@Madame-Drofla indeed! It’s also only 20% off, which seems like a minor discount for yesterday’s tech… though we are in unprecedented times where tech gets more expensive over time.

Many people are pretty two faced about this, getting all excited about the current emulation scene, and PC ports of PS5 games coded by AI, but not willing to accept a company might use the same tools.

Whatever you think of this personally or morally, I think it’s clear this is the direction of travel.

but for me the ergonomic benefits of a split and curved keyboard aren't enough to justify the lack of tactile feedback and full distance travel that I'd expect from even a low profile mechanical keyboard

Can fully understand that stance. But as someone who types on a keyboard for up to 10+ hours a day on bad days, and has had some wrist pain from normal keyboards I will personally take ergonomics over tactile feedback every single day of the year.

That said the RGB and other features aren't quite to my liking. Still on the lookout for an ergonomic keyboard replacement. Thanks for the review.

@wsjudd So does a cable or AA batteries. Also "Infinite" by this loose definition.

"infinite battery life" ahem! I thought they might have made a micro nuclear fusion reactor inside these... but no it's just multiple batteries.

Gotta love nonsense marketing terms /s

I am very excited by the tech but, as I mentioned on the Gears article, am wondering how this will work in reality. Every time we update our driver will there be massive gigabyte downloads for all our games? That doesn't seem sensible and is especially wasteful of resources.

Was always interested to see how this went and good to see what UE5 can do in exceedingly capable hands.

The DirectX platform enforces strict driver versioning contracts, ensuring that updated GPU drivers trigger automated cloud re-compilations so players download fresh PSOs alongside driver updates. Integrated via Windows Gaming Services, ASD is designed to function across both the Xbox PC app and third-party storefronts like Steam, establishing a new technical standard for the ecosystem.

In practice how is this going to work across our libraries? Are we going to have to download gigabytes of shader updates for every driver update we do and for every game. That adds up pretty fast for larger libraries.

@MattGPT Agreed. But on top of that I don't always think it's even "don't notice" it's also "don't care", it just plays how it plays in their eyes, so why worry about it. It's just not a concern for many.

I've seen this with family members whether it's neices and nephews playing games on phones well beyond what the device can handle and it stuttering along, they just don't seem aware or don't care.

My favourite was when I gave my nephew my old PC and he was playing Jurassic World Evolution at around 10-15fps. As he put it, "I realise it isn't great, but it was either play it like this or don't play it at all", it just didn't bother him once he was used to it.

I find myself in the same headspace sometimes whether it's playing Tears of the Kingdom and not really caring it was 30fps once I was acclimatised to the game, and only really noticing the drops to 20fps when using the Ultrahand ability.

As much as I love DF, and am there for most of their content, I also think we can caught in this litte bubble thinking it's normal, making mountains out of performance molehills, when in fact it's pretty niche. Ultimately I think most people just get on with it, they enjoy the games as they are, and don't focus on performance the way we do here.

@MattGPT I think some people are more sensitive to this than others.

Much like John talking about frame pacing in FromSoft, and other, games in the most recent DF Direct and how he had worked with game devs who couldn't even see what he saw. I suspect this is the same and many players just don't care, especially if they are already used to playing games on Switch.

@AKevin15 To be clear I was against the ABK deal and more generally any mass industry consolidation. But the reality is ABK was going to get sold to someone regardless and we would likely be in a similar situation regardless considering the economic downturn and litany of other world events that had led us to this moment.

But almost any IP is worth next to nothing if you get rid of its creators

Sometimes, but I am not sure that is always true. Are the people that created COD for example still there? Are most of the people that created GTA still at Rockstar? The answer in both cases is no, but the IP still retains cachet. Ship of Theseus like situation at least mostly so, there may be a last few remnants of the old guard still there.

Because they wanted the presitigious IP, games and the income but don't want all the expenses. But from Microsoft's point of view the two came together.

It is normal during a merger or aquistion that there are job losses (BTW that isn't saying I support it, I don't, just saying it is normal) but usually this is around 30% over 5 years. Obviously this has been a lot larger than that now.

Honestly I don't think that was Xbox's intention but the state of the world has changed a lot since the ABK was announced, cost of living crisis, RAM-ageddon, etc. and we are seeing record job losses in gaming almsot everywhere trying to make the divisions books balance. Plus their Game Pass gamble hasn't worked as in ABK and Zenimax hasn't increased subscribers. Perhaps they shouldn't have bought ABK, but hindsight is 20:20.

