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[Zathalus]

I'm not sure about this but i feel like sometimes they are doing sponsored content.

Their recent Mist Remaster video gave me that idea. The game is for PCs/Mac only so far and i think it runs on the dreaded Unreal engine? Yet John never mentioned anything about shader/traversal stutters in the PC version. But if you read the comments or search around other forums it's obvious the game has huge issues with that. John's video was nothing but praise though.

If they do sponsored content they are under obligation to state that and disclose it. That’s enforced by both YouTube and EU law. They usually have no problem advertising if they do a sponsored video from a game developer or hardware provider, and have done it many times in the past.

If anyone has any actual evidence showing they are taking monetary compensation and are not disclosing it they should really report it to YouTube or the press. Nobody has done so yet.

 

[P:axMagellanic]

I feel like I'm from planet zogg when I see these clowns rave about TAA, upsample, denoising artefact infested slop. You're raving about an RT reflection whilst ignoring the absolutely catastrophic image for the rest of the scene?

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Let's start by acknowledging that everyone has biases and preferences, and that's fine.

While it's acceptable for Digital Foundry to have a bias, there's a threshold for acceptable levels, and the video in question clearly exceeds that.
Just a few days ago, they claimed they created similar PC settings and achieved comparable performance with Wukong.

They used an RX 6700, FSR, and 1080p resolution.

Anyone with working eyes can see it's not nearly the same image quality, and the framerate is 10% behind.
Yet they keep acting as if it's the same performance, which is really bizarre.



Richard even mentioned PS5 has low textures, maybe it's for new glasses.

Lately they have been passing that bespoke threshold of acceptable bias reporting.

They didn't study computer science, and are often confused of their own results. Experts aren't usually confused by the outcomes.






Edit: I'm not making the case that anyone shouldn't enjoy their content. WWE can be very entertaining, yet it will be with a clear understanding of the reality of the content.

Please watch the video before stating they are not biased.


EDIT 2: Should they be treated as vgzcharts? Or maybe a step above?

EDIT 3:
@TheAssist assisted with a suggestion for a disclaimer for DF.

"Digital Foundry not experts but much better then the average online poster"


EDIT 4:
Dear overlord mods, please edit the title of the thread. Should've ended with question mark instead of a dot.

What do you mean biased? At the 5:30 mark the guy clearly says the PC version is running up to 5-10% slower than PS5.

 

[Anthony Soprano]

They avoided the difficult review likes Hogwarts didn't they due the preceived poltical hot potatoe? Guess what, your there to do a technical unbiased review, it shouldn't matter outside the game.
Wukong was okay though?

This is when I stopped watching and I wasn't even a fan of Hogwarts or Harry Potter. The whole appeal of their channel for me was seeing all the frametimes and analyses and I didn't care for the extra vlogs because I found their voices to be kind of hard to listen to.

When they allegedly got mixed up with politically correct drama (IIRC, rumor was they didn't review due to fear of lynch mob and doxing) and one of them publicly bashed the game for being based in an IP for children, that was when I unsubbed.

I've also read they avoided it because they were busy that week or didn't receive a review copy, whatever. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and waited and it never came in a timely fashion.

edit: a below user says them being wrapped up in politically correct shenanigans was a falsehood

 

[Rockman33]

No one does what DF does better than DF.

I don’t personally like everything they say outside of their videos, but that doesn’t deny the fact they are currently the best at analyzing tech in video games.

 

[Zathalus]

This is when I stopped watching and I wasn't even a fan of Hogwarts or Harry Potter. The whole appeal of their channel for me was seeing all the frametimes and analyses and I didn't care for the extra vlogs because I found their voices to be kind of hard to listen to.

When they allegedly got mixed up with politically correct drama (IIRC, rumor was they didn't review due to fear of lynch mob and doxing) and one of them publicly bashed the game for being based in an IP for children, that was when I unsubbed.

I've also read they avoided it because they were busy that week or didn't receive a review copy, whatever. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and waited and it never came in a timely fashion.

