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How much is Digital Foundry opinion important to you?

skneogaf

Member
Very important, they show both the faults in games and the beauty of games.

Anyone that thinks they're biased are blind fanatics that really need to do themselves a favour and buy all the available platforms as only then it seems can you see the quality stuff they produce.
 

RiccochetJ

Gold Member
I trust them to point out a shoddy PC port and to help tweak my settings. Everything else I just find interesting to watch.
 

Deerock71

Member
I enjoy them whenever John Linneman shows his beauti...
star wars falling GIF
 

squarealex

Member
It was very interesting on PS3/360 Era... because port console was different. We can see some game use different anti-aliasing, different resolution and framerate difference. Also, some effect were different or disabled. Still interesting to see wich plate-forme performed game better.
Then PS4/One era appeared... difference are minimal except 1080p/900p - Framerate... otherwise, the game is very identical... but when 4K game is more spread... i just lost all my interest.. ok for some game this is very weird difference (RDR2 PS4 Pro vs OneX)... but overall games is totally identical... I don't see interest to zoom x400 to see what change...

Then PC tech video appear. Some video are interesting (framerate with what GPU/CPU), but overall, all "console vs PC" clickbailt is just ridiculous. (no shit a 2000$ PC run better some game when 70% of Steam running with middle rang PC)... and community is so toxic...
Also check how many video they made for Control... (OH MY GOSH RAY TRACING)

Other side... I loving Retro DF... All video of John is very great... we saw he's loving games and not just blahblah technical.
 
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Interesting to watch. I like the videos they make. I make my own decisions at the end of the day. So they're important to me for entertainment, not important for final decision making.
 

PsyEd

Member
I do watch DF...like when I'm having breakfast/dinner and I want something to play on TV instead of watching Steve Harvey on mute. But in no way DF or any younoober ever had any influence on any of my purchases for gaming....hardware and software.
 

Mr Reasonable

Completely Unreasonable
It's pretty important for people to know if you zoom in 400% which system displays the best brick texture.

I think digital foundry (and the people who now copy them) are contributors to video game community toxicity.
 
Their videos are very informative and I like listening to them explain how they believe the technology works and the potential issues with it.

I’ll make it clear that they are not the metric I use to determine whether or not I buy a game and on what platform, unless of course they say that the games a broken mess.
 

Spukc

always chasing the next thrill
they basically wrote the book about pixelpeeping
if they state something is not true 4k i refuse to buy it
 
They have their space, just like linus tech tips and other tech entertainment channels on youtube. But they're just that.

At least they are not into blind content that goes nowhere so there's value to be had. They also have some morals, I have to admit, so I don't think they are intentionally favouring one manufacturer or the other.

That said, they have a tendency to geek out at "impossible ports!", assume to much, go too specific on some other things and focus too little on others. Videos are often too long (they should have to limit them to assorted time slots, like 10, 15 minutes as if they were on TV) and thus lack a specific direction.


Sometimes they miss the mark completely. With Cyberpunk on last gen I think only last week did they test a Xbox One X with SSD and Cyberpunk when there have been reports of improvements on both base PS4 and base Xbox One for months. ALSO, while that video poses the valid Xbox Series S vs One X thing, it's useless for most people. Most people have a One S (same with PS4 Pro videos might I add) and they should test loadings on those consoles instead. They also did this test with an external SSD, which is stupid, potentially easy 20% performance lost, but they had to use a sponsored Samsung T7 USB SSD drive.

When a game takes too long to load, they should have been testing with SSD for years to determine where the bottleneck really is; specially seeing they tested them 3/4 times at this point, just not well. That's low hanging fruit on any tech review for me, something that they can easily test and tell you whether it improves the game or not.

Also, their choice of SSD's is lackluster. Last year they did a video with 870 QVO and a PS4, which was a tie in to sell them with Samsung; but, again, neglected the base PS4 in that testing and QVO is QLC therefore sucks balls (outside of the DDR4 cache, write speeds are in the ~130 MB/s range. So they should have done tests with Crucial MX500 or 860 Evo instead.

And I just hate their liberal thing where they all have to do a roundtable and say something like it's a criminal minds episode.
 
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Patrick S.

