DF Direct Q+A: PS5 Emulation on PC, Will Halo Move To COD Tech, Will PCs Replace Consoles?

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2:23Go to mod.com to get started. Hello there, and the warmest of welcomes to this latest edition of the DF Direct Qnation, and as usual, you have questions. We have answers or answers to the pest of our knowledge at this point in time. Joining me first of all to discuss all of this stuff that we've got lined up, hello, Will Jard. Hello, nice to be here once again. It's been a little while, but yeah, happy to make my triumphant return, if it is indeed triumphant. We shall see. And of course, Oliver McKenzie, hello.

3:25Yes, you have questions. We have answers. Hopefully, usually. I guess we'll see our goals. Okay, indeed. Okay, so our first topic for this particular show, not so much of a question as such, but booted up a PC this morning only to discover that Marvel's Wolverine is seemingly running or at least getting to the title screen on PlayStation 5 emulator for PC, which is quite remarkable. Quite remarkable when you think about it. We've not really just gussed it to this point, but there's been a growing sort of a way of projects that are sort of competing to get as many games running and playable as possible. And I think I saw something over the weekend where the game Dead Cells is basically running on PC at the moment. The PlayStation 5 version running on PC, which again is quite remarkable stuff. I guess the question is the extent to which is actually going to become something usable in the medium to longer term. And the extent to which Sony might be concerned about this. Oliver, should we get down to brass tax here because well, the way PlayStation emulators work, PlayStation 5 emulators, I guess it's more similar to Shad PS4 and it's not quite as sort of a comprehensive task.

4:38As maybe emulating the cell or something like that. I mean, fundamentally we are looking at base level PC parts like, you know, sent to CPU and an RDNA to GPU. So seems that the task of getting things up and running isn't quite as onus as it was in the past. Yeah, it does seem to be considerably easier. But one key element that's changed recently is just the explosion of these new LMs in terms of key value for editing code. Like it's just crazy. There's been very rapid progress over the past few months or even few weeks with these tools because they just dramatically lower the software engineering bar for producing this kind of work. Which is interesting because it does suggest a world in which, you know, certain kinds of proprietary technologies that are designed to be locked into certain platforms, you know, like your console platforms or your PC upscalers or whatever.

5:38They're being democratized in this kind of very fast way that's interesting. And we're seeing it too with technologies like DLSS 5 and DLSS FG getting ported to all kinds of architectures, all of a sudden, again with the advent of these kinds of tools. Obviously, they're very skilled people working in these projects, but it just makes the whole process go really fast relative to the kind of progress you would have seen previously and make some things feasible. But I kind of think this is an issue more broadly for the landscape of kind of this proprietary kind of vendor technology, you know, expressed broadly here. Because it's an issue that everyone's going to have to face in one form or another. I'm not sure exactly how people are going to approach it in terms of making defenses or making things that are more difficult to reverse engineer, but it does seem to be an issue for all kinds of vendors in this space, just democratizing this technology, moving this technology, these software projects away from from close platforms.

6:38In terms of its impact on Sony, I don't think it's going to have much impact in the short term in the long term I could see it becoming more of an issue. I don't know, but there are some elements of the PS5 platform that presumably are going to remain constant. Like it's still going to be a plug and play experience. It's still going to be an experience that's very tightly optimized for the console. There are some elements that are going to make the console still appealing even in a world where you can, you know, where you can employ these kinds of projects. And also, like, you know, ultimately, this is going to be if this does take off on PC, it's going to be a, basically a piracy problem in, in my view, not the piracy is necessary for these projects. But if this is going to take off in a, in a big manner and become widespread on PC, it is going to be a piracy issue. And piracy is something that the PC industry has dealt with for a long time when it turns out the way that you combat piracy is by offering a really good experience through official channels. So it could be a case where Sony just needs to, you know, put their PC releases, put their titles back on PC. I don't know. Maybe they're alternatives for Sony to navigate this landscape that don't just involve shutting down the core technology.

7:44I'm really curious to see how this develops. But I don't think it's a near term issue for Sony, but it could become a longer term issue for Sony. If this arms race is not something that they can really compete with with regards to some of these technologies. And the interesting stuff, I mean, the way this is working is because the PC parts are sort of available already in the PC space. You know, the core components of the PlayStation 5, the way emulation works is quite a bit different to something like our PC s3 for example, because I mean, at the fundamental level, you don't need to emulate the CPU because it's some X86 CPU. And specific Zen 2 things that need to be taken into account, for example, because you know the CPU has features that may not be in an Intel CPU, for example. So there needs to be allowances made for that, but ultimately rather than trying to emulate a completely different architecture, what it's actually doing is something quite different. And it's basically something more like wine and proton, where it's basically, I guess the lion's share of the work is actually in adapting the Sony graphics API into windows or actually, rather as PC specific API, which I think Vulkan seems to be the API of choice there.

