DF Direct Q+A: Creation Engine 3 in Elder Scrolls 6/Fallout 5, Is Doom THE Great American Videogame?

[00:04] potential welcomes in the multiverse to this the latest edition of the DF Direct Q&A show. Joining me to field a bunch of questions. First of all, Willjard, >> Hello. It's so good to be here on a day where we are not melting in the UK for

[00:19] once and also the questions have some measure of actual good things happening makes such a change. >> Uh yeah, crazy stuff. I know. Um, hello Oliver McKenzie. >> Yes, Rich. Very busy week for me, I'm

[00:34] sure, for all of us, but I've managed to carve out some time in my schedule for you as always. >> Lovely. Thank you very much. Um, okay. Well, before we crack on, I guess, um, we should take a look at this sponsored

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[02:09] This one comes from Scud. Um, hi chaps. When it comes to Bethesda, what do you think we can expect from Creation Engine 3? I desperately hope they can do away with all the loading screens. After playing King um Kingdom Come:

[02:21] Deliverance 2 and Crimson Desert, seamless exteriors/ interiors adds enormously to immersion in KCD2. Looking out a window as the sun sets and seeing everyone head home makes the world feel alive at a partitioned world feels very

[02:35] antiquated these days. Do you reckon changing that is even possible? Anything's possible, right? Uh Daniel Kilpatrick asks, "Hello there, lovely foundryman." In a recent interview between Todd Howard and Michael Hammer

[02:49] of IGN, Todd spoke of a focus on scalability for Creation Engine 3. The longer cross generational games increasing, this may become more highlighted that Bethesda's tech is primarily bottlenecked by the CPU due to

[03:05] its persistent object tracking and radiant AI. Uh, with The Elder Scrolls 6 Bethesda realistically scale a simulationheavy engine across a wider range of hardware without completely

[03:18] gutting the density and AI mechanics of the lower-end baseline? Many thanks. Exclamation point. Uh, some interesting questions there, Oliver, because fundamentally is entirely speculation at this point. We don't know anything about

[03:31] these games other than the fact that they exist and are in development. But obviously we've got some idea of what's happening with uh the next generation systems and the need to scale across as many pieces of hardware as possible

[03:44] while servicing you know stuff like high-end consoles that sort of thing. Um where do you want to start with this one? Yeah, I mean I do definitely see the need for scalability. Obviously, whatever Bethesda ships, I presume will

[03:57] be fairly scalable to at least the wide range of PC handhelds and consoles that including, I'm sure, Series S and Series X and PlayStation 5 in all likelihood as well, assuming it isn't one of those uh one of those benited exclusives that

[04:11] Microsoft is so keen on promising, but I don't know how many will be emerging, at least, you know, depending on maybe the commercial performance of some of their exclusive titles they've already announced. Um, but actually Todd Howard

[04:23] I think uh there were a couple interviews out there but one of them was with IGN like this user mentions and he he basically talked about yes scalability but also how their world worlds load how they load content and

[04:37] present things of high detail close to the camera and they talked about working might be working on some of these problems already and ensuring presumably that they scale to appropriate levels of hardware capability. Um, including

[04:51] possibly things like I mean he with that word with that wording there present That sounds awfully like a Micropolyon system. I don't know, maybe that's sound awfully like that, doesn't it? Um, and we do know that, you know, games in

[05:05] scale all right to handhelds. And indeed, when we're talking about a game that might not be released until 2028 or 2029, we might be talking about handheld systems look like at that point, right? We're going to be well

[05:19] into kind of the Panther Lake era of capability, I would suspect. And maybe systems like the ROG Alli X, uh, Xbox ROG Alli X, these kinds of devices are priorities. Perhaps they will run, but perhaps not in as great of form as they

[05:33] do currently with titles like Starfield, which runs acceptably well on handhelds of that capability, of that caliber, I would have to say. Um, and yeah, I mean in terms of the co whole segmentation question, I think Bethesda's games have

[05:46] that's for a variety of production reasons. It's for simulation reasons. It's for even things as basic as like, you know, they want to create this large livedin world, but they don't want to

[05:58] model everything out to the same degree of depth and sophistication as they do in their interiors. Their interiors in the Bethesda games usually do not match much more capacious, much larger segments. If you actually go into some

[06:12] things like that in Starfield, they're much larger gameplay spaces. So, actually rationalizing that and making it so those two fit. That is a bit of a change here. Um, and it's not totally clear to me that they would want to make

[06:27] that change. I I actually don't think it's essential that they remove the some segmentation. Like in Starfield, there are a lot of open spaces, open you don't need to remove it for every space. Or maybe you do a bit of a

[06:41] compromise where you have some partitions, but you hide them through like an animation. Like maybe you load in fast enough that you can just open a door, swing the door behind you, and the space is loaded in, right? That kind of

[06:55] thing could also be possible. So, it's possible to create the illusion of seamlessness without creating something that approaches true seamlessness. handle this problem, but I would expect that whatever they do achieve for the

[07:07] next generation, Elder Scrolls 6, whatever, Fallout 5, those solutions waiting for 30 seconds for a loading screen, which is what we currently see in Starfield, which is like very antiquit behavior, not very current gen.