Digital Foundry have released three videos about Hogwarts Legacy, with the initial video delayed because of a request from WB due to a patch being released. Them refusing to cover the game is a myth.

 

[reinking]

I don't think they are biased, but I think they are journalists first and technical analysts second. I think we have to also recognize that these are journalists who are profiting directly on console wars. Creating a new video for every game highlighting every minute difference and sending warriors into a tizzy is their bread and butter. That in itself doesn't mean they are wrong. I think if someone (not talking about anyone specifically here) is going to call them out for bias then they really have to have at least the same technical understanding as they do and are able to point out discrepancies. That's usually where claims of bias fall apart. I've been critical of DF myself though. To this day, I don't understand the need to compare every new, clearly superior GPU to consoles. Their analysis could very well be spot-on and entirely useless at the same time. But if it creates controversy then it will pay the bills. Something worth keeping in mind, imo.

This. It is also the reason I have pretty much stopped watching their videos. It became so obvious, intentional or not, they are perpetuating the console wars. I do believe some bias creeps in but everyone is biased to some degree.

 

[bender]

They've always been a weird mix for me as it feels like they want to have their toes dipped in both technical analysis and personality driven content. It's probably why I prefer the content from their dryer personalities (Olie and Tom). And not to knock their bona fides too much, but it's important to remember they are merely enthusiasts and fallible which isn't that big of deal. I do find it annoying when they don't stay in their lane and try to give advice for how developers should implement tech.

 

[akira__]

What do you mean biased? At the 5:30 mark the guy clearly says the PC version is running up to 5-10% slower than PS5.

Great someone that watched the video. Maybe tell the others that said that difference didn't exist, yet he did say that unfortunately in-between these remarks.
Because obviously it does 10% slower, and the image quality is obviously also reduced.

But some like adamsapple thought I was buried by people who didn't even watch that Richard himself stated performance difference. Which is obvious throughout, if you can do simple math that is.

But reading comprehension isnt his forte.

 

[Zathalus]

Great someone that watched the video. Maybe tell the others that said that difference didn't exist, yet he did say that unfortunately in-between these remarks.
Because obviously it does 10% slower, and the image quality is obviously also reduced.

But some like adamsapple thought I was buried by people who didn't even watch that Richard himself stated performance difference. Which is obvious throughout, if you can do simple math that is.

But reading comprehension isnt his forte.

Let me quote myself here, as you obviously didn’t read it the first time:

That is factually correct, the PS5 has worse textures then the High setting on PC. This only applies to some objects though, and probably not anything you’d notice in the opening intro. Everything else is maybe due to sharpening differences. Immortal of Aveuem had the same issue, PS5 looked like it was running higher quality textures compared to the PC or XSX versions but the developer themselves confirmed it was the same setting on all of them. Turns out the PS5 version had aggressive sharpening applied via FSR while the XSX version did not, DLSS also did not have sharpening enabled for the PC version either.

What are you even arguing at this point? Your own video evidence clearly shows Richard stating that performance is at times 10% worse on the PC, and sharpness differences are easily explained with the sharpness issue that the game has, which has been pointed out to you repeatedly.

 

[Hudo]

I think DF are OK for framerate comparisons between platforms. But are an incompetent source when it comes to technical knowledge "deep dives" or explanations. They have half-knowledge at best.

 

[Banjo64]

The issue is that once you’ve accepted things like an invitation to Redmond to exclusively review hardware before anyone else, you are no longer a neutral source. At the end of the day, access like that is their source of income.

They do treat Xbox with kid gloves nowadays, it is true.

I much preferred it when they just pixel and framerate counted and told us the technicalities. It has all felt very speculative now over the past 4 or 5 years, a serious drop in quality in my view.

 

[akira__]

Let me quote myself here, as you obviously didn’t read it the first time:



What are you even arguing at this point? Your own video evidence clearly shows Richard stating that performance is at times 10% worse on the PC, and sharpness differences are easily explained with the sharpness issue that the game has, which has been pointed out to you repeatedly.

If you would look at the image quality, its clearly not the same.