9:02There's a lot of things in terms of like adjusting what the how the GPU is addressed into something that Vulkan can handle. And I guess also the shaders need to be recompiled as well into something that Vulkan can understand and there actually seems to be two actual sort of approaches to this. There's actual emulators as such and then there's programs that seem to be taking the executable files of PlayStation 5 software and then basically doing the same job, but in actually replacing parts of the executable, you know, all of the graphics calls would be turned into Vulkan calls, for example, it's a completely different model compared to older style emulators. And I guess if on the one hand it makes things see and I guess on the one hand it makes things easier, but on the other hand, I'm pretty sure it's the case that Shad PS4 for the PlayStation 4 for it's on similar principles right because again, there's no need to emulate the CPU, but at the same time, you know, it's not as if, you know, Shad PS4 has been around for years now, but it's not as if it's in any way any kind of competition to actually owning a PlayStation 4 console.

10:10Well, curious about your take on this, but I have to admit I've been sort of taken aback somewhat by the speed of iteration here in terms of how many of these things are sort of cropping up the different approaches being taken and the fact that you know we've got now videos online of like demon souls, adding at like 40 to 50 frames per second. So remarkable stuff. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the point at which Sony starts to become a bit concerned is when something like that happens where you have a game that is actually still very important to the PlayStation brand and platform isn't available as a PC project suddenly is now, you know, maybe weeks away from being something you could conceivably sit down and play through. So it's a bit tricky for Sony because, you know, obviously back in the day, they lost an emulation lawsuit against bleem and you know since then, you know, the precedent was set right that these kind of emulation things as long as they don't use any proprietary code or any, you know, assets that are kind of legally defensible.

11:14So you can't really stop them and we've seen with the Nintendo's response to switch emulation that yes, you can shut down maybe an individual projects or individual developers, but you can't really stop the overall movement. And now as Oliver saying with LLM's getting significantly better at this sort of thing, basically anyone can say, oh yeah, actually I would be quite interested in getting this running and spend maybe, you know, hours, weeks, whatever and get something that is kind of workable. So we're in a situation now where you can't really just say, oh yeah, we're not going to allow this kind of thing because it's going to happen anyway, you know, there are more people doing it than you can feasibly stop right. So it's I think as only you just have to either say, okay, for the PlayStation six, we're going to go back to sell, we're going to go back to something that's way more difficult to emulate. And then, you know, have this sort of really hard, hard way by our to to overcome or you just have to say, you know, all right, well, we're going to have to start selling our games on PC again or we're going to have to go crazy with the lawsuits or, you know, something along those lines, right.

12:22I do think that the the counter example that rich brought up of ShadPS4 and how ShadPS4 hasn't like dramatically changed the landscape for PlayStation soft or already, even though it is operating very well, I would say, it does suggest this is kind of a service problem a little bit where, you know, from most part, the at least the interest in ShadPS4 seems to be around one title in particular, which is bloodborne. One title and that title has certain characteristics. It doesn't have it's a PS4 title that is very flawed in PS4 with its frame pacing behavior and kind of poor image quality. It doesn't have a PS4 pro version doesn't have a PS5 version doesn't have a PC version, right. So that's a title where there's kind of a service problem where Sony is not offering a good version of the game from modern users. I imagine most people who are plugging in bloodborne getting bloodborne off, you know, pirate sites getting on their PC running it with ShadPS4 would be very interested in the version of bloodborne that ran in their PlayStation 5 or their PC, right. So it could just be a service problem here where like I actually think the PS5 will remain a great place probably the best place to play PS5 software.

13:29But if Sony isn't going to offer a good version of, you know, some of their legacy titles for comparable systems, they're going to run at this problem, right. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And of course, we've actually showed a really good version of bloodborne running on PlayStation 5 via a series of mods that unlocks capabilities that PlayStation 5's PS4 emulator doesn't have. So, you know, we've seen bloodborne running at 4K 30. We've seen bloodborne running 1440p 1260p. I think we're with much higher frame rates. We've seen like 1080p bloodborne with VRR running around, you know, 100 frames per second. Yeah, so if there is a service problem, it's not as if the service cannot be delivered. So there must be something else going on there. I think you're probably right Oliver that there is a kind of piracy issue involved with this as well. Because here's the thing right, obviously emulators themselves are as you pointed out like a entirely legal way. They generally don't come bundled with stuff that's, you know, the kind of things you need to sort yourself like biases and copyright and stuff like that.