[07:23] >> Yeah. Yeah. Will, what do you think? >> Yeah, I think Oliver is making some good points there. I think that, you know, you can almost look at it like a stylistic choice, like they'd much rather build out as much detail as

[07:36] possible in their interiors and have their world segmented in such a way that they're getting benefits elsewhere. And, you know, that's not an unreasonable kind of trade-off to make, right? Obviously, they're getting some sort of

[07:49] benefit from doing that in terms of how they're authoring these spaces and how they're actually running them, you know, in real time on consoles and on PC. So, I don't think it's necessary for them to definitely get rid of things. If the

[08:02] loading was like a second, if every space you just have your character like passageway, that would be fine with me. It would be funny, but it would still be fine. Um, and yeah, I think, you know, doing it obviously in in more clever

[08:17] can have your characters open a door in a pre-anned animation and go through like it takes you out of the moment a little bit less. Um, yeah, I think their priority is definitely much more about like what happens when you actually go

[08:31] inside those spaces than it is about making everything as seamless as possible because, you know, we've kind of seen that from like No Man's Sky, right? Where you can go almost anywhere in the universe and it's kind of just a

[08:44] make the trade-off of like when you get there, is it as detailed as as it could have been if it was just an instanced area? Um, so you know there there's lots of different ways to do it and obviously this is a very very far away. So I don't

[08:59] mind too much how they handle it and I have some level of confidence that you know they'll improve this. I think the commenter saying uh about Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 like that really does feel like a really much more lived in world

[09:11] than Starfields even though it has a lot of the same uh characteristics in terms of NPCs having routines and things like that but it is also of a much more in that game and some smaller settlements and not really the same

[09:25] scale that we see in Starfield or or other games. So, you know, they they could go either way on that balance. And uh yeah, I have some level of excitement something if they really wanted to solve, they could solve it, but they

[09:39] might not do it for stylistic reasons. >> Interesting. I kind of think that they probably will give it a shot. And um the reason why is I think it was kind of like the number one piece of feedback that came back from Starfield, right? It

[09:51] immersive because you were taken out of it >> whenever you needed a to access a new area with a loading screen. It's it's not great. The the transition idea is quite interesting, but when you started

[10:03] talking about opening doors, I was reminded of Resident Evil on the PS1. reminded of Resident Evil on the PS1. >> Yeah. More like mans the animation. whether they could have solved the starfield entering a ship thing by

[10:16] having a lift instead instead of a ramp, the time honored lift mechanism for background streaming stuff. >> Yeah. Or just make every every uh segmentation at a long elevator ride

[10:29] like in Mass Effect, right? Make every single doorway just an elevator ride to could cover the >> Yeah, these aliens just really love >> Yeah, these aliens just really love elevators. I said

[10:41] >> I uh I'm really interested that uh the focus here is basically on um what is effectively data streaming as opposed to like well you know uh creation engine 3 what great new rendering features are we expecting? Nobody's even asking that at

[10:55] think about this Oliver because I think fundamentally um uh I mean Starfield was compared to prior Creation Engine games a very very handsome game. I think it

[11:07] held up pretty well. Um, yeah, and there were some sort of nods towards modern think when they move on to the next generation, hope hopefully we could get some rate tracing, some you know, RTGI, something like that. But I guess there's

[11:22] would need to be um fallbacks for accommodating this scalability that they want to do. >> Yeah, I mean RTGI would be a great find in one of these games to have that. That would be terrific. Also, um, some kind

[11:36] of virtualized geometry system, which I think Todd Howard is is hinting at here with his discussion about loading things in high detail up close. Some kind of virtual shadow map system would be great. Um, some kind of just in general

[11:48] the water rendering in Starfield to be too attractive. Even things like, you space reflections. I'd love to see some kind of rationalization of the onscreen detail with the reflections that are in

[12:03] through some kind of you know rate trace solution screen space solution or you know maybe they have some partnership with Nvidia to have you know something like that that'd be really interesting on the PC front but yeah in

[12:18] general I think there's a pretty welltrodden cache cache of uh current gen re rendering tech that Bethesda has not really plumbed too much. Like Starfield did look pretty good. Had PBR materials.

[12:31] Uh great detailing all over the place. Things like this. Uh pretty good-looking characters when they weren't speaking too much. They looked pretty good. Um at maybe not the NPCs that you see walking around with their bizarre faces and

[12:44] strange lighting. And I would expect from, you know, let's say from the Elder Elder Scrolls 6 that it still might not look like a totally high-end game of its pretty respectable. I would I would venture relative to the games that do

[12:58] not going to be the most high-end title, but it will still look pretty decent, I Mhm. Yeah. I'm also happy that there is actually confirmation that they're sticking with their own technology rather than going for like I mean it

[13:11] would be pretty disastrous to use Unreal Engine 5, but I bet you there were discussions. So, yeah, Will, that's that's good news, right? >> Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think we've always really wanted to champion uh

[13:23] because it makes things a little bit more interesting for us and it leads to some interesting, you know, learnings between unrelated studios like we saw with um people learning from uh the Doom guys uh RTGI solution uh the learnings

[13:41] from it there. So, you know, there are certainly um benefits to going to Unreal Engine 5. Like there you could find pretty much any, you know, person in the industry like artists and so on. We very comfortable working with that. But I

