The Microsoft Xbox Summer Showcase was unexpectedly exciting, with plenty of impressive-looking games from a number of popular franchises, as well as some brand new titles. Despite some concerns about the future of the Xbox brand and the stunning unveiling of new hardware, the games themselves were enough to carry the day – and the Digital Foundry team gathered to discuss the highlights and lowlights of the DF Direct special.
I won’t go into every game that John, Alex and Oliver talked about in the 102 minute episode – which included games like Doom: The Dark Ages, Perfect Dark, Gears of War: E-Day and Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake. Eater – so instead I’ll pick some of my personal highlights, starting with Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl. The original Stalker PC game from 2007 was catchy, weird, and utterly engrossing, so it’s incredible to see a proper sequel finally close to the finish line. What was shown looked impressive – significantly more polished cinematography, storytelling, shooting and technology, yet with all the dirty atmosphere of the original, from unknown anomalies sparkling to a gang of guitar-playing stalkers huddled around a campfire. Heart of Chornobyl tries to preserve the emerging AI, relatively wide playing areas and verticality of the original, but with everything realized in significantly higher fidelity.
The new game is one of many from the Xbox Showcase running on Unreal Engine 5, with Nanite geometry and global Lumen lighting in the trailer – although it’s unclear whether it was hardware or software Lumen, with Alex preferring hardware for scalability reasons. . The entire trailer was also shown in native 4K. That said, the Series X version of the game will likely look a bit different, and even PC users may need some pretty beastly hardware to run the game at this resolution without resorting to upscalers like DLSS, XeSS, or FSR.
- 0:00:00 Introduction
- 0:01:17 Doom: The Dark Ages
- 0:11:05 Perfect darkness
- 0:20:42 Gears of War: E-Day
- 0:28:53 Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater
- 0:40:39 A fable
- 0:49:43 STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl
- 0:59:18 Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
- 1:07:17 Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
- 1:15:54 Other games – Mixtape, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, South of Midnight, Atomfall, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, State of Decay 3, Age of Mythology: Retold
- 1:24:36 Updated Xbox Series consoles
- 1:31:35 Phil Spencer: more Xbox games coming to other platforms
We’ll likely know more when the hardware requirements are revealed ahead of the game’s September 5 launch, which is set for Xbox Series X, as well as PC Game Pass, Steam, and the Epic Games Store. Expect Alex to take a close look at it in due course!
In addition to delivering “banger after banger” to the gaming space, Microsoft has also finally detailed its next Xbox hardware revisions. This included two new models – the Xbox Series X model with a white drive for $449, the 1TB version of the Xbox Series S for $349, and the Xbox Series X “galaxy black” drive for $599, with the latter two offering double the storage. of their respective original models.
John and other members of Digital Foundry have often said that the “adorably all-digital” feature that Microsoft is rushing toward is definitely not a welcome move for game archivists, especially since platform holders can take games away from their owners. library and the same logic applies here. Still, it’s at least good to see that the disc-based models aren’t being replaced – the new models look set to sit alongside the originals, at least for now.
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It’s clear from the pricing of the new models that Microsoft isn’t aiming to disrupt the market with lower prices than their Sony competition, but it remains unknown if the new models come with a smaller matrix that would make them slightly more powerful. efficient – and maybe even slightly faster. Microsoft’s press release promises “the same speed, performance and features”, but it would be nice to see lower power consumption in a similar vein to Sony’s PS5 revisions – or even sneaky One S-style GPU overclocking that delivers marginally better frame rates.
What we didn’t see was anything dramatically different from the current offering, either in terms of form factor (the leaked Series X-style “trash bin”) or functionality (the supposed Xbox handheld). I agree with John that this shows that Microsoft understands that a complete refresh of the mid-gen probably wouldn’t move the needle in terms of hardware sales, so their resources are better spent elsewhere – hopefully on a really good handheld that’s proven to different from what Sony offers and what already exists in the pocket PC space.
Of course, it’s been a busy time for game announcements lately, and the recently released DF Direct Weekly #166 focused on the Summer Game Fest announcements. John, Alex and Oliver will talk about highlights including Lego Horizon Adventures, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Black Myth: Wukong, Civilization 7 and more – so check out that show embedded below as well.
- 0:00:00 Introduction
- 0:01:20 News 01: Summer Game Fest: Lego Horizon Adventures
- 0:13:44 Metaphor: Refantazio, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
- 0:25:17 Sonic X Shadow Generations, Alan Wake 2: Night Springs, Phantom Blade Zero
- 0:40:53 Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind, Slitterhead, Killer Bean
- 0:50:14 Black Myth: Wukong, Civilization 7
- 1:03:59 News 02: Sony is removing 8K support from the PS5 box
- 1:22:49 News 03: PS VR2 PC Adapter detailed
- 1:32:58 News 04: Microsoft unveils Auto SR upscaling technology
- 1:46:20 Supporter Q1: How can you optimize Windows text rendering for WOLED displays?
- 1:50:03 Supporter Question 2: Why do people recommend limiting the frame rate to just below the display refresh rate when using VRR on a PC?
- 1:53:24 Supporter Question 3: Would John recommend PS VR2 or Meta Quest 3 for PC VR?
- 1:55:33 Supporter Q4: Can you remember the first game that blew you away with its graphics so hard to imagine a better looking game?
- 2:04:30 Supporter Question 5: Does the console slow down the use of RT on PC?
- 2:10:25 Backer Q6: What games do you wish you had played first on better hardware?
I also particularly appreciated the PC-focused fan questions on this show, which included some excellent advice from John on VR setup – comparing PS VR2 and Meta Quest 3 – and the framerate capping mechanism and W-OLED text rendering on Windows.
If you’re interested in supporting the work we’re doing and asking your own questions at a DF Direct near you – or even a DF InDirect Q&A show – then we encourage you to check out the DF Support Program on Patreon. In addition to asking questions, you can get high-quality video downloads of everything we do, early access to embargo-free content, exclusive DF Retro content and much more.