14:35But, you know, to get games running on a PlayStation 5 emulator, I suspect, I suspect, well, you need to dump them, first of all, which is not an entirely, well, certainly not an illegal thing, but decrypting them, things like that starts to get tricky. And, you know, what's the score with firmware? There's a lot of stuff around that. Yeah, interesting. I mean, I guess it's kind of like the reason there's a huge level of interest because it's kind of like just crazy to see the really fast progress that's being made. And, you know, as I said this morning, the concept of Marvel's Wolverine booting on a PC, you know, not the leaked version for a while back, but the actual retail code getting to the title screen, you know, rendering in three D's kind of crazy, crazy stuff. I guess we're just going to have to see how this one plays out in the course of time. I'm wondering if it will actually sort of reach a wall where, you know, there's things that just can't be done curious to see what's going to be happening there. Yeah, there's one thing that comes to mind is that emulation is also kind of a pathway for future customers. I know like when I was a kid back in the day, I didn't have access to basically any game console.

15:44And so the fact that I could download an emulator of like a Game Boy and get that running on my PC gave me so many more hours of enjoying Nintendo games. And then since that point as soon as I went to college and started having my own money, I sat down and I invested a ton of money into Nintendo consoles and Nintendo games. And, you know, right now I'm playing through Fire Emblem Engage on a Switch 2. And I never would have gotten to that point if I'd never experienced the series back in the day on a PC, right? So even though there is a huge monetary cost potential for Sony to say, oh, well, you know, these people aren't going to be spending money if they can get it for free. It is also, you know, laying the groundwork for people to say, oh, these games are pretty good, actually. I'm going to be, you know, keep paying attention to these. And then when they can become paying customers, you know, if the service is good, like Oliver says, then they probably will be right. So there is, you know, a small silver lining to this as well. Okay, good stuff. Well, I guess we should move on to our first actual question.

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18:02See if you could pay as a little as zero dollars for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash start now that's growtherapy.com slash start now growtherapy.com slash start now availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. Okay, then this question comes from Ambo. Hey, gents, excuration point log type supporter first time DF direct contributor last direct there was a discussion of our fame generation of the viability of going from 30 FPS to 60 FPS games like Stella blade on switch to Nick. And they got me thinking is there any reason that PS5 pro could not utilize fsr 3.1 frame gen with PS SR to now both AMD technologies and perhaps I'm not connecting the dots on something I was thinking specifically with ghosts of Yota in a raytracing performance promo that allows an unlock fame rate. So already great runs about 60 FPS all time it occurred to me that they could actually run fame gen on top of that you can even better high frame rate experience there.

19:07Because in some areas, for example, looking at the sky the FPS can shoot to above 80. Interesting question right Oliver because well there's no reason they can't do that right there are indeed console implementations of fsr 3.1. I mean we've seen it on the consoles we've seen it on switch to even so there's absolutely nothing to stop a developer taking an AMD implementation or customizing it for their particular game and putting it out there. There are a couple of examples where I don't think it's been PS SR that's been used in combination but you know there are fame generation games available on PlayStation 5 that we'll run on the pro. I'm just reminded of a comment that Mark's certainly made a while back which is that they're investigating fame generation for PlayStation. There was no specific console mentioned there could be an X Gen thing but I'm just wondering whether the more likely the better likelihood is that an actual bespoke Sony version of fsr fame generation specifically the ML version not the 3.1 might be a better fit I might be something that's coming I don't know.

20:19Yeah I tend to think in general when we're thinking about consoles in frame generation I think there are a few issues of consoles in frame generation one issue is just the despite technology that's being used right a lot of people are connecting their consoles to 60 heard screens screens without VR support really at a minimum you can want 120 Hertz VR art and make things really work with frame generation that's an issue. So it's just something that hasn't been explored in as much depth as it has been on PC at least up to this point maybe that will change with next generation consoles I don't know maybe the expectation will be that you have a 240 heard screen or 120 heard screen typically connected with VR that could be the case in terms of this particular user in their question there's no particular reason that I'm aware of at least why fsr 3.1 couldn't be combined with PS SR 2 because there are separate things you know image up scaling and frame generation at least is implemented by the graphics vendors you can have one with the other one without the other any combination thereof I do think it's a reasonable thing to explore but the utility in a game like ghost of yote which is this user points out is already above 60 FPS at all times you know there are some legitimate trade offs involved there are some legitimate trade offs involved both with image quality and obviously to some degree at least

21:39input response as well so it's an interesting approach I think there can be some debate over what the best approaches here but frame generation is the kind of technology that I would think is better positioned for the next generation of consoles and the next generation of displays where you have HDMI 2.2 you have technology is like 240 Hertz into television is possibly for the first time that be more interesting to me a little bit more interesting to me at the moment with ps 5 if you like frame generation is a pre niche technology and then on switch I kind of feel like we get frame generation just as an artifact to the fact that people want to do 60 FPS but they just can't with out frame generation that's my kind of feel like not that at least at the moment will yeah yeah I have to echo all of his comments really I feel like this is the sort of thing that Sony would probably want to offer their own branded solution to the game I think it's kind of part of the modern graphics technology package that most vendors wants to offer want to have is it is useful in some scenarios but I see it as being more of a lower priority part of that toolkit because again if you're already getting above 60 FPS getting to 120 is nice and good and there are certainly reasons for that but it's not quite as critical as say you know making sure that you have good upscaling to get to 60 in the first place