[13:55] interesting work when people are are rolling their own tech and and doing something that suits just their game. And obviously Bethesda is a huge studio one of the few studios that could actually make their own engine and do it

[14:12] right and invest the time and resources to make it work out. So obviously I'm >> Yeah, I just think the the concept of what um constitutes Bethesda Game Studio

[14:24] title is fundamentally tied to the technological choices they make for themselves. Um, anything to add before we sign off on this one, uh, Oliver? >> No, I'm just very excited to see The Elder Scrolls 6. I guess all we've seen

[14:38] trailer that they did, I think, to deflect attention from Fallout 76. I think it was like in 2018 or something. Quite a while ago now. But yeah, I would be very curious to see what that game will end up looking like and what it

[14:53] will end up shipping on cuz I suspect it will be shipping on just about everything. But who knows at this point? And then, you know, exactly what that That's that's much further out, I imagine, despite Ash's wishes, I

[15:07] really looking forward to Elder Scrolls 6 for sure. >> Mhm. Absolutely. Okay. Uh, let's move on. Um, so we got this question here from Derp Derpington. Uh, classic hacker alias there. Um, oh, hi there, lads.

[15:22] Exclamation point. The Washington Post recently did a piece on the 25 great works of American art over the last 250 years, and the original Doom was selected as the only video game on the list. I'm curious on the panel's

[15:35] thoughts. Is Doom the great American video game? Um, well, I'm not American or have any sort of links to North America whatsoever. Um, I'm going to go to you first on this one, Will. >> Yeah, I mean, I have some thoughts as I

[15:50] did spend a lot of my childhood in America. So I'm have some some attachment to the country, let's say. Um, so yeah, I think obviously Doom is a monumental game. It made a huge influence on the industry. Um, does it

[16:05] have all the qualities of like the great American novel, which is this is kind of riffing on? Um, I think generally it it has. It's quite disruptive in a way that a lot of American novels were. Obviously, you know, Doom like started

[16:18] an entire genre that is now one of the most popular and bestselling, you know, in the world. Like Doom clones becoming FPS is is a well-known story, but a really amazing one. The fact that it kind of kickstarted land gaming and

[16:31] tournaments and esports and all of those things is a huge huge deal. like you know it came out a little bit before my time but it really paved the way for games that I went on to play like Unreal and you know Battlefield and all these

[16:44] other ones which were so incredible in the land party experience and the fact that that led to the first esports stars people winning Ferraris and tournaments and stuff like that like that's all very influential and you know has shaped a

[16:57] lot of modern gaming culture for sure. Also, the fact that there's user generated content as like a forefront, like a, you know, a foundational piece of it that so many people made their own maps, made their own mods is hugely

[17:09] influential. I don't think you can point to many other games that have had the same kind of influence, maybe HalfLife, something like that. And obviously from an economic point of view, like the fact that a really small studio was able to

[17:22] put out this game via sharewware and say the first disc is free, pay us for the rest. And that's like floppy disc not not CD. Um that is an amazing and interesting story right it kind of paved the way for you know these smaller

[17:36] studios to come in with just a few you know principal programmers or you know single person operations and be financially successful and grow into the giants that we know today. Right. So I think from all those points of view like

[17:49] yes it is the great American game. Does it say anything about the American condition like the great American novels tend to? Um, it doesn't really say much, I suppose. Like, it's not really a commentary in a way that uh video games

[18:03] now are often a commentary. You might look towards like Red Dead Redemption or GTA or HalfLife even to say something more about America and like, you know, what makes things truly American. But um from every other respect, I think it

[18:18] definitely it has to be at least in the conversation for that title and I'm as as their one standup. >> Yeah, famously there is no narrative to do this. So yeah, that kind of makes sense. Uh, I was just reading uh PC

[18:32] Gamers write up on this and um uh apparently um for the decade 1986 to uh 1995 uh Doom beats out heavyweight competition including Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, Spikeley's Do the Right

[18:46] Thing, The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Seinfeld, and the MTV Reality series The Real World. Uh in December 1993, ID, this is from Jean Park, by the way. Um, id game free over the internet. College networks buckled under the traffic and

[19:03] bulletin boards lit up as the game eventually was installed on more computers than Microsoft Windows 95 at the time. Doom was foundational in digital entertainment, a 3D world viewed in first person, self-published with no

[19:15] gatekeepers and no re retail store as it gave rise to userenerated content years before anyone had a name for it. programmer John Carmarmac handed the audience to to the tools to build their own corners of hell. Um Oliver, I mean,

[19:30] I'm struggling to think of a a game originating from the US that has had the same kind of impact or influence as as Doom. Um cultural event though, that's though. >> It is. It is. And I mean I would agree

[19:45] with Will in the sense that it is um seemingly a very American game and franchise. Obviously it originated in Texas, but moreover it's you know small studio, little publisher involvement. Um achieving something that was thought to

[20:01] be not possible at the time. It kind of satisfies what people think of as American qualities. I'm going to defer on whether those are, you know, truly American qualities or or what what would satisfy the what an American quality is,

[20:14] but uh it certainly would satisfy that. I think um I'd also think that maybe a although it feels much more natural to put Doom, which is like the, you know, not the complete progenitor of the genre, but certainly a very early

