Digital Foundry crew bash Windows for 18 minutes straight

SlimySnake said:
it was a gamepass only issue with the game, not windows.

windows issues people talk about are mostly related to drivers, HDR, and other apps that are non-gaming related. you are conflating windows with the Xbox app or worse PC gaming. I use the ubisoft app, EA app, steam, epic store and the xbox app is the one that has the most issues.

PC gaming is actually in a pretty decent state and has been for a while. you have native dualsense support now. HDR on windows 11 at least has system level calibration which finally brings it up to console standards. MS are just bitches for not porting that back to PC but whatever, i will stick with windows 10 and avoid all the issues these guys bringing up with DRM based apps and MS copilot integration.

I think the real problem is Microsoft itself. An xbox app from MS on Windows should be the bastion of gaming apps. If ubisoft, EA and Epic can make better apps on windows then so can Microsoft. I think it has something to do with just how many indian graduate students they hire instead of Americans which means a lot of dumb ideas from third world countries are now firmly integrated into windows. I still remember just how many of my graudate TAs were applying at Microsoft while they refused to even look at undergrads as if we were just too dumb for them. Well, 20 years later, now those indians are running windows and it clearly shows with just how little innovation they have introduced recently and how user experience is even less of a priority than it was when bill gates and co. ran the shop.
Click to expand...



Joking No Way GIF by Yellowstone
 
Hey, works on my machine.

Not updating to Windows 11 even if you'd pay me to though. Shit seems bloated to hell and back.
 
Radical_3d said:
Three of the torchbearers of PC gaming (Battaglia, Leadbetter and Linneman) start gang banging on Windows and the thing keeps on going for minutes and minutes. I find that curious since some people told me that PC gaming was a breeze nowadays.
Timestamped.
Click to expand...

Its modern windows really what they are complaining about. many people arent happy with windows 11 and are switching to linux which is a lot more stable.
 
Microsoft better copy all of the SteamOS ideas from the Steam Deck and integrate them into the next Xbox. I swear to god. Conceptually, their Xbox PC hybrid idea could be the greatest device of all time (imo), but it all hinges on them not fucking up the software side of things. And I guarantee they will, which is just baffling considering they're known as a software company.
 
adamsapple said:
Don't hate myself enough just yet to even consider Linux.
Click to expand...
Same. Well in my case is more about lazyness lol, got a lot of shit installed on my PC and don't want to move all that to another partition.

As an IT dude, I go by this mantra: "if it's working, don't touch it!"
 
Haven't seen the video. Can someone sum it up?

I use Windows every single day for gaming. No idea what they can rant about here unless it's about Windows gaming on the Xbox Ally, which sucked ass and I swapped from Xbox App to Playnite after 1 hour of usage.
 
Every week Windows does something to piss on my chips, this week it was destroying my CPU undervolt by falsely flagging it as a virus and no longer giving me the option to set it up again, so yes, Windows is shite. Once Nvidia support is a bit better on Linux I'll nuke windows forever.
 
crazyriddler said:
many venture to install Linux and come face to face with a complex system, where one wrong command can break your system, where for small apps that in Windows you just download and run, you have to compile software and install dependencies using commands or find a compiled one that works with your specific distro...
Click to expand...

whatyearisit.gif
 
Buggy Loop said:
I mean, not bad drop in performance by all means but why? On top of the list of games that require tinkering fro protonDB or just downright doesn't run because of anticheat. I mean why would I deal with this. What do I gain here?
Click to expand...

You get to change your computing environment, and hopefully still do what you need to do. For me it's just browser and games. There's some caveats on the gaming part, but nothing too serious if you aren't invested in one of the anti-cheat games.

So you can change your operating system, a fundamental part of operating a computer. That in itself is amazing. Could have been just one, by now. If you are happy with windows, you would have nothing to gain. But if you don't like your os, you have a lot to gain by changing, because you may end up liking something else more.
 
Syphon Filter said:
Yea but its not native, and native is ideal. If the linux marketshare keeps growing then they might consider releasing native games for linux.
Click to expand...

The marketshare would need to get unrealisticly large. And because proton works so well, that's not going to be a thing anytime soon. Even then, it's not necessarily true. There's some advantages to using proton on windows games. In any game that has a linux version, I force the windows version through proton, anyway. Devs only have to maintain one version, fixes stuttering, controllers work more reliably, and performance tends to be better.
 
Radical_3d said:
I find that curious since some people told me that PC gaming was a breeze nowadays.
Click to expand...
For 99% of people jumping on playing some random game, it's a breeze.

Just fire up Steam, pick a game, and you're on your way.

I don't know what the fuck Microsoft is doing with Xbox App. And the other stuff is shit Microsoft has gotten away with for ages now, so it's good people are calling them out for it. But if they're going to put a bigger focus on Windows for gaming going forward, they better get better at fixing and not breaking stuff.

