Coming This Week to Digital Foundry (Week 16, 2024) (Patreon)

Welcome to this - the 16th update of the year about what's happening within Digital Foundry. It's been a bit of a weird month so far in terms of new #content with some issues getting projects completed and John being out of rotation first with Covid and then with DF Retro production duties, but we're back on track this week.

First of all though, I'd like to get another 'shout' out for John's latest DF Retro episode on the legacy of Sunsoft and its new beginning - a two hour, 16 minute DF Retro epic including unprecedented access to Sunsoft itself. It's the kind of content that makes no sense owing to YouTube economics and exists only owing to the Supporter Program so many thanks for making this passion project real. It's out now on the retro tier and will, of course, go public in due course.

It's also the first DF Retro episode fully mastered in 4K (with a meaty seven hour export time from Adobe Premiere) so do enjoy that UHD CRT b-roll! In the meantime, we're going to continue to 'remaster' older DF Retro videos into the marathon format which will include 4K upscales for improved YouTube quality.

Oh, and another shout-out for Will's DF Merch 'warehouse sale'...! The shirts contained therein will be out of print for a while until later in the year: https://store.digitalfoundry.net/collections/warehouse-sale

But here's where we are this week:

• John is away on vacation from the end of the week but is working on two projects we hope to have finished for you this week. He is handling our Stellar Blade PlayStation 5 review and is hoping to have a No Rest For The Wicked preview done too before his departure,

• Rich (ie me) doesn't want to jinx it, but will have that handhelds video finished imminently. It's done now bar some product filming - which is always a bit tricky with handhelds, but it will be complete in the next day or so. Beyond that, I've been approached by HP to do a sponsored video on the HP Omen Transcend 14. This is a very interesting device so I'm looking forward to this project.

• Alex is producing a video on the latest Unreal Engine 5.4 update, which offers some very juicy optimisations and enhancements. If all goes well, we'll be making the Matrix city sample demo on this update available and I've offered to do some 5.0 vs 5.4 comparisons on my 4800S/RX 6700 Frankenstein's Console!

• Tom is handling two projects - one of which is embargoed content and the other being Grounded. We've not really looked at this since its earliest beginnings but the PS5 launch tomorrow gives us a chance to look at this across the board.

• Oliver, on a similar vein, spent some time with the Sea of Thieves bay-ta this weekend, and will have his report on the current status of the PlayStation 5 build and how it stacks up against the Xbox Series machines... and again, that'll be the first time we've seriously looked at the game on current-gen hardware. And I promise you that the Steam Deck RT piece will follow!

As usual, we'll be ready to pivot should the need arise, but I'm also looking to start a series of background projects that are not time sensitive - stuff like the look at Illusion's 60fps patches for PS5, or Tom's in-depth breakdown of cloud streaming on PS5 and xCloud. Got any suggestions on topics along those lines? Do let us know in the appropriate webzone beneath this post, which is always available for any and all feedback.

Have a great week!