[20:28] exemplar of the genre of first-person shooters, as the number one title. And I'd also say that, you know, a game like Uncharted 2 would also be kind of exemplary of a certain kind of very American

[20:40] perhaps production ethic. I don't know. But definitely another very prominent American title that probably exemplifies that kind of like AAA Sony blockbuster that kind of like AAA Sony blockbuster title of the like late 2000s to modern

[20:53] day I suppose uh better than any other title out there. So, there are a number of choices here, but I think Doom is probably the the safe consensus pick for what an American video game should look like. If we look at the title of the

[21:07] Washington Post article, the 25 most influential works of American culture, I produced in video games off the top of my head that comes anything close to my head that comes anything close to what Doom was doing uh back then in

[21:21] 1995. I think that's, you know, the the impact that game made. I mean, I was there when it happened. was just was just like astonishing. You know, this game was the it you know it it changed everything. I think I think in terms of

[21:34] being a most influential work probably does trump anything produced by America. So yeah, I've got no issues with that particular choice. So you know certainly if you're going to be doing it in terms of like choosing a video game entrant

[21:48] from any of the decades I think so I think it was a a safe choice but also an inspired choice I think. I think it was uh good stuff there. Okay, let's move on to the next question. So, a question here from Darjako in brackets. Dan lads,

[22:03] what about the recent patents uh for the PlayStation 6 suggesting that they've ditched liquid metal alloy and are moving to a vapor chamber with a quote unquote piping pipe extensions that prevent console orientation, reducing

[22:17] vapor flow. Sounds like Sony will once again be running narrow and hot while Microsoft goes wide and possibly cooler. Is this likely a clue they'll go with a Is this likely a clue they'll go with a dynamic boost clock setup again? Uh,

[22:30] interesting question there. Um, Oliver, what do you think about this? I mean I think the first thing to say is that um there is a very strong possibility that because you know we've even had comment from Mark Cerny saying whoa you know to

[22:44] to paraphrase Mark Cerny not that he does say whoa but um a lot of people sort of look at patents and think this is this is a thing and it's happening whereas generally it tends to be an idea that is just protected and doesn't

[22:58] really tend to go anywhere. Um what do you make of this though? Yeah, in general engineers at companies like ST Sony are advised to file as many patents of their work to cover anything that could be valuable and to cover the

[23:14] broadest possible uses while still creating like patentable and legally defensible patent art, you know. So, I wouldn't read too much into statements like this into filings like this rather. But um I did look at this filing briefly

[23:28] and to me I'm not totally sure that it says they're moving away from liquid metal thermal interface material because this patent is kind of studiously agnostic about what the thermal interface material would be. They

[23:41] describe a heat transfer member many many times in this patent which I think is something like a heat spreader but they never actually describe what kind of thermal interface material would be presumably between the heat spreader and

[23:54] the heat pipes. So they could be using a vapor chamber in conjunction with liquid metal. Certainly we've seen that with some higherend GPUs I believe some possibility. Um whether they would ditch liquid metal entirely I'm not sure. I I

[24:09] I think a good reasoning for ditching liquid metal possibly would be some repairability concerns and some longevity concerns because recently and in the past um but but especially recently there have been some reports uh

[24:21] sporadic reports perhaps but reports of liquid metal drying out on PlayStation fives especially PlayStation fives that might be placed vertically um issues dry spots of liquid metal where liquid metal pools towards the bottom of the uh

[24:36] up with some problems and it leads to some possibly some random shutdowns and things like that. I'd like to see that alleviated, but in this context, uh I do think that Sony is probably going to ship a narrower design than Microsoft.

[24:51] design, I don't know. It certainly could indicate a higher clock design, but I'm not totally sure how mored Microsoft will feel to like keeping the box under

[25:03] 200 watts or something like that because part of the Xbox uh Series X kind of gambit there was you want a console that's relatively slim and is not going to consume too many watts. Um, I'm not sure if they would still have that same

[25:16] feeling and they certainly could increase the clock if they did feel like they had the thermal headroom to do so and the power headroom to do so. So, would be very surprised if Sony abandoned the dynamic boost clock

[25:29] behavior because it seems to have worked out very well for them, but um, I'm not that context. They could just ship a very similar thermal solution to necessarily there's not necessarily an indication they're going to change it.

[25:44] Mhm. Yeah. Um Will, what do you think? >> Yeah, I think Oliver's pretty much covered it. I think, you know, this is just a patent. We can't necessarily just take it as red that they're definitely going to implement it. And even if they

[25:56] it's not going to be used with liquid metal. So, you know, it doesn't really say anything uh conclusively. I think we can look at what they've said about, you know, upcoming consoles and stuff like that, which is not very much, and say

[26:13] anything is possible, but PS5 was massively successful. And, you know, if then I think that was probably going to be good enough. >> So, I think if there's one thing that we can take away from um Sony's sort of

[26:26] console design is that they're extremely efficient in terms of die area. I mean, if you compare the PlayStation 5 to the Xbox Series X, the die is significantly smaller. I mean, I think the launch one, the models were like uh 320 mm square

[26:40] versus 360 mm square. You know, factor that into the millions of units that were made across the generation. Um, that's a significant saving that they've made there for a console which, you know, against the odds basically