Yet he says ps5 is worse, even though its clealry not.

Plus he saying its the same when it's also clearly not running the same.

That is the point, just because someone states the obvious(well if you can do simple math) that it runs 10% slower. But at the same time look at those other remarks, around it stating its the same.
So if the image quality is less(well if you have eyes) and if the performance is 10% less. Then how do you call it the same.
Hint it's not the same.

 

[Rocco Schiavone]

I don't really see any bias. Most of their content seems to be based on factual data.

Yeah sure.

 

[Zathalus]

If you would look at the image quality, its clearly not the same.

Yet he says ps5 is worse, even though its clealry not.

Plus he saying its the same when it's also clearly not running the same.

That is the point, just because someone states the obvious(well if you can do simple math) that it runs 10% slower. But at the same time look at those other remarks, around it stating its the same.
So if the image quality is less(well if you have eyes) and if the performance is 10% less. Then how do you call it the same.
Hint it's not the same.

He didn’t say image quality is the same, or that the PC version looks better. He said texture quality on PS5 is lower then the high setting on PC, which it is as been pointed out by their other comparison video. You won’t notice it on all objects though as it only appears to apply to some environmental assets. As for image quality differences, the sharpening argument has been mentioned repeatedly, or maybe there is a FSR issue. The PS5 version does run at 1080p though.

Yeah sure.

Yeah, cherry picked images from an awkward unboxing video is something.

 

[Senua]

Yeah sure.

They don't fellate the PS5 enough for you, we get it. You show us in every DF thread lol

 

[Fortress of Regrets]

Yeah sure.

I have no idea about what I'm looking at here.

 

[Rocco Schiavone]

They don't fellate the PS5 enough for you, we get it. You show us in every DF thread lol

Someone has to spread the truth. You seem to be able to hide the truth.
Fortress of Regrets
Left is an unboxing of the PS5 and right is an unboxing of the series x. Not that difficult.

 

[Senua]

Someone has to spread the truth. You seem to be able to hide the truth.

 

[Fortress of Regrets]

Someone has to spread the truth. You seem to be able to hide the truth.
Fortress of Regrets
Left is an unboxing of the PS5 and right is an unboxing of the series x. Not that difficult.

I see two boxes, yes. What is the crime I'm missing here?

 

[Senua]

I see too boxes, yes. What is the crime I'm missing here?

He is smiling in one and not in the other, it's real hard evidence!

 

[Fortress of Regrets]

He is smiling in one and not in the other, it's real hard evidence!

Oh noes. That is some serious shit. lmao.

 

[adamsapple]

I see two boxes, yes. What is the crime I'm missing here?

Lack of visible erection while unboxing the PS5.

 

[DR3AM]

One of my favorite YT channels. Their stuff is great but sometimes they treat a dropped frame like it’s the end of the world.

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

Yeah sure.

How about that product placement of each

 

[Senua]

How about that product placement of each

 

[adamsapple]

How about that product placement of each

Look at the joy on his face.

 

[poppabk]

The irony of people complaining about DF over analyzing and then a bunch of people over analyzing unboxing videos.

 

[Killer8]

Their contributors do have some personal biases but I haven't detected any outright bias from the channel. Some of those personal biases filter through to the coverage like Alex and PC gaming. Generally he has done a good job highlighting stuttering and bad performance in PC games, but the second the PC version boasts some other advantages he seems to overlook just how destructive that stutter is to the gaming experience. For many games he just kind of declares the PC version the winner, when sometimes the ports can have such unacceptable issues that it ruins that version compared to the console one.

Take the coverage of Returnal on PC for example. You might come away from his video thinking it's an objectively better slam dunk over the PS5 version. But then you peruse the Steam forums and find that the developer basically abandoned the game without fixing the stutter issues and memory leaks. Yeah, sure, it's got RTX features and higher res that the PS5 version doesn't, but what is that worth when people on Steam are saying they have an RTX 4090 but went back to their PS5 version because at least it works?

I get the feeling that DF are better used as a way of presenting data in their comparisons and then it's up to the viewer to form their own opinions and do further research. They are not the deep dive authority on tech coverage people claim they are.

