Oliver Mackenzie

Not really my thing sorry!

Best of for the year: t.co/xnUiA8muln

Prior years: bsky.app/profile/olie...

My top music for 2025 from Apple Music Replay ! This is what gets me through many hundreds of hours of video edits every year. These days mostly pop music that is sort of hyperpop adjacent. About 69,000 minutes total.

I wouldn’t want to say at the moment but I hope to look into this in more detail in the future.

Shadows is an excellent new “impossible port” for Switch 2, packing solid visuals and decent image quality. But frame-pacing woes in the current version should be fixed for docked play.

I got my Lexar for $260 CAD on sale which I think is a good price for a likely marginally faster name brand. Standard price seems to be ~$390
which is kind of ridiculous.

Interesting. I just bought a Lexar Play Pro 1TB card so I am set.

I leave HDR off in handheld mode yeah. It’s not really an HDR capable screen.

Yes it does seem to be a reference to Xevious!

I saw!

Kirby Air Riders is an entertaining racing game, and it provides a thorough workout for the brand new SOL-AVES engine. It's hard to fault this Switch 2 exclusive and its high-octane visuals.

DF Direct Weekly #241 is now available, discussing Steam Machine's PC-adjacent pricing news, Proton FSR 4, the return of Red Dead Redemption, the brilliant Sektori, Windows perf issues, Horizon Steel Frontiers and much more: youtu.be/NOEGamg6nf8

I think they probably have a pretty good idea of how well it works by now, but in any case I would expect Deck 2 to be AMD based.

USB-A is the standard on PCs still so I get it. I do think it’s a little weird that it is so tilted in favour of A though (4 A vs 1 C).

I think that would be a pretty attractive pricepoint to a lot of people, low enough to be in the mix with consoles but still having the cut-rate game costs and free online of PC.

I think a lot depends on what you think of it: as more of a PC or a console. It’s a console-like PC essentially but it’s not either of those things specifically and there’s no direct analogue on the market.

Yeah I think I would go for the 2TB model as well.

What’s the most you would pay for a Steam Machine? There isn’t really anything like it out so I’m curious to hear what people think. If it’s indeed priced more like a similar PC ($700 to $800) is that too much?

STALKER 2 had a rough launch, but its performance level has increased greatly in patch 1.7, despite little notice from the developer - and the apparent absence of a major Unreal Engine version update.

DF Direct Weekly #240 is out now, focusing on last week's big Valve news. We discuss potential Steam Machine prices and positioning and we go into more depth on specs, while answering a wide range of Supporter questions: youtu.be/K0jaDAG_jc8

I don’t really understand what your objection is to (presumably) Matt Bruenig’s research work. There isn’t a large enough market to do what he does with NLRB Edge and his NLRB database without LLMs, and he produces a useful product for groups I am very sympathetic to.

Ha thanks! I was a little sick when I recorded that video which may have helped.

Wow that is quite something!

accompanying*

Valve’s Steam Frame is a multifaceted streaming/standalone VR headset that should provide a best-in-class gaming experience.

I didn’t say that it didn’t, I just said that the original unit didn’t have a counterweight and the new one (and its accompany strap) does.

Likewise!

Valve's overhauled 2026 Steam Machine is a polished, finely crafted console-like PC system. It's a great little home entertainment box - and it should give Microsoft a lot to worry about.

The PS5 Pro has had a mixed first year, with plenty of games that impress - and plenty that don't.

Not a big surprise. Launching during the fall is going to suffocate adjacent releases though during a very busy period, and I'm curious to see how publishers handle it.