[26:53] provided the same or slightly worse or slightly better performance than Microsoft's um die there. And they did it with a more efficient memory really really interesting. You look at PlayStation 5 Pro 4 nanometer chip

[27:08] seemingly and you know 280 square millimeters you know this is uh really good stuff. I mean the performance that they've extracted from what are relatively small D certainly in um you know versus the uh the competition. I

[27:23] think it's been really really impressive. Going back to PlayStation 4, I seem to believe the PlayStation 4 die was actually smaller than Xbox One despite delivering significantly more performance. They know what they're

[27:35] going to be pushing clocks again as they did with PlayStation 5, need some sort of different cooling solution there. We don't really know. I mean, are they they're kind of thinking that it's a 3 nanometer die for

[27:50] PlayStation 6. Isn't that right, Oliver? That's the That's the the rumor, so to >> Yes. 3 nmters and I believe the uh target TDP was 160 watts, although perhaps that's optimistic, at least according to some of the leaked uh

[28:04] seen from outlets like Mo's law is dead. So, who knows how accurate that is, but yeah, 3 nmters and possibly with a slightly more sevelt TDP than PlayStation 5. >> Mhm. Yeah, I think we'll see more of the

[28:17] same because they on a winning formula. Anyway, let's move on. Uh, question here from Pi Studios. Hello, ARM enthusiasts. Question mark exclamation point, the Nvidia recently teamed up to announce

[28:32] that Virtual Fighter 6 will be getting a native ARM version meant for RTX Spark. out of their way to target Nvidia's new ARM chip, or do you think Nvidia will have to pay off every company that

[28:44] supports it? Qualcomm has had very little success getting native or native adjacent support unless it's coming from Microsoft like with anti-che being fixed Microsoft like with anti-che being fixed for GTA online. Um that's an interesting

[28:58] question. But I one thing I do want to point out is that I I read that um announcement last week and it was kind of like that Sega will be supporting RTX what I could tell from the from the press release at least any kind of

[29:13] meant I was kind of like scratching my head thinking well you know RTX Spark's a PC anything PC will run on it via the translation layer. So now what does support mean? I mean, the logical thing is that it's native ARM support, right,

[29:28] Will? But, um, they didn't actually say that, which just baffled me. >> Yeah. I mean, it might be that they haven't yet, you know, figured out which route they're going to go down, or maybe it is that it's just going to run via a

[29:41] to make sure that there aren't any big issues with that. You know, it could be as simple as that. So in terms of you know developers going out of their way to target ARM then you know it purely depends on how well RTX Spark and

[29:56] everything else uh sells right. Um Spark itself is quite expensive. It doesn't look like it's going to be like a mass market thing at least not immediately. So, I would say the chances of

[30:09] developers out of the goodness of their heart saying, "Oh, yeah, let's just make sure that this runs really well," is probably quite minimal. Obviously, there are other ARM devices in the wild, but we haven't seen developers rushing out

[30:22] to support them necessarily. Um, you know, the Steam Frame is coming out, which is also an ARM device. So, you know, there is a bit of movement towards crystallizes into developers saying, "Oh, yeah, we're going to have an ARM

[30:37] version, then I don't know. >> Obviously, Mac OS is also a big ARM user and, you know, not many developers are necessarily supporting that and that has necessarily supporting that and that has a much bigger install base. So, possibly

[30:51] hard to say. Um, but my guess would be it will probably take this sort of a big games, >> right? Um, Oliver, what's your thoughts on this one? >> Yeah, I'm kind of skeptical that Sega is

[31:04] going to be shipping an ARM executable. I mean, I'd like to be surprised on this mentioned are going to wing against it penetration, and I'm not even sure

[31:16] much money to rewrite this thing from the ground up for for ARM if indeed that's the case here. Um, but I would expect that there could be certain expect that there could be certain components that would cause issues under

[31:29] uh conventional translation, like you know, your anti-cheat stuff that might need to be adapted or rewritten or rellicensed for ARM. Who knows exactly what kind of solution they would have going on there, but I could see specific

[31:41] components needing to be adjusted, especially given that this is a competitive online multiplayer title. Obviously, we've seen issues with those titles running on all kinds of different systems from Linux systems to ARM

[31:54] different approach there. Um, but yeah, because this is like a apparently a multi-game partnership. I mean, at least through this, they talk about a larger partnership. I don't think that you're

[32:09] going to see every single Sega title coming forward as an ARM executable. I think it's going to be compatibility rather than complete native support. Right. Um, my viewpoint on this is that, um, I think Nvidia are probably thinking

[32:23] long term on this. You look at N1 and N1X. Um, I'm just reading up on some of there's actually two configurations of N1X and N1. Uh, that seems to be the rumor. Uh, 6144 CUDA cores on on one N1X

[32:39] variant, 5120 on another. With N1, it's a much smaller GPU die seemingly um or certainly paired back in a number of ways, but there's uh 2560 CUDA cores or

[32:53] 148. This is really interesting, I think, because um you know, obviously we've seen how expensive the um N1X laptops are going to be, right? And I guess there's going to be desktops, mini desktop variants of that as well. Um not

[33:06] great, you know. Um, and it looks like the N1 could be like a cheaper variant. And I'm very curious as to whether the N1 in particular could be the start of some kind of gaming push from Nvidia. Um, and I guess, you know, if they're

