Microsoft’s Xbox Summer Showcase was unexpectedly exciting, with a stream of impressive-looking games from a number of beloved franchises and some completely fresh titles as well. Despite some doubts about the future of the Xbox brand and an underwhelming reveal of new hardware, the games themselves were enough to carry the day – and the Digital Foundry crew have gathered to discuss the highlights and low points in a special DF Direct .
I won’t go into every game discussed by John, Alex and Oliver in the 102-minute episode – which included games like Doom: The Dark Ages, Perfect Dark, Gears of War: E-Day and Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater – so instead I’ll pick some of my personal highlights, starting with Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl. The original Stalker PC game from 2007 was weird, weird and completely fascinating, so it’s incredible to see a proper sequel finally near the finish line. What emerged looked impressive – much more refined cinematography, storytelling, shooting and technology, but with all the dark atmosphere of the original, from unknown anomalies exploding to a group of guitar-playing stalkers huddled around a campfire. Heart of Chornobyl looks set to retain the original’s emergent AI, relatively large play areas, and verticality as well, but with everything rendered in significantly higher fidelity.
The new game is one of many from the Xbox Showcase running on Unreal Engine 5, with Nanite geometry and global Lumen lighting visible in the trailer – though it’s unclear whether it was Lumen hardware or software, with hardware being preferred by Alex for scalability reasons. . The entire trailer was also shown in what appeared to be native 4K. This means that the Series X version of the game will likely look a bit different, and even PC users may need a beastly enough rig to run the game at that resolution without using high levels like DLSS , XeSS or FSR.
- 0:00:00 Introduction
- 0:01:17 Doom: The Dark Ages
- 0:11:05 Perfect darkness
- 0:20:42 Gears of War: E-Day
- 0:28:53 Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater
- 0:40:39 Fairy tale
- 0:49:43 STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl
- 0:59:18 Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
- 1:07:17 Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
- 1:15:54 Other Games – Mixtape, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, South of Midnight, Atomfall, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, State of Decay 3, Age of Mythology: Retold
- 1:24:36 Updated Xbox Series consoles
- 1:31:35 Phil Spencer: more Xbox games 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 set for Xbox Series X, as well as PC Game Pass, Steam, and the Epic Games Store. Expect Alex to take a closer look at this in due course!
Beyond delivering banger after banger in the gaming space, Microsoft also finally detailed their upcoming Xbox hardware revisions. This included two new models – a $449 white Xbox Series X model without a drive, a $349 1TB version of the Xbox Series S, and a $599 ‘galaxy black’ Xbox Series X drive with 2TB of storage. with the latter two offering double the storage space. of their respective original models.
John and other members of Digital Foundry have often gone on record to say that the “adorable all-digital” feature that Microsoft is pushing towards is definitely a welcome move for game archivists, especially with platform holders being able to take games away from their owners. libraries, and the same logic applies here. Still, it’s at least good to see that the disc-based models aren’t being replaced – the new models seem to be staying alongside the originals, at least for now.
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It’s clear from the pricing of the new models that Microsoft isn’t aiming to disrupt the market by pricing them lower than their competition at Sony, but what remains unknown is whether the new models come with a model shrinkage that will it made them a little more powerful. efficient – and maybe even fractionally faster. Microsoft’s press release promises “the same speed, performance and features”, but it would be nice to see lower power draw along similar lines to Sony’s PS5 revisions – or even a sneaky GPU overclock ‘s in the One S style to deliver fractionally better frame rates.
What we didn’t see was anything dramatically different from the current offering, either in terms of form factor (the leaked “trash can”-style Series X) or functionality (the discussed Xbox handheld). I agree with John that this shows an understanding by Microsoft that a full mid-gen refresh likely wouldn’t have moved the needle in terms of hardware sales, and therefore that their resources are better spent elsewhere – hopefully, in a very good device that is significantly different from what Sony offers and what already exists in the handheld PC space.
It’s certainly been a busy time for game announcement shows as of late, and the recently released DF Direct Weekly #166 centered around the Summer Game Fest announcements. John, Alex and Oliver talk about the highlights, including Lego Horizon Adventures, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Black Myth: Wukong, Civilization 7 and more – so check out that show too, which is embedded below.
- 0:00:00 Introduction
- 0:01:20 News 01: Summer Game Fest: Lego Horizon Adventures
- 0:13:44 Metaphor: Refantazio, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
- 0:25:17 Sonic X Shadow Generations, Alan Wake 2: Night Springs, Phantom Blade Zero
- 0:40:53 Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind, Slitterhead, Killer Bean
- 0:50:14 Black Myth: Wukong, Civilization 7
- 1:03:59 News 02: Sony removes 8K support from the PS5 box
- 1:22:49 News 03: PC PS VR2 Adapter detailed
- 1:32:58 News 04: Microsoft unveils Auto SR scaling technology
- 1:46:20 Supporter Q1: How can you optimize Windows text rendering for WOLED displays?
- 1:50:03 Supporter Q2: Why do people suggest limiting the framerate to just below the screen refresh rate when using VRR on PC?
- 1:53:24 Supporter Q3: Would John recommend a PS VR2 or Meta Quest 3 for PC VR use?
- 1:55:33 Supporter Q4: Can you remember the first game that left you in awe of its graphics, making it hard to imagine a better looking game?
- 2:04:30 Supporter Q5: Do consoles prevent using RT on PC?
- 2:10:25 Supporter Q6: What games do you wish you had played first on a better device?
I also particularly appreciated the PC-focused supporter questions on that show, which had some great advice from John on VR setups – comparing PS VR2 and Meta Quest 3 – and the mechanics of framerate capping and text rendering W-OLED on Windows.
If you’re interested in supporting the work we do and submitting your questions to a DF Direct near you – or even a DF InDirect Q&A show – then we’d encourage you to take a look at the DF Supporter Program on Patreon. In addition to questions, you can get high-quality video downloads of everything we do, early access to embargo-free content, exclusive DF Retro content and much more.