Digital Foundry Direct Q&A: One Year of Independence

One Year of Digital Foundry Independence

Reflecting on a Year Alone

• The team marks one year of independence since parting ways with IGN and ReedPop.
• A massive thank you is extended to the community, patrons, and viewers for their continuous support through a difficult year for the games industry.
• > "Whichever way you've done it... it's all worthwhile and it's kind of helped us to navigate what's been, I think, let's face it, a pretty disastrous year for the games business."

Website, Tooling, and Retro Content

• The digitalfoundry.net website has expanded beyond video, bringing back 10 years of ad-free video archives for supporters.
• Production on custom tools is heavily underway, moving away from janky Adobe workflows and rewriting capture software like VirtualDub into a brand-new tool named OBS-inspired custom tech.
• The DF Retro Super Show recently published its 20th episode, focusing on passion projects rather than just click-driven content.

Industry Analysis & Supporter Questions

The State of Sony and Microsoft

• Discussion centers on whether Microsoft's stumbles made Sony complacent and indifferent toward core gamers.
• Sony's heavy investment into live-service games resulted in missteps like Concord, whereas Nintendo continues to succeed by sticking to its core philosophy of all-ages software and controlled budgets.
• The contrast between Forever Games (like Fortnite and Minecraft) and platform loyalty is analyzed.

Hardware Speculation for the Next Generation

• A supporter asks about the PC specs needed to comfortably run next-gen console games (PS6 generation) at 60 FPS.
• Oliver McKenzie emphasizes that VRAM capacity will be the deciding bottleneck rather than pure horsepower, suggesting high-end cards with 24GB of VRAM (like a 4090 or 5090) might be necessary if consoles ship with large RAM allocations.
• The team discusses rumors regarding hardware additions like Xbox Helix and the practical limitations of system-on-chip add-in cards for PCs.