[33:21] going to do that, um, they are probably going to need to do something with Windows on ARM and sort of push support for it a bit more. And um it also opens up you know the chance to have a cheaper version of Nvidia's um uh ARMbased

[33:37] endeavor. Although of course the concept of cheap uh is there such a thing in the current climate? I don't know. Um both of them seem to have um different power of them seem to have um different power um windows as well. N1X 45 W to 80 W. N1

[33:54] um windows as well. N1X 45 W to 80 W. N1 um seems to be 18 watts to 45 watts which kind of puts you in um sort of uh how can I say it dare I say it a handheld terod even interesting stuff it's going to be a lot less capable um

[34:08] though obviously it's the N1X but you know Nvidia really good at getting um support for their devices um the infrastructure they've got there is pretty awesome and obviously it would behoove them to do something similar to

[34:23] this. Um, very curious to see how all of this plays out and um, yeah, looking forward to seeing what devices may or I guess may not appear from that and maybe this Sega thing is, you know, part of that equation. Anyway, let's move on.

[34:40] Right. Okay. So, we got a question here from MDJ. Howdy. Does the DF team wonder like I do on where console graphics would be if games only targeted 30 fps on the current gen systems? 60 fps is always preferable, but Red Dead 2, Last

[34:54] of Us Part 2, and Uncharted 4 were incredible showcases considering last incredible showcases considering last gen specs and a 33.3 millisecond render interesting whatif question there, Oliver. I'm curious what you make about

[35:08] this. Yeah, I really think games are limited more by artist time and engine capabilities than frame time budget. And realistically, even speaking the CPU side of things, a Zen 2 CPU can deliver you, I think, sufficient simulation for

[35:24] 60 FPS with most game concepts. I mean, I'm not really seeing games that really push against that too much. And you have so much CPU time, so much GPU capability generation um that I really think that most games can scale just fine. Maybe

[35:39] there are some exceptions like I think Hellblade 2 had some issues and perhaps GTA 6 will have some issues. Who knows? getting to 60 fps. Um, but I don't concern. And then on the GPU side, things are inherently scalable,

[35:53] especially with dynamic resolution, temporal upscaling. You know, most game engines, if they're capable of delivering 1440p 30 in a representative scene, they can probably do 900p60 and probably do 900p60 with upscaling

[36:08] sufficient to make the image look okay. and all like these techniques that rely on like temporal amortization across many frames, they all work better at higher frame rates anyways, there's kind of a natural fit there where you might

[36:20] not actually have to do twice the work necessarily in the same span of time to achieve the uh desired result. So yeah, I think that um in in general, I don't think you'd see the results that you're looking for. And I I actually think that

[36:34] when you look at like really advanced titles this generation that are shipping in engines like Anvil, the developers are doing a really really good job of hitting 60 fps without necessarily compromising that 30 fps experience as a

[36:47] byproduct. I don't necessarily think there's like a corresponding compromise there. In the same way that last generation there definitely was when you were targeting like fixed 1080p resolution on PlayStation 4 and many

[36:59] titles, most titles. um when you were targeting uh world simulation that had targeting uh world simulation that had to scale to a Jaguar CPU at like 1.6 GHz when you didn't have the benefit of um techniques like FSR3 or whatever that

[37:12] allow you to scale the uh image output to achieve a credibly a good-look result. Um I think all those factors weigh against last generation consoles consoles in terms of actually pulling this off.

[37:27] >> Yeah. Interesting. Well, >> um, well, as a mostly PC gamer, the thought of 30 FPS gaming just fills me with dread. I can't imagine a more horrible experience. I mean, what about 120 FPS as the standard going forward?

[37:43] Can anyone get behind that with me? No, >> it's it's not happening, but I I admire your confidence. >> Thank you. Um, so yeah, like there 30 30 FPS obviously I think we would see a lot more developers just going for pure 30

[37:57] more developers just going for pure 30 fps experiences if there was huge bounties of graphical fidelity to reap from that decision. Right? So I think that the fact that we do see 30 fps and 60 fps modes as kind of the standard for

[38:10] this generation means that 30 fps doesn't necessarily unlock a huge amount for you. So the odd game GTA 6 looks like one of them possibly could make like one of them possibly could make that uh more of a decision and you know

[38:24] is you know able to achieve more by going for that 30 fps but it seems like yeah 60 fps is is definitely reachable with the current hardware that we have available. Yeah, I think um Oliver answered a lot of the points that I had

[38:37] um with this particular question, but I am actually surprised and delighted that there are so many 60fps experiences to the point where if a game doesn't ship with 60 fps, people are up in arms about it. That's kind of like where we need to

[38:50] be, I think, for console gaming. I think it's surprising because, you know, you think back to um those original Unreal Engine 5 demos, they were running at 30 1080p. Um, and I think that was kind of like

[39:05] the initial design target, 1080p 30 with an upscale to 4K. And uh, I think that experiences we saw early on in Unreal Engine 5's um, uh, life cycle where, you

[39:18] know, they they did 60 fps. I mean, it's still happening now, actually, where certain games are running at 60 fps or targeting 60 fps but not quite hitting it. are running out of CPU resources. Image quality can be in the toilet. Um