@RealBrown22 Playing devil's advocate (and perhaps today isn't the day for that, but screw it) Xbox have taken on far more new employess than they have laid off in that time. i.e.

Around 10k from ABK deal, another 2,300 employees in the Zenimax deal, not to mention reportedly well over a thousand to existing studios like Playground games, Halo Studios, Obsidian, The Initiative etc. as they staffed up to make bigger games and become multi-team studios.

Now I am not here to defend 7k people getting laid off in X years, it's truly awful, it really is, but it is worth pointing out that it's only one side of that equation, gamers conveniently ignore the other side in their rush for pitchforks.

In my testing between my desktop and an ethernet-connected Xbox Ally X

Ally X on ethernet feels like a tiny niche of a niche situation, but while I can see a few situations where this may be useful it still seems aimed at a small portion of users.

I appreciate the transparency, but surely even for leaks information and sources need to be corroborated first before publishing. It's your (DF's) reputation on the line at the end of the day.

At the same time, we all make mistakes and get it wrong sometimes.

@MartinAshford Too many games, not enough time.

I am interested... but not at almost a grand.

Will likely buy a second hand PSVR2 and use that both on PS5 and tethered to my PC.

Very useful addition, thanks for the heads up. (it's now showing up)

The downside is that display latency also doubles

As downsides go that's pretty huge!

Is it though? Nintendo have already said Physical releases will be $10 more expensive to cover cart costs, at which point I think we should expect games to actually be on the cart not GKC. Not least with Switch 2's trifling 256GB storage.

You have a source for that? I looked it up and couldn't find any confirmation.

99% of the time these artifacts don't bother me because when playing a game I am not standing still watching paint dry like in the examples above. Instead I am always moving where it isn't really as noticeable in motion. But there were a few more static cutscenes where it was more distracting.

That said with the mysterious lore of The Oldest House, a place where walls are already often moving and reforming themselves, I just wrote this off in my head-canon as yet another mystery of the building. Problem solved

Still... it's cool there is a fix for those that were bothered.

Thanks @Rich_Leadbetter, I wasn't expecting you to go digging that is appreciated, just wondered if any of you knew offhand. Only time will tell if Sony has this, though i'd expect not.

Would be quite a coup imo if Xbox was able to do this and Sony isn't.

Though personally I wish this was the other way around as I have a lot of discs on PS4/5 but Xbox has more successfully moved me to digital with Game Pass and Play Anywhere.

@StooMonster Totally agree. Would be good to have some clarity on whether Sony also has unique ID's on their discs, either PS4, PS5, both or none so they could in theory do similar, even if they didn't have to.

There is a lot of misinformation online right now and it would be good to have it cleared up. Anyone the wiser about this at DF @wsjudd @Rich_Leadbetter? Disc to digital feels like a killer feature imo.

I do find it funny that a feature of Xbox One's much maligned adorably always online policy is now a whole 13 years later a useful feature for the disc-to-digital programme. Crazy.

Just gave it a whirl and it looks great. But I am really waiting for XC3 in December.

@Nick2310 I'm a big CEX fan, been using them for over 20 years. They actually test cards and offer a 5-year warranty which is great, but most second hand retailers sites do not and it's more of a lottery. CEX is also UK only.

I wouldn't mind seeing a second hand article, but the trouble with that is used pricing depends on availability which varies store to store, E.g. for CEX much of their stock isn't available online. Additionally second hand pricing varies massively country to country limiting scope for DFs international readership.

Used pricing would be a bit like a "paper launch", not really achievable by many.

@EvilSpaceLasagna1 Sure if you are savvy consumer a second hand GPU may be a better option at the same price point, though most sales are new, not second hand. There’s also some inherent risk with second hand GPUs being overworked. Additionally most standard PSUs have an 8-pin connector, but you are right not all do.

This probably isn’t a card anyone coming to digital foundry is interested in, but I think there is a potential target market for it, many buy primarily on price.

I do think there is a market for this. Tens of thousands of games will run fine at 1080p, or below, for more casual gamers. It's mostly just AAA games from the last few years that struggle. Entry point GPUs are still needed.

Hopefully they will also concentrate on things like Neural Texture Compression that will lower the amount of RAM needed in future.