23:07so I think in the fullness of time Sony will probably say yeah we're going to have our own brand of solution or we're going to make sure that AMD's FSR 3.1 works really well but it's probably not something that most users are going to make full advantage of right now and as Oliver says like next gen when higher resolution sorry higher refresh rate displays are more common then I think it becomes you know more similar to the PC scenario where it's actually more of a useful thing and maybe eSports maybe there's an each there where you can trade off a little bit of input lag for additional you know smoothness something like that but yeah it's it's probably not going to be a thing unless a specific developer is like you know what we really want to see this at 120 FPS and frame generation is the best solution for us. The question is the extent to which current generation users are actually using 120 hertz modes at the moment. Sony would have the telemetry on that of course as would Microsoft on how many of their users are actually using 120 hertz modes and well you know I'm kind of getting the cup feeling it's going to be quite low possibly not worth the investment at this time there's something else which I think is worth point to get that.

24:22We have with examples on PlayStation 5 for frame generation there's this kind of perception that there's two X frame gen means you're getting double the frame maybe you don't that's the other thing right so the concept of FSI itself requires the GPU to do to do some work which means that unless you're CPU limited and your GPU is under utilized you're not going to be getting twice the frame rate you know there could be like a 50 to 60% increase of course you've got the latency pedal to you on that as well. So you know the utility of it I think is we're probably the concept of having solely taking control of providing a PSS R alternative or whatever they're going to call it makes a lot of sense because all of this stuff would be taken into consideration during the R and D period. Yeah interesting but if you want to experience a frame generation with PSS R I believe the first descendant it's a free to play game you can grab it from the PlayStation store I believe that does actually support PSS R and a frame generation simultaneously I gave it a go here's some footage I'm running it slowed down with the frame rate graph so you can see the performance level and potentially the art of acts of frame generation there but it is running unlocked I did have some problems with screen tearing on it when I was trying to capture the frame generation.

25:40I'm not going to capture it which is why the capture here is quite limited but you know if you fancy giving that a look check it out but you know I don't see it being a kind of worthwhile thing for developers to look into at this point next generation who knows let's move on. I should hear from anxiously quantum figure to hey DF crew apparently PC gaming revenue is more than doubled in Japan over the last four years with its share of the market go from six to 12% is this yet another sign that traditional consoles might be on the way out over the next decade or do you think they'll always be a place for them I think the latter and I'm hoping game is always crave an intent like experience no matter how good or bad the next generation of DLSS gets cheers excavation point. What do you think about this I mean my viewpoint on this is that the console is a concept is in danger I think because the whole the whole idea of it is that basically you're getting state of the art experiences at mainstream price points right yeah it's always going to be some compromises here are there on the visuals for example but ultimately plug and play cheap gaming seems to be the case that certainly in this case.

26:55The current era where prices are just going where I've control there is a very real danger that the concept of the console is being diluted to the point where people might be thinking maybe I should just be moving into the PC ecosystem instead what do you think yeah yeah definitely I mean I think Japan is certainly not unique in the world in the fact that PC gaming and mobile gaming as well are just very easy entry points. Because you know you probably already have one of these devices and then you see oh I can install a game on it and then later you think I can spend some money on this game so it's a bit more of an easy sell rather than a console which is you know consistently going up in price and becoming more less and less affordable PC also has the advantage that there's quite a range of options you know low and hardware hasn't seen quite the price bumps of the high end stuff. So it's a lot more you know affordable and reasonable for for people especially in Japan that are suffering with quite a devalue currency so I could see it being more popular for that reason long term I feel like you know obviously the story of Japan's obsession with games consoles and their success in spreading them to the rest of the world is quite a phenomenon I'd be so surprised if Sony in particularly Nintendo ever kind of got to the point where they said you know.