But yeah, PC gaming is generally a breeze still.
 
Zacfoldor said:
Excuse me? Console gamers? Want me to go in on PC gamers and their girlfriends in discord?

Sure we console gamers are a snoody bunch of know it all children but you PC gamers are normies fucking full on mate. Half of people on discord are your friends from work who couldn't name any fucking videogame but wow.

You think we don't know about those people but we play wow too, we play everything eventually. Our eyes are everywhere.

We know how secretly uncool you all actually are.

We also know that like only one or two of you are smart in every friend group and the others are hangers on who you got into PC gaming by helping/making them build a PC. We know.
Click to expand...
Run Away Shiba Inu GIF by Justin
 
Sethbacca said:
Or people are just tired of Microsoft nonsense like AI training sapping your FPS on top of all the other spyware and bullshit they shovel into the OS these days.
Click to expand...
Those tired with at least a single brain cell just don't use all the nonsense and deboat everything with 1 command and 2 or 3 clicks. And "everything" keeps working. 🤷‍♂️

Pedro Motta said:
Holy shit, hide! rodrigolfp rodrigolfp is coming!
Click to expand...
"Everything" just works and tons of benchmarks shows Windows still overall wins in performance at the majority of games, but somehow people love to hate it because make them special snowflakes being outside the 95% of gamers that prefer it. Dual boot master race, the cry is free. 🤷‍♂️
 
Last edited:
rodrigolfp said:
"Everything" just works and tons of benchmarks shows Windows still overall wins in performance at the majority of games, but somehow people love to hate it because make them special snowflakes being outside the 95% of gamers that prefer it. Dual boot master race, the cry is free. 🤷‍♂️
Click to expand...
anger GIF
 
Last edited:
As an IT professional: I fucking hate Windows so much.
I use my Macbook Pro for dev work and appreciate the UNIX underpinnings.
On my Desktop, I run Linux and only boot into Windows for certain games that are unable to run on Linux due to shitty kernel-level anti cheat (I'm looking at you Battlefield 6).

I dream of a future where I'll never have to use Windows again.
 
CuteFaceJay said:
you mean the lack of support for the spyware anti cheat software on Linux being shoe-horned into most games these days?

Games run fine on proton if they aren't packaged with that spyware shit.
Click to expand...
No. He means lack of DirectX and video drivers support that constantly causes games to miss features like HDR, RT, DLSS, and have crazy bugs like missing geometry, textures, etc.




Try Wuthering Waves for example right now and you will have the video cutscenes being black screen with sound only. ProtonDB exists for a big reason. 🤷‍♂️
 
Last edited:
Can you recommend Linux without automatically be assumed to be a "linux guy", and have your advice ignored?

I am not a "linux guy" but I have a PC with Windows 11 on one drive and Bazzite on the other. I play most of my PC games through Steam and Proton makes things smooth 99% of the time. Your enjoyment definitely depends on what kind of games you like. I only use Windows now when I'm using GameMaker, or two or three big modern games and I don't want to reinstall them just to test them to see how they perform.

To be honest, most of my anger with Windows is how they don't let me customize anything anymore.

I've tried gaming on Linux twice in the last 10 years, and both times weren't successful. It's much better now and things have come a long way. This reminds me of guys who hate emulators and only want to play on real hardware. My personal theory is that the last time they used emulators were 20 years ago and aren't aware of the improvements since. (I could be wrong.)
 
Microsoft started outsourcing quality assurance to insider rings years ago. What do people expect? Basically, 50% of quality assurance has been streamlined away, and since then, the frequency of critical problems has continued to increase. It alternates between "updates that wreck your system," "updates without which your system wrecks itself," and a combination of both.

Ironically, I now have virtually no problems with the Xbox app, which used to be much worse. But the fact is that the overall experience is simply far behind Steam. Funnily enough, Epic Games, although it entered the business much later, is much further ahead. In fact, everyone is further ahead than Microsoft.

I really wonder what's so difficult about just doing things the same way as the competition. Those idiots are constantly trying to reinvent the wheel with things that already work. And in doing so, on top they lose features, such as download speed info.
 
Listening now, this is great. I doubt MS will fix this stuff, but its good its being discussed now so the public is aware.

It would be amazing if people started to leave windows in droves to send a message.
 
Last edited:
This is not just about Windows tbh...Something that will always be a hot take but idgaf: Gaming in platforms that have to work on countless pieces of hardware will never be as stable as a piece of hardware that runs custom made hardware and a UI made specifically for it, that also happens to run games made specifically for them.

Say what you want about consoles but i think the last time i had a game crash on me was in 2020, when PS5 came out and i played Miles Morales. The game crashed 2 or 3 times. This was week 1 for the PS5 btw. It's been 5 years.