[39:32] Image quality can be in the toilet. Um FSR two is being and indeed three is being horrifically abused in some cases, but you know, it is what it is, I guess. Um what would have the situation been if you you were targeting 30 fps uh on

[39:46] you you were targeting 30 fps uh on current gen systems? Um it really is an interesting question but I think ultimately um the move to service 4K displays has actually proved to be quite flexible in terms of um the arrival of

[40:01] upscaling solutions and the fact that you know in in good with with good you know in in good with with good implementations you know 1440p 1080p can look perfectly fine on a 4K screen. So yeah I mean it's something that we never

[40:14] really had to it's a route that we didn't have to go down I don't think. um the GTA 6 question. I mean, you know, there's um a lot of rumors and push back against our views on what they're doing and whether there is going to be a 60fps

[40:28] mode or not. I just want to reiterate that we don't know. And if we do see 60 that we don't know. And if we do see 60 fps, then go great, right? Um it will be um kind of counter to everything that we've seen in the trailers which were

[40:40] running at 30 fps. Uh but I'm very curious to see what they could do there. I just hope it's not frame generation from 30 to 60. That would be that would be kind of funny. Although, weirdly, I think a lot of people, however, would be

[40:53] shipped. Yeah, who knows? I mean, people put up with some uh pretty deranged stuff on consoles. I mean, I still see people consoles. I mean, I still see people going back to our coverage of um

[41:07] Blackmith Wukong and remarking that, oh, that original PlayStation 5 performance mode was so good. That's like, no, it really wasn't. But, uh, yeah, pe people do have a bit more of an affinity for frame generation than I personally do

[41:21] and than I was personally expecting, certainly when the technology debuted, let's let's do it. Do you see any hope for 60 fps with GTA 6? I mean, the way I'm seeing it is that, you know, anything is possible, especially with

[41:36] Rockstar, but I can't see it based on, you know, that level of quality that 60. >> It's it's just a really hard call given that uh well, we aren't working at Rockstar for one, and we have seen a lot

[41:50] of very complex titles, a lot of very complex open world titles. You look at uh Watchd Dogs 3, right? That shipped on current generation title consoles. It looks very large, has very large scale, doing a lot of complex things. I mean,

[42:03] GTA V, I mean, these games are probably not holding a candle to what uh GTA 6 is doing visually, but you don't really know what's going on under the hood. And also, you don't really have a good appreciation for like, you know, for

[42:15] instance, just as one example, right, in the uh initial GTA 6 trailer, we saw a more of a cut scene moment >> or is that actually something you're going to see in gameplay? Right? And also, would they be willing to decrease

[42:28] you're seeing in that scene, the amount of simulation that's going on for a 60 fps mode, right? These are all kinds of questions that we don't know the answers to. We can only kind of grope around in the dark at what the answers could be,

[42:41] different choices that would shunt us off in different directions in this topic, right? So, I think at the moment, it's it's really hard to say. I wouldn't wouldn't be surprised if they do it. I wouldn't be surprised if they don't. But

[42:54] not doing it, it would be Rockstar is my thinking. >> Absolutely. Okay, let's move on. A question here from Wild Wild Westy. Sony's announce announcement to move away from discbased physical games does

[43:08] not rule out cars or code in box physical editions. Is it possible their strategy is not just about greed, but is paving the way for gaming that works across a unified ecosystem? Whether you're on PS5, a handheld, or PS6. Could

[43:22] the real point be not quote unquote kill physical but to move to a format that lets one purchase follow you across devices? Uh will what do you make of this? I think fundamentally yes that is

[43:35] going to be part of the strategy assuming the handheld is real and it and uh it's happening which we understand it is. But at the same time um it's not great to phase out physical discs for those that maybe aren't

[43:49] interested in the handheld. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I don't think it's necessarily greed, but it is certainly a motivation of, you know, have to say that's necessarily greedy for a business to try to make money, but

[44:05] yes, uh yeah, there are lots of ways that this could go down. Some of which are a lot more uh consumer friendly than others. Certainly, if discs just phased out of existence and everything became a game card that could fit into a

[44:20] handheld, could fit into a PS6, then that would be much less disruptive than if you had a handheld and a PS6 that don't have any options for any kind of physical thing to be inserted and for physical additions to be codes and

[44:34] of doing the same thing as, you know, making people buy from the PS store, right? you're still getting rid of the possibility of selling nude games. Um you're still, you know, reducing consumer choice and really dis

[44:48] disincentivizing people to go to other retailers rather than just buying digitally um from Sony direct. And obviously that has a huge impact on the amount of uh profit that that Sony can get from each uh sale of a console. So

[45:03] yeah, there are uh lots of ways this could happen. And uh I don't know. I just don't see it ending in a way that uh consumers will be necessarily happy. Like if you're on a slow internet connection or you have a huge library of

[45:18] PS5 discs, I doubt very much that Sony will have a solution that is going to make you feel 100% fine about it. But we don't know what their plans are. And say there is going to be a program that lets your PS5 discs turn into digital

[45:33] purchases or there is going to be a program or or sorry there's going to be, you know, an attachment that lets you play PS5 games on a PS6. Like we just don't know at this point. >> Yeah, I think that's a fair point. Um