28:24That's it where we're not going to make a box that plays video games anymore but you know the industry is changing quite rapidly and you know who knows what the what the future will hold but I can certainly see the reasons for PC becoming more popular it you know I think that's going to be something that happens all over the world and yeah it's not a huge surprise to see in Japan. Yeah I've kind of changed my mind on this a little bit over the past year because I used to play games almost exclusively on consoles really really heavily on consoles except for like big PC experiences that were really really exciting like cyberpunk with past racing or you know your typical like MMOs and titles like that they don't slot well into a console audience but I've been playing a lot more PC over the past year two years few months. It's definitely been increasing and I think PCs are just easier for me to use in part because I mean they were coming easier for me to use because steam is very integrated nowadays with PC basically have to worry about three things you know windows updates in the video getting your video up updated and getting your steam updated and working and the PC nowadays is kind of feels like a kind of Nvidia platform at the moment at least if you're using a high end

29:41video graphics card it really is that they do handle a lot of things I do think that consoles need to differentiate themselves from PC but it kind of depends on the vendor I think some vendors are doing a good job I think some aren't I think Microsoft very purposefully isn't pursuing the fragiation from PC Sony is pursuing exclusives again right according to various reporting that's out there which is helpful but still if you put up a PS5 most of the popular games are going to be able to play them on PC just fine. On the Nintendo set of things that I think switches to get really good job of differentiating itself from PC in terms of having a very large exclusive library of titles that are very unique titles you can't play the night on PC. And having a very unique harbor platform that the PC can't currently replicate very very well so I think it kind of depends on the vendor but like it ultimately is incumbent on the console makers to make a unique experience and I feel like only one of the three vendors is currently doing a good job of that and one of the three vendors is purposefully

30:44homogenizing the PC experience there's no real hope of you know an exclusive title for instance on an Xbox platform that can ship a sale. Yeah yeah I think you're right and Nintendo has done a masterful job in actually providing an experience that separate and distinct from PC right I think just a fantastic job there you know games you can't buy on PC and a form factor that you know is producing results that kind of shaming PC handhelds that have better specs. I think that's quite interesting as well the power efficiency of switch to as well in terms of like it's bad for life in mobile mode and the results you're getting from from from that form factor compared to what's happening on PC I mean there's just nothing like switch to the PC at the moment even though there are PC handhelds right so in that respect I mean it's very much separate and distinct but yeah I do think Microsoft and Sony especially Sony who do want to sort of carve out this sort of a.

31:44Exclusive experience that you know you keeps you to that platform I think there's work to be done there yeah let's move on okay question here from Mikey love evening jets hope everyone is doing well in the Alex is as well with the continuing saddening news of further restructuring up Microsoft we've now seen the Halo IP handed over to teams at Activision what impacts can you envisage this having on future titles a switch to the I W engine feels inevitable so. I imagine the big question is whether they can recreate that special Halo gameplay and visual style of the franchise within a completely different engine or what should we be expecting something completely different interesting question right will because obviously we've just seen Halo transition onto another engine in the form of unreal engine five and although there are unreal engine five base issues that people took exception to the actual game was very very good but.

32:44On the flip side maybe it is the case that complete reboot of Halo requires a complete reboot across the board and you do have one of the very best tech teams in the business running the call of duty franchise with the spoke engine tailored for first person should us yeah it's really interesting actually because I think both of those outcomes are quite possible quite you know you can make arguments for them certainly if you go over to the end of the game. So if you go over to the infinity ward engine then as you say it is it isn't a Halo engine but it is at least an FPS engine its feature set is really strong it works well across a wide range of consoles and you have a huge amount of learned experience with that engine internally so if their thoughts on it are okay we're going to make a Halo and we're going to do it with our own call of duty employees and we're going to make sure that it feels very you know relevant and and I'm working around the strengths of our game.

33:44It's really going to be a really interesting team then I think that would make sense right but equally you know we've just seen Halo campaign evolve come out using Unreal Engine 5 if those developers are still going to be kept on in some respect like if they're going to be moved across or they're going to be rehired or whatever else or if you're building the new halo team with programmers from outside of the the those two studios then they're probably going to be more likely to know Unreal Engine 5 than the game. So if you want to build that team really quickly then perhaps just maintaining Unreal Engine 5 makes the most sense and we've already seen that it's very well suited to producing a Halo game of course is it's already happened and they already have a lot of assets and a lot of work that has gone into that to make it viable. My thinking is that from Microsoft that the strategy seems to be we're going to tell you way ahead of time that we're working on a game we're going to hope that we can get a lot of people in very quickly to finish it in a reasonable time frame because that's been the huge problem recently right has been that Xbox has these interesting temple franchises but the games come out and they're either not good or they just take absolutely ages to come out.

35:01So I think their biggest priority is getting something out soon so it depends whether they're trying to you know maintain the Halo studios people and you know get developers in from outside of infinity ward and those other studios to work on something quickly then probably they stay with Unreal Engine and otherwise they're going to move over to the infinity ward engine and use that that expertise there but like both seem totally viable to me and I'll be really interested to see which way it goes. Which is the two scenarios or possibly a third do you think is the most likely they want to. I think they're going to stick with Unreal personally I kind of think they're going to stick with Unreal yeah because Halo studio has spent a long time making sure that they could get a version of the Hillary change in working within Unreal which I know is the technical foundation for hello campaign evolved. And in making their assets work well within Unreal apparently we spent a lot of time making their assets and revising existing assets to work well in Unreal and basically building a technology base that could work for future halo titles in Unreal that was the emphasis with Halo campaign evolved not that hey here's this remake we're going to shift on real but then we're back to slipspace no it was where we're shipping a game on Unreal and then we're going to also ship future Halo projects in Unreal.