If Playstation stopped existing for some reason I'd rather have a Switch 2 with its outdated hardware and play multiplatform games in there than on a PC.

Watching this video almost gave me anxiety.

I'll go even further: Everything that has to work everywhere, always turn out to be a mess and that includes engines like Unreal Engine.

There.
 
John talking about the problems of Windows 11 was brutal. Damn. Sometimes feels like he want to punch his computer.

I'll stay on Windows 10.
 
rodrigolfp said:
Those tired with at least a single brain cell just don't use all the nonsense and deboat everything with 1 command and 2 or 3 clicks. And "everything" keeps working. 🤷‍♂️
Click to expand...
Personally I just don't feel like sitting at a desk outside work hours, and I don't feel like having a mouse and keyboard on my coffee table. It's more about the convenience than anything else.
 
Tiago Rodrigues said:
This is not just about Windows tbh...Something that will always be a hot take but idgaf: Gaming in platforms that have to work on countless pieces of hardware will never be as stable as a piece of hardware that runs custom made hardware and a UI made specifically for it, that also happens to run games made specifically for them.

Say what you want about consoles but i think the last time i had a game crash on me was in 2020, when PS5 came out and i played Miles Morales. The game crashed 2 or 3 times. This was week 1 for the PS5 btw. It's been 5 years.

If Playstation stopped existing for some reason I'd rather have a Switch 2 with its outdated hardware and play multiplatform games in there than on a PC.

Watching this video almost gave me anxiety.

I'll go even further: Everything that has to work everywhere, always turn out to be a mess and that includes engines like Unreal Engine.

There.
Click to expand...
"I don't play on PC, but I think playing on PC sucks"

Lex76kRKbWiKGgzO.gif
 
Sethbacca said:
Personally I just don't feel like sitting at a desk outside work hours, and I don't feel like having a mouse and keyboard on my coffee table. It's more about the convenience than anything else.
Click to expand...
Me too. That why I made non desk setup to play with mouse and KB. So good that I can lay there the entire day and night. Desk or couch never more.
 
TintoConCasera said:
"I don't play on PC, but I think playing on PC sucks"

Lex76kRKbWiKGgzO.gif
Click to expand...
You interpert that as you want. I can't do anything about that.

What it really means is "i don't play on PC because i'm never gojng to give myself the trouble to go throught the hassle of having games working on them".

Most of my friends play on PC and that whatsapp group is always funny whenever a new game comes out and something doesn't work as intended.

I get the fun of it...but not for me.
 
Tiago Rodrigues said:
What it really means is "i don't play on PC because i'm never gojng to give myself the trouble to go throught the hassle of having games working on them".
Click to expand...
What hassle?

When I want to play a game I just install it and it works. If it's an older game I might have to install a patch someone made sure, but that's better than just not being able to play a game like in a console, no?
 
Last edited:
Windows 11 is a complete mess. I was tasked to move our org to 24H2 as my first year on the job , and what a complete disaster that feature upgrade has been , the headaches it caused had my manager decide we are holding off on 25H2, he was so confident in 24H2.. lol. Lets not even go into the complete fuck up that Server 2025 is as a DC. Microsoft just loves disappointing but they know they still have control , unlike the Xbox division, they fuck up and they are feeling it.
 
Tiago Rodrigues said:
This is not just about Windows tbh...Something that will always be a hot take but idgaf: Gaming in platforms that have to work on countless pieces of hardware will never be as stable as a piece of hardware that runs custom made hardware and a UI made specifically for it, that also happens to run games made specifically for them.

Say what you want about consoles but i think the last time i had a game crash on me was in 2020, when PS5 came out and i played Miles Morales. The game crashed 2 or 3 times. This was week 1 for the PS5 btw. It's been 5 years.

If Playstation stopped existing for some reason I'd rather have a Switch 2 with its outdated hardware and play multiplatform games in there than on a PC.

Watching this video almost gave me anxiety.

I'll go even further: Everything that has to work everywhere, always turn out to be a mess and that includes engines like Unreal Engine.

There.
Click to expand...
All those stable games like SotC on PS2 and Bloodborne (and gazillions of others) /s. Ironically both much more stable emulated.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

PS5 “Power Saver” Mode Tested - Digital Foundry
Analysis Platform  2
86
198
kevboard replied
Digital Foundry: Wuchang: Fallen Feathers - Digital Foundry Review - PS5/PS5 Pro/Xbox Series X|S
2
95
3K
Pedro Motta replied
Digital Foundry : Star Wars Outlaws Switch 2
4 5 6 7 8
363
3K
Mr Hyde replied
Digital Foundry is no longer controlled by IGN
News  2 3 4 5
220
2K
Ashamam replied
Digital Foundry: Battlefield 6 PC - DF Review + Optimised Settings - +72% Perf Boost For Little Visual Loss
3
278
Gaiff replied
Top Bottom