 

[Gaiff]

If you would look at the image quality, its clearly not the same.

Yet he says ps5 is worse, even though its clealry not.

Plus he saying its the same when it's also clearly not running the same.

That is the point, just because someone states the obvious(well if you can do simple math) that it runs 10% slower. But at the same time look at those other remarks, around it stating its the same.
So if the image quality is less(well if you have eyes) and if the performance is 10% less. Then how do you call it the same.
Hint it's not the same.

At this point, you are being wilfully ignorant. They both use 1080p with a 100% FSR scale. PS5 does not use any better post-processing so the burden on both machines is the same. Doesn't matter if PS5 is oversharpened. It makes no difference to the performance which is what matters.

Which one is better?

 

[adamsapple]

The irony of people complaining about DF over analyzing and then a bunch of people over analyzing unboxing videos.

 

[dragonyeuw]

I like John and Oliver together, they tend to mesh well. I sometimes get the impression John and Alex don't care much for each other.

 

[Anthony Soprano]

Digital Foundry have released three videos about Hogwarts Legacy, with the initial video delayed because of a request from WB due to a patch being released. Them refusing to cover the game is a myth.

I don't see the PC version as having ever been reviewed. From what I can see on their youtube channel, they reviewed the current gen console version 02/19/23 (street date 02/10/23), the last gen version 5/10/23 (street date 05/05/23), and the switch version 11/18/23 (street date 11/14/23).

This was the tweet I was referring to;

But yeah, doesn't look like they ever reviewed the PC version. Console benchmarks are pretty pointless to me - if someone out there actually needs third-party confirmation that console games run poorly then I guess those types of videos are useful information.

 

[Madserb2023]

Everyone is biased to some degree. I think DF is actually not as bad as many others I have seen. I don't think I have ever seen them outright lie and deliberately deceive by saying the Series x has a higher resolution in a game than the PS5 when it doesn't. Their results are often corroborated by others. I only have an issue with the PC love fest. Not because they aren't telling through truth. I have witnessed Unreal 5 on a 4090 and it is a different story but we all know that here, we aren't stupid but I don't want it rubbed in my face. I don't want to read about the new Ford Fiesta, only to hear its great but it's not as good as a $100,000 Bentley. I know lol

 

[Heisenberg007]

Absolutely.

Digital Foundry is 100% biased. What's worse is that they are stupid on top of that.

Don't forget that these are the same "technical experts" who propagated that Series X will have better performance than PS5 just because "12 is greater than 10". And now they have been acting confused for the last 4 years why Series X didn't outperform PS5.

Fuckin' idiots.

 

[PaintTinJr]

You think "real" journalists can't have bias?

Be real journalist and have major conflicts of interest with why and how they do data analysis, you mean? No I don't.

Which ever way you try to wrap it up the conflicts they have for doing faceoffs and hardware analysis are too compromising to impartial and just brushed off IMO.

 

[Heisenberg007]

You think "real" journalists can't have bias?

I think everyone has bias. Journalists as well.

But professional integrity requires you to set aside your bias when reporting / analyzing something.

Digital Foundry is incapable of doing that.

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

Absolutely.

Digital Foundry is 100% biased. What's worse is that they are stupid on top of that.

Don't forget that these are the same "technical experts" who propagated that Series X will have better performance than PS5 just because "12 is greater than 10". And now they have been acting confused for the last 4 years why Series X didn't outperform PS5.

Fuckin' idiots.

Almost the exact wording used as when I was watching The Road to PS5 with Ybarra and Jason Ronald, the lead dev on the Series consoles

They actually laughed how much time and money Sony spent on the SSD and that every head to head game matchup would be "easy wins" for the Series X because of that power.

Dare I say marching orders even.

 

[Darkness_Arises]

another one with DF Derangement Syndrom.

sad how prevalent it is

Instead of replying with ad hominems, how about actually contesting the point? Weren't DF the ones who platformed Penello and went to bat for the XBO secret sauce?