Related aside: I just noticed something odd on the Steam Reviews. I've always liked that a game keeps getting reviewed after launch on Steam and you can filter to see later ones in a heavily patched game like this.

But I would have assumed, the game having been largely fixed, for it to get better Steam reviews now than at launch (where it was the buggiest game I have played in years). But in fact the opposite is true it was 81% "very positive" in the first month, but just 64% "mixed" in the last month.

I guess those that really wanted to play it Day 1 were more inclined to review it favourably than those who were on the fence and waited to play the objectively better game.

Literally cannot get past the opening menu. Mouse cursor moves, hover and click not responding. Seen other sites reporting the same.

As promised reporting back. It's still early days but generally I really like the ultrawide, it's much cleaner setup than I had before with multiple monitors (2 x 1080p). It's mostly been positive so far... but there are a few teething problems too.

For gaming: I have tried Cyperpunk, Ori & TWotW, Avatar & Indiana Jones, it just feels a LOT more immersive than what I was playing before and a big step up for gaming. I've tried a few non ultrawide games and they seem to play fine with bars. This is a clear win.

For productivity: It has taken a bit of getting used to and I am working through a few things. Years of muscle memory arranging windows a certain way, i've had to learn some new tricks, use some new tools (like PowerToys Fancyzones) but mostly I like it.

So far there's 2 things I don't quite like that I am still figuring out if there is a better solution to what I have:

• At the distance I sit from the monitor, and with my aging eyes, I found the 100% text size on Windows was a bit small and I was squinting a little. Windows allows you to increase this system wide in fixed increments 125%, 150% etc. and I find 125% much more comfortable (I think I had this on my last PC too tbh). However that makes everything take up more space, this is an issue horizontally whereby 2 windows fit fine side-by-side at 100% but at 125% everything is a bit squeezed and some websites don't fit well. For this 2 x 1920 x 1080p (3840px horizontally v 3440px) was more convenient. Windows does have a custom scaling setting where you can enter your own multiplier e.g. 110% but it says not recommended and other warnings, I haven't done the research to see what repercussions this might have.
  EDIT: I have turned this back to 100% and just increased the text size by 10% which seems to have solved this.
• Likewise I used to often used to have a video, or something else, in full screen on one monitor while working on the other. Or a window open on the second screen while gaming, this worked as they were separate monitors. However Fullscreen on an ultrawide no longer works like that, it just fills the whole screen, not half of it. I have seen there are some paid apps that allow you to effectively split your 1 monitor into two, or more, so that you can do like you used to, but I haven't tried those. For now I find I am having my tablet just below the screen for if I want to watch videos/sport while working, or have them windowed. But this doesn't work as well for multitasking while gaming.

@Frosh I get what you are saying. But I also think that there is a different time scale, budget and skillset invovled in remaking a game that is already made to CREATING a brand new game.

Studios have a small core team iterating on ideas trying to find a concept that works, sometimes for years. In the meantime what does the rest of the studio do, especially more junior staff, QA, artists etc? In the past they were often just fired after each project, or more accurately just contracted per project. But now those devs can stay working on something else like a remaster or remake that doesn't take their key talent away from working on their next big game but crucially keeps them employed.

That said I would like to see what those junior staff at least given the chance to try and make a smaller NEW game sometimes. But lets be honest it's unlikely to make as much money as the remake / remaster, right?

This feels very gimmicky... though I kinda like that.

Also like the retro 70s plastic colours.

But not for €200. LMAO

+1 for this!

Is this REALLY any easier than what is currently there? I've had to change the Joycon analogue sticks often (on mine, friends, nieces and nephews and their friends' Joycons) and part of that process is either removing the battery or at least moving it out of the way. Feels very similar.

@Simplex_ It was a different article based on one of those polls.

I don't REALLY believe "45% of Enthusiasts 'Seriously Considering' Leaving Sony for PC" as Push Square titled their article nor that "45% of PlayStation Gamers Are Leaving For PC". Both are clickbait.

Good for those that care, but my Switch is docked 99% of the time, I won't upgrade.

@Simplex_ Asking people to vote just after physical games are nuked and expecting a fair result to a poll is kinda my point, tempers are flared and too many people will vote on emotions rather than what they will ACTUALLY do.

It's like another Push Square article / poll that stated "PS5 Has Put a Dampener on Gaming': 45% of Enthusiasts 'Seriously Considering' Leaving Sony for PC"

And as I commented on that article

'Seriously Considering'

I'll take that with the entire Bolivian Salt flats.