36:24And Halo campaign evolved is a very technically sound game I know people complain about certain Unreal Engine issues but I think it runs great it looks great it's one of the very best looking Unreal games around very striking pedal also like we'll said this is you know a new team I think I don't know if it's necessarily just called it people I'm sure there will be some call to the people in the project but like I have to imagine it's a lot easier to get people up to speed on an Unreal engine title. Like in those days then it would be on IW engine I also just don't feel like like if you're approaching a new project new team blank slate one maybe not quite a bit blank slate but like you know you have an opportunity to start fresh make make kind of decisions that might shape. years or decades of a franchise's future. I just feel like Unreal is the better bet. Like, if you look at IW engine, the progress over the past, you know, six, seven, eight years has not really been that pleasing relative to Unreal. Certainly in terms of the development of

37:27next generation graphics technologies and the integration of those technologies into mainstream console games. Halo Campaign evolved has like mega lights, it has hardware, lumen, it has all this cool stuff, nanite, I mean, all these cool systems. I just feel like, you know, if you're building a, basically a reboot of a franchise, might as well go with the leading engine technology in the industry as much as you might kind of deride the shift in the industry towards this kind of homogenous third party all-consuming engine. It is very tempting if you're going to make a new Halo title to ship it on Unreal. I think that's just too too compelling of an option, I think. Yeah, I think it's summary. There's good reasons to possibly consider all the options here. And, you know, they do have a really good technology available in-house. I guess it's a question of whether it's just about rendering or whether there's things inherent to that original reach engine that's been evolved over time that they really want to keep. And of course, yeah, there's various other reasons why Unreal Engine

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40:35little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com-startnow. That's growtherapy.com-startnow-growtherapy.com-startnow availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. Can perspective. Let's move on. Okay, then. I've got a question here from Baron Hopebeef. Hello, gentlemen of the Digital Ether exclamation point. Long time listener, first time caller. Do you think a potential high-end Xbox project helix device will be able to replace both my mid-range PC RTX 3060 system and my Xbox Series S cheers? Well, this is an interesting question, Oliver, because ultimately, if it is the hybrid that we kind of think it to be running on windows, there's no reason why it couldn't replace both of them. I guess the question is really more kind of like situational, locational in some respects. For example, is your RTX 3060 PC connected to

41:41a monitor? Is your Xbox Series S connected to a living room TV? Can one device cover both of those scenarios in that respect? Yeah, I think it depends on what Microsoft ships, because I feel like we have a very good idea of what Microsoft will ship from a hardware perspective. But the software question, I think there is some unresolved software questions. Like what does Microsoft do with third-party storefronts and their device, even if they do ship basically a PC box is that actually viable to have Steve or EGS in there? I don't know. The messaging for Microsoft initially seemed like the answer was yes, and now under the ash air, it seems a little bit more uncertain, at least as of the last press on that particular point. And shipping a PC box doesn't guarantee support for absolutely everything, right? If this is indeed a PC box that loads into a version of windows, that's sort of up in the air. But if Microsoft does ship a PC box, and it is able to run

42:47fully free and open windows, it could replace any number of functionalities for you. Be only real exception to that would be on the hardware side, like if it, for instance, only has HDMI ports, right? Which is typical of consoles, but not typical of PC parts, that would get in the way possibly. And then also when it comes to certain vendor specific technologies. So it's not going to support the OSS, for instance. How important is that to you? There you have FSR4, you have alternative technologies, perhaps at that point as well. That certainly plays into it, but broadly speaking, if they do ship that expansive PC box vision, I don't see why you couldn't just sell your series as sell your RTX 3060 PC and have a Helix. Yeah, interesting. Well, what else on this one will? Yeah, I mean, it sounds like, yeah, this listener is pretty much an ideal candidate for a project Helix, right? If they have a situation where they can use one device to replace two, that sounds

43:50pretty good. And yeah, the question really comes down to how unlocked the box is. Like, I could very easily see it being a bit similar to the Xbox ally Handel's, where it boots into a Xbox app, which contains links to launchers and allows you to access those. But maybe it doesn't let you access the full Windows desktop, or maybe that's hidden behind a developer mode or something along with those lines. Like in theory, it could certainly just be a full PC and have good Xbox games on it, and that would be fine. Or Microsoft could choose to lock it down for whatever reason. So you might have a scenario where you might still want a PC because you want to put Linux on it, or you want to do certain deeper alterations that a console probably wouldn't allow to prevent piracy and things like that. But I think for most people's uses, and yeah, it sounds like project Helix will be able to be that PC and console replacement. It's pretty cool.

