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Welcome to 2026! While the Digital Foundry team remains on vacation and gears up for CES, we're still looking to get to grips with everything that happened last year - so why not start by taking a look at the content that attracted the biggest audiences?

Before we go on, such a list needs to be delivered with important context: firstly, it stands to reason that the earlier in the year a video is published, the longer it has to accrue views, although the nature of the games business is that the vast majority of attention is concentrated in the first month of publication.

Further complicating an otherwise simple list is the fact that the nature of how views are counted changed significantly some time in July or possibly early August. Changes to the way that Google Chrome handles extensions meant that in the second half of the year, desktop users with ad-blocking software in place no longer had their views counted on YouTube tallies. Bear that in mind when considering publication dates on the videos below - by our estimates, most "new era" videos on our main channel are down 25 percent on reported views and that may explain why just one video out of the ten was published from July onwards.

Still, as an at-a-glance look at the year 2025 viewed through the lens of the Digital Foundry audience, this still represents some of the biggest topics of the year and - quite possibly - some of our best content too.

10. Nintendo Switch 2 Hardware Review / Cyberpunk 2077 Review (Jun 2025, 450K Views)

We're going to hand the video-embed privileges to the Cyberpunk 2077 Switch 2 review, even though the Switch 2 hardware review is only a few hundred views behind and is significantly ahead in terms of important metrics such as watch time and YouTube ad revenue.

The hardware review was challenging - and somewhat late - as Nintendo did not supply console hardware until the day before launch, suggesting that a day-one system software update was required to review the system properly. The upshot of this is that to do a proper review we were happy with, we had multiple team members look into various aspects of the machine, then two weeks later, we felt confident enough about creating the review. That explains why the Switch 2 review is at the bottom of the top-ten list, when in other circumstances, it would have been in the top three at least.

Cyberpunk 2077? This published around a week after launch on June 13th. Even though Tom had banked some PS4, PS5 and Series S assets in advance, the scale and nature of this game demanded that we had to take some time with it.

9. Mario Kart World Switch 2 Review (Jun 2025, 461K Views)

Going into this one, Oliver Mackenzie had a plan. Having a very good idea of the content of the game and the things he wanted to cover, he worked on getting the necessary comparison assets from other systems captured ahead of time, meaning that he could go straight into Mario Kart World on launch day, grabbing the balance of the capture, then settling down to play the game.

And not just playing it: capturing it, assembling his thoughts and - remarkably - getting the review out just a couple of days post-launch. This likely explains why the Mario Kart World review accrued more views than the hardware and Cyberpunk 2077 reviews.

The rest of the team is still quite in awe of how quickly Oliver can get an edit together - and it's not just about Mario Kart World. Each and every week, Oliver somehow manages to get 90 to 120 minutes of episodes edited in just one day.

8. Bloodborne PC Emulation: The Remaster We've Always Wanted? (Jan 2025, 466K Views)

In early 2025, we spent some time looking at one of PlayStation 4's most beloved games - one of the few that lacks any kind of remaster or basic modernising effort: Bloodborne. Where Sony has failed to deliver any kind of improved version, the PC community has stepped in, increasing resolution, frame-rate and adding extra mods on top.

At the heart of the experience is the ShadPS4 emulator. It's now over two years old, and while its compatibility improves with each new release, we're still some way off from the finished article - but that hasn't stopped the community from coming together and essentially using force of will (along with a lot of tweaks, mods and fixes) specifically aimed at getting Bloodborne running. We're now at the point where the emulated version runs at the higher resolutions and frame-rates that the audience demands.

Recent performance improvements have improved the Bloodborne emulator experience still further - something we'll be looking at in early 2026.

7. Monster Hunter Wilds PC Review (Feb 2025, 472K Views)

Monster Hunter Wilds is one of the few games that Alex has covered on PC where he didn't feel comfortable producing optimised settings, owing to the fact that - in his eyes - an optimised experience simply wasn't possible. Performance was poor, 8GB GPU support was very poor, but more than that, it's just extremely difficult to justify the extremely heavy CPU and GPU load for the quality of visuals users received in return.

This video was just one part of our Monster Hunter Wilds coverage. The consoles (bar Series S) fared better in our console launch coverage (379K views), but there was still the sense that the game was undercooked. But really, it was all about the very poor PC version, where we found that texture quality and performance could improve on 8GB cards by manually decompressing textures and stripping out DirectStorage support.

Then, beyond that, Capcom finally began to address the game's issues, but even there, improvements are haphazard - and there's still a long way to go before Monster Hunter Wilds is worthy of recommendation.

6. AMD FSR 4 Upscaling Tested vs DLSS 3/4 (Mar 2025, 491K Views)

The year began with Alex and Oliver at CES, where they discovered something remarkable - AMD "dropped" a machine learning-based upscaling demo on the show floor, running on nondescript RDNA 4 hardware. The implication was obvious: this was our first look at AMD's ML-based super resolution technology, FSR 4. And it was good. Very good.

But it's the full review of the FSR 4 upscaling technology that pulled in the views, and it's not exactly surprising to see why and indeed how. After years of highly unfavourable comparisons to DLSS across three different FSR upscaling iterations, AMD had done it, delivering ML-based upscaling that matched and in places even exceeded Nvidia's DLSS CNN model. And it's comparable even to the transformer-based DLSS 4 Transformer.