Banned
I used to watch them a lot when I had both a PS4 and an Xbox One, to see if by buying a game I wanted on Xbox I was getting a much worse version, because I have more love for Xbox consoles than PlayStation. So I would only really buy the PS4 version if Digital Foundry tested the Xbox version to be much worse.

Now I mostly game on my PC, and on the Xbox I'm playing stuff from Game Pass or stuff I'm rebuying so I can play it on the couch, and I don't care if the game looks worse on the Xbox or runs at 30 fps with some drops.

And their opinion should not be important to anyone, really. Opinions are subjective. The FACTS they can prove in their videos is what should matter, if you care for their content.
 
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Rubik8

Member
Unless they are warning about severe performance issues, I don’t care. The minimal differences between the PS5 and Xbox mean dick.
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
I honestly dont care and barely watch their videos mostly because I find tech discussion pretty dull.
 

Ozzie666

Member
Honestly, DF RETRO is far better than most of the DF content. I find there is a lot of bias generally in their normal stuff. But John doing his thing with Retro is fantastic, full of good content.
 

captainpat

Member
It feels like the only people that issues with them are the console warriors. I just watch their for their opinions on pc ports and optimization which they've been extremely helpful with.
 

GrayDock

Member
I like when they show some detail that otherwise I wouldn't see, like the water poodles evaporating in Horizon.
The technical analysis are good to learn something, and that's it. Faceoff s are useless to me since I only play on PS ecosystem.
 
There was a special edition Red Dead 2 PS4 Pro release that I was looking forward to

Instead I bought Xbox One X just because of a Digital Foundry video
 

LQX

Member
Not much when it comes reviews, but I do think they are they equivalent to Gamers Nexus when it comes to consoles and graphics on a technical basis. I trust what they have to say and their breakdown of graphics and the best settings for some games on PC are by far the best.
 

qiqiqiiq

Member
I enjoy the tech analysis they do, it's interesting to see what kind of technology is implemented on games, and the tricks developers sometimes do to create certain effects.
 

Notabueno

Banned
I don't watch medias for their opinion, nobody should unless you're a dumb f**k.

I'm interested only in the information/knowledge they might provide.
 

Killer8

Member
I used to be a fan of Digital Foundry and I do still watch their content if i'm looking to buy something for purely technical reasons, like a new PC port or a device like an Analog Pocket.

However I think their coverage and features are becoming more and more irrelevant. I can get direct comparisons with no nonsense on ElAnalistaDeBits. Even includes a bullet point summary of their findings. MyLifeInGaming handles retro hardware coverage better. Vincent at HDTVTest just destroys all other coverage when it comes to TV related issues. Amok4All even does HDR quality analysis, which is very important now in the 4K age. Point is, there are new kids on the block doing things better now.

In terms of the merit of even doing comparisons, they are generally less and less useful. The consoles are basically the same power no matter how much fanboy cock measuring happens on here. Resolution differences in the age of 4K TVs and image reconstruction techniques are becoming increasingly minuscule. DF even addressed this by saying they are no longer going to count pixel resolutions from now on. It's the same story with minor framerate dips - variable refresh rate is making tearing and the odd drop to 58fps a non-issue.

I care much more about tangible differences, like better LODs or effects. Sadly there have been some instances where DF really let me down over the years with that. Alex's video of Dark Souls Remastered for example seems informative at first glance, but it paints the game as an upgrade when it just is not. Same story with Tom's coverage of Alan Wake Remastered - why on Earth didn't he compare it to the 4K PC version, which would reveal that the remaster looks noticeably worse than the original release? They also softball a lot of games which fuck with the art style enormously, like GTA: Definitive Edition and Crysis 2 with its new lighting. There is a borderline fetishization of 'the tech'. A new dynamic lighting implementation may be better on paper but that doesn't necessarily mean it actually looks better than the old one.

Finally I wanted to rant about DF Retro. This used to be my favorite part of the channel. John's early output was phenomenal. I still have all those videos saved on my hard drive in high quality from when I backed the Patreon. But DF Retro has quickly become a pet project for John (and now the hopelessly deadpan Audi) to just namedrop whatever his niche interest of the week is. This got people in the comments section extremely upset when I said this lmao.

