Call For Questions For DF Direct Weekly #235
Added 2025-10-09 16:16:37 +0000 UTCYessssssss Supporters - it's Thursday, and I've just caught my breath after putting Oliver's excellent Battlefield 5 video live, so let's get straight down to it. We'll be "taping" DF Direct Weekly #235 tomorrow and while topics for discussion are still brewing, we'll be talking about Microsoft's need to shoot down the rumours behind it completely pulling out of next-gen console hardware. I stress "console" hardware as I've got a feeling that the SoCs Microsoft creates will be seen across a range of PC hardware.
Other topics? We'll be talking about the new Project Amethyst ML disclosures from Mark Cerny and AMD's Jack Huynh, along with the drip-feed of hints about the arrival date for the PlayStation 6 console that continue into this video.
We're still considering other discussion points for inclusion - such as a new round of rumours on current-gen Red Dead Redemption 2 ports, including Switch 2, now corroborated by especially accurate leaker, Nate The Hate. John's looking to share his joy about a standalone VR emulated version of Halo: Combat Evolved.
Anything else you'd like to see us discuss? And beyond that, any questions to ask of the team. It'll be Rich (ie me), Oliver and John on the panel and the deadline for your inputs is 8am BST on Friday. Thanks!
Comments
Hi guys, Will future hardware fix #StutterStruggle ? As an older gamer, due to the infinite struggles of work and family, I don't get much time to game so I'm currently stuck in the past!.... The dog and I curated a list of games we wanted to play through and sorted by release date. We're currently in 2017. I believe around this time was the onset of stutter struggle? Is near future high end hardware likely to alleviate this problem? By the time we get around to playing some of the more problematic games there will be at least a couple of new CPU generations and an Rtx 6090. And by the time we reach current date (2025) it will probably be at least 2030 on everyone else's calendar.
Mike M
2025-10-11 15:36:40 +0000 UTC"Hey! Whatsup!?" That's how we greet "gents" here in Southern California/Northern Baja California. Man, Xbox has really pooped the bed a few times the past few months with these announcements. I started planning this 2-part question way before they announced the Gamepass price hike, so I'll try to incorporate that. Q1) Xbox says I can play Xbox anywhere, yet I can't put my Red Dead 1 disc into my computer and play my cloud save from the 360 days. Until I can do that I consider Microsoft calling my computer an "Xbox" to be plain-old false advertising. How do you think they should fix this? Q2) Here's how I think they should fix this and their whole reputation: #1 Allow users to download the official 360/OGXbox Emulator and open it up for tweaking, and allow us to use our own DVD and BluRay drives to play our games on our computers. #2 Allow Windows PCs and Xbox Series and Handhelds to Dual Boot into either Windows or Xbox OS, and then eventually streamline it into one OS (Maybe a reformat into a ZFS file system might be a good idea to ensure you can install whatever you want on the SSD without having separate pools of data for your OSs, games, and programs). For a game console $800 is a lot of money, but for a powerful Media Center PC that can game, the price suddenly makes a lot more sense. Xbox has been trying to make Media Center PCs a thing for decades, and with all these powerful mini PCs coming out it seems like there's finally a shift. Making that Xbox a Windows PC on your TV makes it a much more worthwhile buy. #3 Drop the GamePass requirement for Xbox Online Play. When your competition on the Windows Platform doesn't charge for online play (Steam, Epic, GOG, etc.) it doesn't make sense to continue to charge. Let that be part of the price calculation when comparing to Sony too (If Xbox doesn't require you to pay for online play, but Sony makes you spend $80 a year, that inherently increases the value of Xbox for a new consumer) . And #4 Add Game Pass to other products, and other products to Game Pass. I don't see any reason why Game Pass essential shouldn't be included with a Microsoft 365 subscription, or Gamepass Premium shouldn't be included with MS 365 Premium, and then upsell to Ultimate. They may need to change the way they price adding family members to these plans, but If they want to increase the amount of people playing Xbox and Gamepass, and they want people to be downloading and using MS Word instead of Google Docs, then they need to broaden their offerings and try to bring the customers that they already have from their other consumer-facing products into the fold of the other, and upsell them on their other offerings (Xbox games, cloud storage, seats on the family plan, Apps on the MS Store, etc.) My question is do you also think Xbox and Microsoft should do this, and do you think it will repair their overall reputation and increase Microsoft's non-enterprise consumer-based revenue?
William Johnson
2025-10-10 15:10:46 +0000 UTC