It's a crucial turning point for AMD, helping to make RDNA 4 even more appealing - but controversy remains. AMD FSR Redstone is a disappointment, while AMD holding back an RDNA 3/2-compatible version of FSR 4 leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

5. Switch 2 Reveal: A DF Direct Special (Apr 2025, 494K Views)

We're talking about the actual Switch 2 reveal here, not the basic couple of minutes showing the device and highly limited Mario Kart World gameplay. Our coverage came out the same day as Nintendo's lengthy Direct, which showcased a massive range of games - many of which are now out, while some have still yet to launch (Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth) or are subject to delay (Elden Ring Tarnished Edition).

This was our first chance to get to grips with what Nintendo's next-gen console hybrid had to offer - and bearing in mind the constraints of using a mobile-orientated processor, Switch 2 landed pretty much where we expected. Since then though, games like Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin's Creed Shadows have made us re-evaluate what this system is capable of, not to mention that we really shouldn't under-estimate what talented developers can do within the confines of a fixed platform.

We did make some errors on this one we clarified in following content - DLSS was there, just in a different form to the PC version in many cases. And Metroid Prime 4 wasn't 4K as Nintendo suggested... though the easily countable edges on the visor overlay were!

4. Death Stranding 2: On The Beach Review (Jun 2025, 530K Views)

In a year where triple-A releases were much more thin on the ground than in prior years, it was down to Assassin's Creed Shadows and DOOM: The Dark Ages to represent the higher-power consoles and PC - but it's Kojima Productions' latest epic, Death Stranding: On The Beach, that attracted the most views for us.

We're really proud of this one, not least because John delivered the full review not just in standard 4K, but also in HDR - which significantly complicates video workflow, but when a game looks as good as this, why not? Significant time was lavished on this one, and it's another example of how John exploits features like photo mode to beautifully showcase gaming technology in motion.

It's also worth giving a "shout-out" to SIE for providing review code significantly ahead of embargo. One of the key reasons we were able to make this review to the quality level we wanted was because we received review code on June 2nd, giving us a full three weeks to play the game and create the content. This is the way.

3. Grand Theft Auto 6 Trailer 2 Tech Breakdown (May 2025, 616K Views)

Ahead of its eventual delay into November 2026, Rockstar Games dropped a surprising GTA 6 trailer in May of this year. Digital Foundry examined its graphical prowess at length - which Rockstar has described as real-time rendering on a base PlayStation 5. The official trailer is one of YouTube's most-viewed gaming videos of 2025, so we're not surprised to see our own coverage follow suit.

As always, it's fantastic to get any kind of preview on new technology coming from Rockstar - results like this are what happens when a hugely talented studio of developers is effectively given a blank cheque to create a truly state of the art experience. Rockstar games are basically the closest we have to Apollo moon mission levels of investment, innovation and achievement. Faced with the prospect of an extended ninth console generation, we're looking forward to (hopefully!) seeing a genuine technological leap.

And with the lack of a PC version, we're also curious about the extent to which Rockstar will push the game on PlayStation 5 Professional. One thing's for sure: the November 2026 release date is perfect for locking in prospective next-gen PSSR/FSR 4 upscaling support.

2. Nvidia DLSS 4 Multi Frame-Gen Reveal (Jan 2025, 741K Views)

So, how did you spend your 2024 Christmas holiday break? While the team broke off to take a well deserved break, I made two separate visits to Nvidia UK to check out the latest DLSS innovations: the arrival of the Transformer model and, of course, the debut of multi frame generation.

We went into that one not even knowing what we were seeing, rolling up to Nvidia's office armed only with a custom-built 13900K-based PC with a Yuan SC750N1 HDMI 2.1 capture card, capable of grabbing 8K60 or 4K120 video via HDMI. After a quick presentation that revealed that multi frame gen was a key focus for RTX 50-series, Nvidia staff departed the room, leaving me with an RTX 5080-equipped PC - and it was time to get down to business. Decisions had to be made in the heat of the moment: how would we capture multi frame generation? All we could do really was to cap to 4K 120fps capture and grab each individual frame, running everything slowed down within a 4K 60fps container.

To this day, we still don't think we're doing a good enough job of showing how frame generation works and how it looks. The 120fps cap effectively meant that internal game frame-rate was hobbled down to just 30fps! It's a topic I still ponder every now and again. Still, it was great to reveal the new technology directly after the announcement at CES - and it was the first of many excellent CES-related videos we put out at the beginning of the year. Can CES 2026 possibly compare? I guess we'll find out in a few days - and once again, Oliver and Alex will attend.

1. Hands-On With Steam Machine: A DF Direct Special (Nov 2025, 972K Views)

Steam Deck positioned Valve as a hardware manufacturer to be reckoned with, so when we were invited to take a look at some new kit at the firm's Bellevue HQ, we jumped at the chance - and it did not disappoint. Beforehand, we had expected to see the new "Deckard" VR headset, now known as Steam Frame, but it was Steam Machine (codename: Fremont) that caught the public's imagination - hence a Digital Foundry video that tops the charts for 2025 with just shy of 1m views. In fact, the real view count here is likely well in excess of that owing to the whole "ad-blocked dekstop views are no longer counted" situation described in the intro.

So, how come the Steam Machine video proved so popular? There is an automatic level of extreme interest attached to anything Valve does, but the nature of the machine itself is highly compelling - while Valve itself seems to view the hardware very much as a PC, the form factor and the nature of SteamOS effectively positions it just as a console too. Even in the face of necessarily limited specs, the appetite for anything and everything Steam Machine cannot be satiated.

Missing from the reveal was anything at all on pricing - leading to hopes that Valve could deliver console-like costs, only for the firm itself to step in to temper expectations. And now, with RAMageddon in full effect, big question marks remain over not just the pricing but the nature of the launch itself. We look forward to finding out more in 2026.