Microsoft’s Xbox Summer Showcase was unexpectedly exciting, with a flood of impressive-looking games from a range of beloved franchises as well as some brand new titles. Despite some doubts about the future of the Xbox brand and a disappointing reveal of new hardware, the games themselves were enough to carry the day – and the Digital Foundry crew has gathered to share the highs and lows in a DF Direct special discuss.
I won’t go into every game discussed by John, Alex and Oliver in the 102-minute episode, including Doom: The Dark Ages, Perfect Dark, Gears of War: E-Day and Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater – so instead, I’m picking out some of my own personal highlights, starting with Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl. The original Stalker PC game from 2007 was janky, weird and utterly captivating, so it’s incredible to see a real sequel finally close to the finish line. What was shown looked impressive – significantly more refined cinematics, storytelling, shooting and technology, yet with the grimy atmosphere of the original, from unknowable anomalies flaring up to a gang of stalkers playing guitar, huddled around a campfire. Heart of Chornobyl appears to retain the original’s emergent AI, relatively wide play areas and verticality, but everything is achieved with significantly higher fidelity.
The new game is one of several from the Xbox Showcase running Unreal Engine 5, with Nanite geometry and Lumen global lighting clearly visible in the trailer – although it’s not clear whether it was hardware or software Lumen, with Alex the preferred hardware for scalability reasons. The entire trailer was also shown in what appeared to be native 4K. That means the Series .
- 0:00:00 Introduction
- 0:01:17 Doom: the Dark Ages
- 0:11:05 Perfectly dark
- 0:20:42 Gears of War: E-Day
- 0:28:53 Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater
- 0:40:39 Myth
- 0:49:43 STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl
- 0:59:18 Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
- 1:07:17 Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
- 1:15:54 Other games – Mixtape, Chiaroscuro: Expedition 33, South of Midnight, Atomfall, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, State of Decay 3, Age of Mythology: Retold
- 1:24:36 Updated Xbox Series consoles
- 1:31:35 Phil Spencer: More Xbox games are coming to other platforms
We’ll likely know more when the hardware requirements are revealed ahead of the game’s September 5 launch, which is scheduled for Xbox Series X, PC Game Pass, Steam, and the Epic Games Store. Expect Alex to take a closer look at this one in due course!
In addition to delivering ‘banger after banger’ in the gaming department, Microsoft has also finally detailed their next Xbox hardware revisions. This included two new models: a $449 white driveless Xbox Series of storage. of their respective original models.
John and other members of Digital Foundry have often said that the “adorably all-digital” feature that Microsoft is rushing towards is certainly not a welcome move for game archivists, especially since platform holders can remove games from their owners. libraries, and that same logic applies here. Still, it’s at least good to see that the disk-based models aren’t being replaced – the new models seem to be sticking around alongside the originals, at least for now.
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It’s clear from the prices of the new models that Microsoft has no intention of disrupting the market with lower prices than their competition at Sony, but what remains unknown is whether the new models will come with a die reduction that would make them slightly more powerful. efficient – and perhaps a fraction faster too. Microsoft’s press release promises “same speed, performance and features,” but it would be nice to see lower power consumption in the same vein as Sony’s PS5 revisions – or even a sneaky One S-style GPU overclock to deliver fractionally better frame rates.
What we didn’t see was anything dramatically different from current offerings, both in terms of form factor (the leaked ‘trash can’-esque Series X) and functionality (the announced Xbox handheld). I agree with John that this demonstrates Microsoft’s understanding that a complete mid-generation refresh probably wouldn’t have changed anything in terms of hardware sales, and therefore that their resources are better spent elsewhere – hopefully on a really good handheld that is arguably different from what Sony offers and what already exists in the PC handheld space.
Of course, it’s been a busy time with game announcement shows lately, and the recently released DF Direct Weekly #166 focused on the Summer Game Fest announcements. John, Alex and Oliver discuss the highlights including Lego Horizon Adventures, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Black Myth: Wukong, Civilization 7 and many more – so check out that show too, embedded below.
- 0:00:00 Introduction
- 0:01:20 News 01: Summer Game Fest: Lego Horizon Adventures
- 0:13:44 Metaphor: Refantazio, Kingdom Come: Liberation 2
- 0:25:17 Sonic X Shadow Generations, Alan Wake 2: Night Springs, Phantom Blade Zero
- 0:40:53 Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind, Slitterhead, Killer Bean
- 0:50:14 Black Myth: Wukong, Civilization 7
- 1:03:59 News 02: Sony removes 8K support from PS5 box
- 1:22:49 News 03: PS VR2 PC adapter detailed
- 1:32:58 News 04: Microsoft unveils Auto SR upscaling technology
- 1:46:20 Supporter Question 1: How to optimize Windows text display for WOLED screens?
- 1:50:03 Supporter Question 2: Why do people suggest limiting the frame rate to just below the screen refresh rate when using VRR on PC?
- 1:53:24 Supporter Question 3: Would John recommend a PS VR2 or Meta Quest 3 for PC VR use?
- 1:55:33 Supporter Question 4: Can you remember the first game where you were blown away by the graphics, which made it difficult to imagine a better looking game?
- 2:04:30 Supporter Question 5: Do the consoles prevent RT use on PC?
- 2:10:25 Supporter Question 6: Which games would you have liked to have played on better hardware first?
I also particularly appreciated the PC-focused support questions on that show, which included some excellent advice from John on VR setups (comparing PS VR2 and Meta Quest 3) and the mechanics of frame rate limiting and W-OLED text display on Windows.
If you’re interested in supporting the work we do and would like to ask your own questions at a DF Direct near you – or even a DF InDirect Q&A show – then we encourage you to take a look in the DF Supporter Program at Patreon. In addition to asking questions, you can get high-quality video downloads of everything we do, early access to embargoed content, exclusive DF Retro content and much more.