta Quests. Having the SD2 docked could add a more PCVR like possibility, even tho I'm not sure the processor in the Steam Deck could ever churn out high enough framerates for high end VR.
Was hoping to see a discussion on the Intel issue.
... Can someone please explain what happened to Alex? He has a giant cut sign on the cheeck... HOW?
Alex's reaction to the final question asker 👏😂
Funny how Xbox cpu replacement was talked about. I watched a couple of his videos before and that is a crazy mod.
I would love to see Rich do a PS3 RSX overclock video. I plan on doing the OC myself, but have been waiting for the next CFW.
Dear DF team. Why are some 60fps 3rd person experiences smoother than others? Was quite pleased to discover how well Ghost of Tsushima runs at 60fps. This being the case, after trying to get it to run at 120 fps (4k) ,( unsuccessfully) since most 3rd person games at 60 fps ( to me at least) feels like wading through a pool of graphical sludge.
Alderon Games, an Australian-based developer behind the dinosaur-themed multiplayer survival game Path of Titans, announced "we are swapping all our servers to AMD" because "Intel is selling defective" CPUs - specifically 13th and 14th Gen models.
there's way less games on PC game pass.
Great weekly! but man its really difficult sometimes to hear what Oliemack is saying. Dont know why. Maybe too fast and his tone is too low or something? Its not really clear sometimes
Why do we have Game Mode on TV's today? I understand that TV's in the past were limited in what they could deliver, but I would have thought that Game Mode would have been figured out by now and eliminated. Just make a display with Game Mode in mind. If TV manufacturers can not figure it out, for whatever reason, then why have we not seen a dedicated Game Mode button on our remotes? Many displays automatically detect a signal depending on the hardware, and turns on Game Mode, but the these streaming FireTV's do not have that ability. Having to scroll through TV settings to turn Game Mode On or Off is an absolute pain in the butt, and would like to know what in the heck is going on. I find it kinda ridiculous. Is it a marketing thing? I'd love to see Digital Foundry cover this Game Mode technology, and if Game Mode is here to stay 20+ years from now.
Regarding FSR3 FG:
IMHO it’s also present in the recent Robocop-Game on consoles. So the First Decendant is actually the third game to support FG on consoles 🤔
Should of called the ROG Ally X the Ally Respawn
But everyone loves that Apple X naming
If MS streaming to NVIDIA levels then they have an opportunity to massively expand their market share. At the right price of course..
Alex almost falling asleep during the Xbox streaming discussion (no suprise there lol) , wait till it comes to the PC space and a choice between £1k plus for a card plus the cpu etc. or a lot cheaper streaming service with all the bells and whistles for a fraction of the cost
I love the idea of older systems getting a Frankenstein upgrade treatment and seeing what it does for the system. Be it any actual visible improvement on games or if it completely messes some up due to settings made for said system originally.
I remember how, for my PS2 way back, it had an official upgrade option via an added GPU to play FFXI on it. I always, as a child, thought it boosted other games at times, be it more consistent frames or loading. Mind I was a child and didn't know crap and gave it to my cousin decade plus ago for her kids. I remember attachments for "enhancements" for Dreamcast and GameCube as well. Not full on soldering more ram, boosting clocks, etc, though😅.
I think it makes more sense for them to do that once the mid-gen PS5 Pro is released, at least that way they know what to target and what's needed on the PC side.
@VanTesla: The HW expansion needed for FFXI on the PS2 did not add a GPU, but rather a hard drive and network interface.
@@gebler my bad. I was a young child back then and must have confused such a thing😅. My laziness for not looking it up to verify.
I think they just means along with all the other ways to play Microsoft games and not necessarily replacing the console. Who really knows except Microsoft on what they want Xbox to be 10 or 30 years from now. What Game Pass will be like 10 or 20 years from now.
In other news Microsoft's trousers have fallen down, it's trippped over and wet itself.
Man this was a weird video to fall asleep to and have playing so I could hear it during sleep paralysis.
Microsoft seem lost with Xbox right now, they don’t seem clear about what their competitive advantages are (I guess they consider Azure and cloud to be their advantage?) and what they want Xbox the brand to be. It seems like they are just an also ran vs Sony right now with regard to ‘gaming’.
They are throwing darts everywhere and seeing what's a bullseye.
They've been lost since Phil Spencer started
It feels like gaming is in a transition point and Xbox is trying to be the first to figure out where the industry is going. Even PlayStation seems to be acknowledging their limits in growth so it doesn’t really make sense to copy what they’re doing. That said Xbox is doing a shit job with finding their competitive advantage
@@Gvines723 Yes, agreed, console growth has stopped and PC will have a limit too I suspect. Can’t keep developing $200m games if there’s only 30m Xbox Series consoles to sell to.
Actually, all this shows is that you consume anti-xbox propaganda 24 / 7. It shows you personally aren't aware of it.
People don’t get what Xbox is doing.
One of the things I like about this Fire Stick app is that I have a 24” TV at my bedroom which I only use 30-60 min before sleeping to watch something. Now I could easily play a game relaxing down on bed, and bitrate or whathever WONT MATTER when the tv is so far away and so small. Even better I could play a turn-based game like Final Fantasy or Gears Tactics and then latency won’t matter either.
They still call the streaming service "Beta". How can you justify mainstream customers sign on a beta software?