44:51Yeah, I guess the question is whether there's going to be access to the Windows desktop or not, you know, if so, then it's an open box, right? And you can do anything with it. I'm kind of wondering though whether Helix might be two things where maybe the reference device is basically locked down console, and then the booted manufacturer partnerships. Maybe they could be like a sort of dual boot device or something like that where it can be both things at once. You know, maybe an ASUS version if the Xbox lets you boot into Xbox OS and all Windows, whatever the differentiation of that turns out to be really tricky to tell at the moment because there've been sort of conflicting signals from Microsoft on that front. Ultimately, I'm still wondering how they're going to be able to produce a device that has some sort of subsidization model if it is that open. And if it's not got any kind of subsidization to it, then I'm going to say again, Oliver, we're back to buying an Xbox on Cloud, uh, to make it a bit more affordable. Yeah, I think that

45:58pretty much subs it up. Let's move on to the final questions of the show. And this one comes from Fall House's very own John Stebos. Nice question. The question is celebrity right now. The question is this, what if the series S slash X was a smashing success and won this generation? What, how would project Helix differ if at all? So Oliver, it interesting question, right? Because um, you know, what is the stuff that we know about projects Helix? Well, we've been told it's the biggest generational leap from any um, console generation, generation ever. That's kind of the signaling that came from us ever bond. There's been the concept that it's also an open platform that you can run your PC stores on. That's, that's kind of like sort of a bit more up in the air at the moment. I'd say so to speak. Right. But I'm not sure either of those things would have happened if the series X slash S would have been the, the smashing's success that Microsoft hoped it would be.

47:05What are your thoughts on that? I do feel like we have a pretty good idea of what it would have looked like because back in May 2022, Microsoft was drafting plans for the next generation Xbox, which subsequently got leaked in late 2023. And we discussed that in some detail. Right. That was the initial 10th gen leak. And uh, at that time, they did not know how badly they were going to lose the current generation. So I think it does give you a bit of insight into how their plans might have differed. And if you read through that spread spec in broad strokes, the spec matches Helix very well. They weren't talking about PC support. They were, we're talking about cloud. The cloud is an alternative to local processing for some of them. Right. But it really doesn't look that different from a hardware perspective. It's just the software offering changed from being a straight up console to like this box that offers some PC software support at the very least. So I think that's what would have differed. It's fundamentally the PC side of the equation that differs.

48:12But I'm also not 100% sure about what I just said. This is there earlier, at least I want to offer a caveat, which is that I'm not really sure there's a coherent line between Xbox's success or lack thereof and Microsoft's direct strategy because Ashes come in and basically has said, well, the platform is still very important. And she's trying to shift away at least rhetorically in maybe in terms of some of the financing options and maybe in terms of some of the hardware ecosystem away from the high-end PC version that Phil and Ashes seem to be selling a little bit. So now we're talking about, you know, by now pay later options. Ashes shipping, you know, a lot of Xbox series console updates. And we're not hearing nearly as much about a curated high-end PC experience from likes of Ashes Charmer. We're hearing a lot more about the idea of some kind of mass market offering that is organized around the console and not organized around PC at least rhetorically. But the through line is the hardware and the hardware has not changed much in terms of the basic

49:13overall ideas from the 2022 offering when they were sketching it out. But a lot of the other things have changed around it. So I suspect that really what you're seeing there is the realization from Microsoft at least at some point, but they felt like they could not support a next generation console business off of the size of their audience and that it would be better to have a smaller volume PC play, smaller volume higher in PC play. But now Ashes seems to be trying to undo that. So I don't know if there's like a coherent through line where you can kind of just chart their console performance and say, hey, if they had done this, then it would have been so. But yeah, it seems to have pushed them in a certain direction at least a one point. Just trying to gather my thoughts on this one. I mean, what would it have taken for series X S to be a smashing success? I mean, ultimately, I think the console should have launched with Halo Infinite, a version of Halo Infinite was kind of like more in line with what was promised from

50:13the first trainer, which we discussed the other day. And then you would have had like games like Forza Horizon 5 coming along later. What they needed, there was a thorough line of fantastic games early on in the generation that would have like solved the hardware. And I also think there should have been, I don't know whether you could have revised the strategy for series S. But ultimately, a series S was hamstrung from the very beginning because it was a $299 box. And you could buy a PlayStation 5 for $399, which didn't have any of the compromises that series S had, you know, and the only thing that was lost was the disk drive on that product. So in that respect, you know, that, you know, certainly series S offered great value, but they were basically being asked to choose between, let's be brutal about it, a hobbled box at $299 versus a fully equipped box that was $100 more, where you wouldn't have any compromises at all, apart from the lack of disk drive. So yeah,