[45:45] but Oliver, um Sony is on the record of saying that they want to extract more revenue per active user, right? Yeah, I think that's got to be the center of this and just trying to turn your user who maybe you were netting,

[45:59] your user who maybe you were netting, you know, $15 off of, $13 off of whatever in a physical sale to a user who you're netting, you know, twice the amount on a digital sale easily, taking a 30% margin or whatever. I think that's

[46:11] a 30% margin or whatever. I think that's where Sony has got to be. In terms of I think it does push you a little bit more in that digital direction. But uh don't want that person who has a

[46:26] primarily physical library to be, you know, totally out of step with the uh PSP 3 or PSP goto or whatever they end up calling it. I don't know. PS VA 2, who knows at this point. But um you know Sony did manage a split between the

[46:41] digital and physical realm with the PSP Go where they had a a PSP that only played digital games even though they had a largely physical library before. experiment worked out too well for them. So perhaps that isn't a point in the in

[46:56] favor here but uh yeah who knows at this point but I I do feel like it could be direction. But I think probably the primary factor is just like let's take primary factor is just like let's take that group of users and increase our you

[47:11] know average revenue per sale by an enormous amount. I think it's probably the predominant factor here. Yeah, I think so as well. Um uh but I do think that the concept of having this unified ecosystem is going to be uh

[47:27] one of the the reasons why they're doing this in addition to um uh obviously increasing the revenue per user. Um yeah, interesting stuff. I mean I think here's the thing, right? I think that what

[47:41] speculation on my part, but it kind of makes sense because there have been reports that um publishers and developers had no idea this was Sony made this announcement, surprising everyone, is that it would have leaked

[47:55] publishers about it. So, in a sense, they had to go early with this. Um and um unfortunately the the issue with going early is that you can only produce

[48:07] the vaguest of statements, three paragraphs, and um you can't actually couch it within the context of what your next generation strategy is. I think Okay, so we're going to move on to the last question of the show and this one

[48:21] comes from some guy person. Given that we have now seen Oliver's cat's tail um in DF Direct 272, he's even supplied specific time codes here. Where will we

[48:33] see the rest of the cat? Is the rest of the cat extent or is it a floating tail? How often does Oliver edit his cat out of videos? Is there a montage of edited out cat videos that would surely do well on YouTube out there? What do you make

[48:48] of that then, Oliver? No, I I mean it's tough with the cat because she's e tough with the cat because she's e either in the room with me or she's meowing outside the room to be in my office. So yeah, I kind of have a bit of

[49:03] don't really want her to interrupt the recordings, but she does sometimes stride in the frame and sometimes I don't cut away from it. But I think I have her right here. So maybe I can grab her. Oh boy, here she is. She's very

[49:21] how >> friendly she is at the present moment. I just woke her up, but yeah, she is uh I've had her for almost nine years now. Very sweet. And uh yeah, she does like to sit on the direct recordings. So,

[49:36] yes, very nice cat. >> Cats generally have a um uh an ability to sit on valuable equipment in oppo times. Does that ever happen with you? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I used to uh guard my electronics with double-sided

[49:51] tape so she wouldn't go on them. But now I've kind of given it up for a more proactive approach where I just hush her off. But no, she's uh she's usually quite well behaved. Um but she is she's a Siamese so she's really quite uh wants

[50:06] to be near you all the time, right? So that creates some issues with recordings >> Uh will any dogs cats in the picture or rather out of the picture? Uh, I have two neighbor cats that come and visit me regularly and there's uh

[50:21] the house just down the road from me also got two uh kittens recently that have been jumping around. So, they haven't yet made it onto a recording, but yes, frequently uh cats are out there. You might remember I did a a

[50:35] little 10k a little while back for cats protection and so I supplied lots of photos of those cats and was very happy when they were plastered on their social media and stuff. So yeah, haven't yet made it onto a recording, but very much

[50:48] >> Are the are the neighbors on board with this? came around one time and were like, "We noticed that our cats really like to come and visit you. Can you please get cats of your own?" And I was like,

[51:01] "Yeah, okay, fair enough." Um, but I think they're they're okay with them We don't feed them that they they seem to uh like to come here for a nice quiet place to relax. I kind of imagine we have like a cat spa kind of going going

[51:14] on which uh yeah I'm very happy about. >> Good. Nice. Well, it's a catfree zone foundry obviously is still in the picture. Uh he guest starred on a previous direct. Uh we've just recently taken on a new dog as well. A friend of

[51:29] ours was um immigrating so we decided to adopt the dog. His name's Ace. So we got a couple of Jack Russell now which I'm very very pleased about. Um, but no cats in the picture and no dogs in the picture actually cuz um, uh, well, I

[51:45] don't let them in the room when we when we're taping these these directs. Anything could happen with dogs, particularly if the doorbell goes off. particularly if the doorbell goes off. Anyway, good stuff. The the the mystery

[51:57] Anyway, good stuff. The the the mystery of the cattail has finally been solved, question and therefore the end of the show. So, please do like, subscribe, ring bells for this that and the other. Uh DF supporter program

[52:10] patreon.com/digitalfoundry. Please check that out and help to support the team. Uh but that's all from us on this one. Thanks for watching and supporting Digital Foundry. We'll see you soon.