 

[adamsapple]

Don't forget that these are the same "technical experts" who propagated that Series X will have better performance than PS5 just because "12 is greater than 10". And now they have been acting confused for the last 4 years why Series X didn't outperform PS5.

To be fair they're also acting confused in the Warhammer video where the SX is outperforming PS5 by an unusually high margin.

 

[winjer]

Great someone that watched the video. Maybe tell the others that said that difference didn't exist, yet he did say that unfortunately in-between these remarks.
Because obviously it does 10% slower, and the image quality is obviously also reduced.

But some like adamsapple thought I was buried by people who didn't even watch that Richard himself stated performance difference. Which is obvious throughout, if you can do simple math that is.

But reading comprehension isnt his forte.

Are they using the Ryzen 4800S as the CPU for this benchmark? Or is this the 3600?
Because if this is the 4800S, it's a major screw up, considering that the 4800S has only 4 lanes of PCIe for the GPU. Meaning, it will become a bottleneck quite often.
So no wonder it's running slower than a PS5.

 

[Zathalus]

I think everyone has bias. Journalists as well.

But professional integrity requires you to set aside your bias when reporting / analyzing something.

Digital Foundry is incapable of doing that.

If they are so biased against Sony that they are incapable of doing objective analysis then why:

- Do they almost universally praise Sony exclusives?
- Why do they always point out when PS5 wins and Xbox looses in face offs? And don’t say because they need to align with other sources, they have picked up a number of advantages for Sony that nobody else has, or performance review games where Sony wins that nobody else covered.
- Constantly have Sony games win or place top 10 in best of year graphics.
- They are extremely positive and pour tons of praise on most Sony hardware products. For example the review of the PS5 itself, or PSVR2.
- They continue to get developer interviews with Sony studios as well as get invited to Sony events. John was even invited to do an early performance sneak peak of Astro Bot.
- Have an overwhelming amount of Sony game coverage.

They obviously each have preferences, Alex is PC over everything and John dislikes Xbox, but I see little evidence that it leads to results being altered or them being overly harsh towards Sony.

 

[ShaiKhulud1989]

Their integrity died with Xbox Series exclusive reveal lol

 

[Zathalus]

Dare I say marching orders even.

Which is silly, almost everyone thought the XSX will have a performance lead over the PS5, myself and the majority of this forum included. Even tech sites like Anandtech were expecting the XSX to have a lead over the PS5 in rendering.

 

[poppabk]

Are they using the Ryzen 4800S as the CPU for this benchmark? Or is this the 3600?
Because if this is the 4800S, it's a major screw up, considering that the 4800S has only 4 lanes of PCIe for the GPU. Meaning, it will become a bottleneck quite often.
So no wonder it's running slower than a PS5.

I mean no-one really gives a shit - it's just a fun little exercise to see how the settings etc on console versions are set-up. Then people freak out because apparently even a fun little comparison makes fanboys seethe.

 

[Celcius]

DF is fantastic.
Time for a nap, OP.

 

[consoul]

Breaking News: Everyone is biased.

If you think you're consuming any unbiased content, you are kidding yourself. Work out and stay aware of the biases of all the people and media outlets you watch/read.

It's all a matter of degrees. Sometimes the bias is bad enough to invalidate them as a useful source of info.

Is DF that bad? No, I don't think so.
Do the presenters sometimes display their personal biases? Sure.

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

Which is silly, almost everyone thought the XSX will have a performance lead over the PS5, myself and the majority of this forum included. Even tech sites like Anandtech were expecting the XSX to have a lead over the PS5 in rendering.

Thing is I know MS paid for the bias, at least at one point

 

[winjer]

I mean no-one really gives a shit - it's just a fun little exercise to see how the settings etc on console versions are set-up. Then people freak out because apparently even a fun little comparison makes fanboys seethe.

Non-sense.
This is just bad testing methodology.

 

[Topher]

Be real journalist and have major conflicts of interest with why and how they do data analysis, you mean? No I don't.

No...not what I mean and not what I said so not much point replying, is there?