51:14I mean, there would be a lot of hard work that would have been needed to be done throughout the X Box One generation to prepare that proper lineup of games to come out when the series consoles launched. And the Gambit on series S, which on paper looks like, you know, certainly looking at hardware prices today, the Gambit, you know, was the right one, was it the right one to pull at that time? It's the right one. I think it would have been a better bet this time around if they were to do it. It's really, really tricky. Now, let's say that all of this had come into fruition, you know, and X Box was suddenly a lot more successful. How would it have affected this particular scheme for Helix? And I think ultimately, there was at one point a decision made to unify as closely as possible the console business with Windows gaming. And I honestly think that the strategy was okay. Look, people are spending lots of money on PCs. There's far more money,

52:18they're spending far more money on a gaming PC than they are on a console. But what if we could produce a much less expensive box compared to a gaming PC that offers a lot more performance? I think that would have been a pretty good strategy, right? But suddenly, it's all about going back to, you know, the console model, the traditional console model seemingly. And that was the model that Phil Spencer was kind of veering away from. So yeah, we've kind of like, yes, going to be very curious to see how all of this pans out with Helix because they're talking more now about a sort of box that's focusing on efficiency and cost. And yet they've still got this gigantic APU, which they've got to sell. And that's going to require a lot of memory too, seemingly. So how are they actually going to pivot if they are going to pivot? Very interesting. What do you think, Will? Yeah, it's a hell of a question. Like, just imagining the sort of future dream scape that would exist had Xbox One this generation. And, you know, how magical things would

53:19be flying cars, I would imagine, things like things like that. I mean, you've got to think that, you know, if they had launched with a huge amount of first party games that had actually been really successful, then there would have been more of a drive from developers to get onto that platform, would have pushed more people into game pass, it would have made up the whole thing a lot more sustainable. You know, maybe then Microsoft is the first one to announce that they're getting rid of disks, but don't worry, we have a program to turn them into digital codes and everyone will be fine with it. You would get the Xbox series X2. It has probably no PC component because you don't need it. You know, your first party games are doing well enough. Like, it's a very interesting world to imagine. And I think, yeah, there is probably a slightly more realistic root where you could say, yeah, if they had done the Sony model of having a full fat console without a disk drive as a cheaper option instead of the series S, probably that works out a bit better, maybe development gets a little bit easier and easier to sell to developers. But, yeah,

54:23ultimately, it's not the world that we're living in. And yeah, Microsoft have some very stiff challenges to make, he likes, makes sense, especially in terms of leadership that is, you know, kind of going one way and then another, like, we really need to see a consistent vision for what this thing is going to look like and why people would actually want to. I mean, I guess if series XS was a smashing success that it would be validation of the two console models of having like a cheaper box and a more expensive box with a more premium experience. And it's kind of ironic, I think, that that kind of strategy would probably be quite a good one in the in the current climate. Yeah, moving into the helix generation, I think, yeah, pretty good. So I suspect that kind of strategy would probably have persisted right. And I think it would have been the right strategy, I think at this point, assuming that, you know, the base model would still be relatively constrained from a memory perspective. Yeah, there's a lot of what ifs on this one and

55:27can't really project all of them. I probably think that the main sort of pivot probably would have been something other than this kind of unification with windows and, you know, but at this point, still don't really know what form that unification is going to take. That unification with windows. Yeah, I'm sure we'll find out something soon. Certainly at GDC this year, I think Jason Ronald was showing a unification of the development environment, but we had something similar with the GDK for Xbox One, Xbox Series and PC. So maybe that's sort of like a more organic evolution. Anyway, really difficult question. I hope we've sort of tried to answer it. But that was the final question. And therefore, the end of the show, so please do like, subscribe, share all of that good stuff, bell ringing, instant notifications, paytveeon.com, slash digital foundry to support the team and our work. And store.digitalfoundry.net. If you'd like to sample our merchandising ways, including the new digital foundry pint glass, and of course,

56:32digitalfoundry.net, the home of our website presence. But that's all from us on this one. I'll guess we'll see you in the next direct proper. But for now, thanks for watching and supporting digital foundry. Production slows. Granger's $2 billion in on-hand inventory helps you get what you need when you need it. So you can help keep budgets balanced and lines moving. Call 1-800-Granjer. Click ranger.com or just stop by. Granger for the ones who get it done. Business is booming. Is your fulfillment ready for peak season? Switch to shipstation now and handle more volume with confidence when it counts. Shipstation connects Shopify, Amazon, TikTok shop, and over 200 more integrations with one platform that does it all. You can manage orders,

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