Digital Foundry, the most trusted name in game console analysis, is going independent
IGN sold it back to its founder.
I stopped trusting them when they flooded the conversation with Nvidia price hike apologia since the Turing line’s (rtx 2000) release. They seem to have gone easy on the evangelization most recently, but they will still absolutely not do the bare minimum of calling out how insane it is for a company to engage straight-up false advertising in their official performance metrics.
I liked their “optimized settings” series, but that series ended (AFAIK)
I liked their “optimized settings” series, but that series ended (AFAIK)
It didn't really end, it's just part of their normal game analysis now
Eh, enough if their content can exist fine without calling anyone out. I don't think it's what any of them really want to do, they prefer to focus on games. I feel like they mostly call out individual game performance.
You are right in that their consistency in what they get upset about seems inconsistent. It does feel like it might depend on what company was nice to them recently. But I still think the heart of their content works even with that issue.
Optimized settings was my favorite thing too.
But do we reeeeeaally trust them? Don't get me wrong, I like them for their analysis games, but I just really don't like when they put up opinion pieces about games, like I still remember that comment about Stellar Blade being a gooner game. Maybe if they tried it, they'd have seen more than just the surface level stuff in the game. Not to mention the Cyberpunk review that they took down saying that the game ran fine at 1080p (unstable)30fps, as if the standard wasn't already 60fps at the time, not to mention that they tried to gaslight people into saying the game wasn't as buggy as people were claiming.
I don't watch their videos because of stuff like that. But good for them going independant, that's always good when you can safely support yourself financially.
Honestly, I mostly trust them. I did feel they went too easy on some corpos, especially nvidia with series 50, but also amd and iirc they barely said anything about the Intel gen13/14 issues. Their attitude towards lower-end hardware is also a bit annoying, especially alex's. However they do have great retro reviews for both tech and games, and john's fascination with older tech is infectious. And I love that they have a positive attitude towards linux gaming and privacy in general, unlike many other channels. I wish them lots of luck with this newfound independence.
I did feel they went too easy on some corpos, especially nvidia with series 50, but also amd and iirc they barely said anything about the Intel gen13/14 issues.
As someone who’s been following them for ages now, my understanding is that they say what needs to be said and move on when it comes to things that are beyond their control - personal opinions are for their weekly podcast. They could criticise pricing and customer hostile behaviour more but they seem to be very cautious about not contributing to unproductive negativity that’s so prevalent in video game commentary. Ultimately it’s up to consumers to vote with their wallets because talking about things doesn’t fix them. Blaming journalists for not speaking against things enough is not going to fix them either.
I must be living in some parallel dimension where unstable 30 FPS was the standard through nearly the entire previous console generation, even in non-open world games, which was still an upgrade from PS360 days. I wished I lived in your time continuum though.
I love those guys!