Why do we need 3 x 1 hour videos about the PS1 launch lineup in every region? Who cares? There are a lot of 'literally who?' tier videos about really obscure / sideshow games which lack populist appeal (this is reflected in the declining view counts). It really seems like they ran out of content after covering so many of the big guns early. It doesn't really make sense to me though, because I can name a lot of visually interesting retro games not covered yet:

Tekken series? Paper Mario? Gran Turismo series? More arcade games like Outrun? Zelda games? Cel-shaded classics like Jet Set Radio and Wind Waker? A special maybe on pre-rendered games and their production? The golden age of pixel fighters like KoF, Garou or Street Fighter? I mean will they finally do a big Resi 4 retrospective when the HD texture mod drops next month?

Who knows, as we speak John is probably pouring his time into a video about a fan translation of a PC Engine game a handful of people give a fuck about.
 
I really enjoy Alex's breakdowns of PC Settings/performance and so on for PC Titles/Versions of titles and the other videos are pretty cool....The videos where they break down old events in gaming(Like the E3 when Sony unveiled the PS3) are pretty interesting since Richard has good stories of being around/at the events for some of the big things that have happened through the years. I don't do the whole console war thing or care about that stuff so I have no problem with them I suppose
 

Topher

Gold Member
Shit
Or is it Jack?
Hmm
Let's go with....
Jack shit

I don't need some dweebs yapping about pixels to tell me whether I want to play a game or not. That is squarely in the land of console warrior nonsense.
 
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WorldHero

Member
Thread is worded weird but I do enjoy their content. Check out John Linneman's Retro series for example. Plus they were the OG's in pixel counting. They deserve credit.
 

Bogroll

Likes moldy games
There stuff is quite laughable especially if your from the 8 bit days when you only had to look at a 30mm x 24mm screenshot on the back of the box to see the difference between versions. It does interest me though brings out the nerd in me.
 

ChoosableOne

ChoosableAll
It was fun in the beginning but i don't care anymore. I'm playing on PC lately, maybe that's the reason why. If I had an Xbox Series S i would anxiously await their videos though :messenger_grinning: .

They have created awareness about technical side of gaming so everyone talks about it more, kudos to them.
 

01011001

Banned
opinion? they don't really give out many opinions... like the recent God of War PC video... that is just 90% reporting facts and 10% recommendations of how to set it up, which is mostly also based on objective findings.

It was fun in the beginning but i don't care anymore. I'm playing on PC lately, maybe that's the reason why. If I had an Xbox Series S i would anxiously await their videos though :messenger_grinning: .

They have created awareness about technical side of gaming so everyone talks about it more, kudos to them.

uhm, especially as a PC user you should watch their videos. PC ports still aren't even close to problem free even if you have a beefy PC. excessive UE4 shader stutters, awful options menus or really bad CPU utilization are just a few of the very common issues on PC still
just look at Final Fantasy VII that is almost ruined due to stutters if you don't run it in DX11 mode, which is not an in-game option but needs to be set as a launch command, if you don't know that you gonna have a really bad time with it
 
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ChoosableOne

ChoosableAll
opinion? they don't really give out many opinions... like the recent God of War PC video... that is just 90% reporting facts and 10% recommendations of how to set it up, which is mostly also based on objective findings.



uhm, especially as a PC user you should watch their videos. PC ports still aren't even close to problem free even if you have a beefy PC. excessive UE4 shader stutters, awful options menus or really bad CPU utilization are just a few of the very common issues on PC still
just look at Final Fantasy VII that is almost ruined due to stutters if you don't run it in DX11 mode, which is not an in-game option but needs to be set as a launch command, if you don't know that you gonna have a really bad time with it
I just do quick search on Youtube before buying one, that says all to be honest. You can refund it in 14 days too. That FF7 solution sounds cool but how often do they give those tricks? If they share solutions like it, probably you can find it later with a quick google search. Good for them, but that's internet.
 
I like them, because they regularly make the fanboys fight on GAF which is usually highly entertaining. Other than that i don't give a shit about them or any other reviewer.
 

Putonahappyface

Gold Member
I watch Digital Foundry mostly because they resemble real life adults of the children from the Rugrats. The analysis and breakdown of games is always nice though.

J2k7C2J.jpg



will smith mib GIF
 

Robb

Gold Member
Their conclusions don’t affect what I buy. I just find the content interesting, it’s fun to see what kind of differences they find between versions of various titles.
 
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