That's not to say there isn't some merit to these polls to show people are dissatisfied, that is clear, i'd just completely ignore the actual numbers as many will be protest votes while emotions are high.

If priced right the 5070 Super could be great with 18GB of VRAM, 12GB being the main stumbling block on the 5070. But Nvidia and fair pricing...

Timely. I just bought a 1440p Ultrawide, and also just picked up Cyberpunk on PC in the Steam sale for this reason.

A few other games I am looking forward to trying for the visuals alone that reportedly have good ultrawide support (all on Game Pass)

• Indiana Jones
• Doom: The Dark Ages
• Avatar Frontiers of Pandora
• Ori & the Will of the Wisps
• Avowed
• Hellblade 2
• Batman: Arkham Knight
• Forza Horizon 6 / 5 / 4
• A Plague Tale Requiem

@LordJitterJager I am on the waitlist even though I have little interest in the Steam Machine right now. I suspect many are in this position. It's about keeping your options open in case something changes.

E.g. If FSR4 suddenly performs MUCH better on Steam Machine that expected and it starts consistently beating PS5 for example that makes it look less bad price to performance than it does now.

@DrianCel As I said in my first comment I am pro-physical media, pro-consumer choice, I HATE that Sony are getting rid of discs.

I was just suggesting that a DF poll isn't all that relevant here. Asking a group of gaming enthusiasts on DF about the relevance of discs, is a bit like going to Xbox Fanfest and polling which console they prefer.

What I don't understand is why Sony didn't try to do what Nintendo did and just say physical media is more expensive to make and distribute; that both we and the developer see a smaller cut, therefore we are going to increase prices by £10 / $10 for discs but not digital. Yes there would be outcry, but it would at least be understandable.

Though perhaps this is part of their masterplan... "we hear you, you can have discs back, but they will cost more" and people will lap it up. The old two steps forward, one step back PR move... stranger things have happened.

@DrianCel The 15% will be accurate last quarter across ALL PS5 game sales BUT it is HEAVILY skewed in digital's favour as most indies and many AAs ONLY release digitally, even some AAA games nowadays.

When all things are even and a big tentpole AAA releases day and date on Physical and Digital it's probably nearer 50:50.

But that wasn't my point. My point was a lot of people don't seem to care, it's mostly us enthusiasts that do, we're the disproportionate minority. While it's true we play an important role in driving trends that can filter down we also can get stuck in thinking our little bubble is the be all end all and easily conflate that to think everyone feels the same. They don't.

@burndive Do you really think MOST people are going to dispose of them any differently just because they are more removable? You think they are going to open up their Switch 2's and joycons, take the batteries out and dispose of them separately. We've already seen people don't do that with other devices so why suddenly the Switch 2. It's more a societal problem.

16% smaller battery in the Pro controller? Hell no that's not good news. Frankly I'll take my chances with the battery dying, it's not happened on any controller i've owned yet.

@wsjudd They've had over 4 years since Steam Deck launched to make dual boot work officially, they keep kicking it down the road. Not doubting it's easier to not develop it, but at some point - over 4 years later - you have to start to wonder why they haven't delivered the feature they have been talking about for so long.

Likely makes sense to force people new owners to try SteamOS first before offering Dual Boot to Windows. There also isn't much hard drive space for a dual boot with windows and games on each if you have the 512GB version.

Awful news all around with id reportedly having around 50% of staff laid off (rumoured to be id Tech team), Obsidian facing major cuts and Zenimax online also rumoured to be 50%.

If there's any small sliver of a silver lining it's that Double Fine, Ninja Theory, Compulsion games & Undead Labs all have a small lifeline and aren't being closed.

We will have to wait and see about Arkane as French law is holding up an announcement there... but it doesn't sound good.

Add to that Sony ending discs, rumoured £1000 consoles, and it's been the worst week of gaming news I can remember.

@StooMonster If there are unique signatures are part of the each blu-ray disc spec then couldn't Sony also do this?

@MattGPT Trade in program would be prohibitively expensive I think. PSP UMDs trade in was small fry by comparison.

External drive for BC on PS6 would make more sense, though is likely incompatible with PS6 handheld's digital library.

Mad that a decision by Xbox made for that disastrous 2013 reveal of the Xbox One could end up being a positive for Xbox over a decade later.