Sam Machkovech
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Articles by Sam Machkovech
E-Day’s 6-Year Journey Inside the Rapidly Changing Xbox Industry
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. Gears of War: E-Day, the newest game in Xbox’s sci-fi military franchise, is a top-to-bottom chronicle of war’s devastation. Collapsed buildings billow with fire and smoke effects, resembling real-life tragedies, while faces convincingly convey an infantry squad’s heavy, unspoken emotions.
Every Arts District at Bumbershoot 2026
⭐ Means don’t miss it! ⭐ Bumbermania In which local wrestling crew SOS Wrestling builds a real-deal ring in the middle of the Seattle Center, and dozens of local wrestling superstars (66, to be exact!) fight, tackle, pummel, and toss one another around for a chance at the Bumbermania belt. It’s so fun, so captivating, that I missed part of Janelle Monáe’s headlining set last year because I couldn’t look away.
Every Band Playing Bumbershoot: Saturday
KEY: ⭐ Don’t Miss 📍 Local! ⭐ 📍 ANTHERS This comparison will only resonate with maybe six people, but I’m gonna say it anyway: If you loved long-defunct Seattle punk rock noise makers pleasureboaters, go see ANTHERS and party like you’re at Healthy Times Fun Club circa 2008. Not a 40-something who lived in Seattle nearly two decades ago? Fine.
After sci-fi smashes, a video game studio goes cutthroat
share bookmark In extraction shooters like Marathon, another player might kill you at any moment and steal whatever bounty was in your backpack. Alternatively, you might do the same and escape with high-value loot. — Bungie BELLEVUE, Washingron: Because the video game studio Bungie has built some of this century’s most influential franchises, science-fiction shooters Halo and Destiny, expectations are high for its first new property since 2014. The financial stakes may be even higher.
After Sci-Fi Smashes, a Video Game Studio Goes Cutthroat
BELLEVUE, Wash. -- Because the video game studio Bungie has built some of this century's most influential franchises, science-fiction shooters Halo and Destiny, expectations are high for its first new property since 2014. kAm%96 7:?2?4:2= DE2<6D >2J 36 6G6? 9:896C]k^Am kAm$:?46 $@?J 24BF:C65 qF?8:6 :? a_aa 7@C Sb]e 3:==:@? H:E9 E96 AC@>:D6 @7 G2=F23=6 3=@4<3FDE6CD[ E96 DEF5:@ 92D 56=2J65 D6G6C2= 6IA2?D:@?D 2?5 82>6D[ :>A@D65 =2J@77D[ =@DE 2 rt~ 2?5 6G6? 366? 42==65 @FE :?
The Creators of Halo and Destiny Go Cutthroat With Marathon
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. After Sci-Fi Smashes, a Studio Goes Cutthroat Bungie was bought for billions after creating the hit video games Halo and Destiny. But will players welcome its confrontational extraction shooter Marathon with open arms? In extraction shooters like Marathon, another player might kill you at any moment and steal whatever bounty was in your backpack.
Intellivision Sprint Review: Mattel's Forgotten Console Runs Again
Features Intellivision DF Retro Who is this sold-out, Atari-produced curio for? Until roughly eight years ago, Intellivision was in competition for last-place in the retro-gaming nostalgia sector. Its 1980 launch led to a few years of significant sales for its handlers at global toy giant Mattel, but the brand never overcame the 1983 home-console crash.
Bloodborne PC Emulation Can Now Exceed 4K at 60FPS - And It's Brilliant
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on Tom Morgan presents his exploration of the state of Bloodborne emulation via ShadPS4. In the era of the remaster and the remake, one game stands alone as the biggest missed opportunity of the generation. Over five years since the launch of PlayStation 5 and getting on for 11 years since it first debuted on PS4, Bloodborne remains untouched by Sony and developer FromSoftware, locked to a wobbly 1080p at a wobbly 30 frames per second whatever console you play it on.
Assassin's Creed Shadows on Switch 2: The Making of an "Impossible Port"
Features Nintendo Switch 2 Interviews "All the investments we had in scalability really paid off." Before the end of 2025, we spoke at length with Ubisoft engineers responsible for porting Assassin's Creed Shadows to Switch 2. As the team members were generous with their answers, we're circling back to present some of the porting team's quotes and findings - along with their advice to other game studios working on their own ambitious Switch 2 ports.
Why Intel's Panther Lake Won Digital Foundry's CES 2026
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on Laden with Panther Lake benchmark captures from CES, Oliver Mackenzie and Alex Battaglia talk performance and impressions. Intel's mobile graphics are a force to be reckoned with. On a device and hardware basis, especially on the PC gaming side, CES 2026 left us a bit cold. Nvidia didn't reveal any new consumer-grade GPUs this year, while AMD only had one gamer-centric CPU announcement - an incremental bump to the Ryzen 7 9850X3D.
CES 2026 In Review: Short on Gaming Hardware, Big on TVs and Monitors
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on Direct from Las Vegas, Alex Battaglia and Oliver Mackenzie share their thoughts on everything they saw at the Consumer Electronics Show 2026 while also discussing all of the big announcements. Nvidia, AMD and Intel announcements, the latest TVs and monitors and... the weirdness. Plus, what is Crimson Desert and why should be excited about it?
Nvidia G-Sync Pulsar is a Motion Clarity Revelation
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on When we moved from CRT to LCD, gaming lost something of crucial importance: motion stability, motion clarity. Even today's monitors exhibit motion blur, especially evident with strong lateral movement. Backlight strobing, black frame insertion and other methods have sought to mitigate the problem - but all have their drawbacks. Enter Nvidia G-Sync Pulsar - 4x motion clarity over standard LCD with full VRR support.
Intel: Stutters in PC Games are "Breaking Immersion"
News CES Intel XeSS Core Ultra Series 3 Tom Petersen on the present - and the future - of PC performance at CES 2026. Subscribe to Digital Foundry on It's time for a big CES 2026 interview! Intel's Tom Petersen is a legendary figure in the PC hardware space, having spent decades at Nvidia before moving onto Intel.
Nvidia Hands-On at CES: DLSS 4.5, Path-Traced Pragmata
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on Our CES 2026 coverage kicks off with a look at Nvidia's impressive tech demos. Oliver and Alex got to go hands-on with DLSS 4.5 and Dynamic Multi Frame Generation, before moving onto a range of demos including G-Sync Pulsar (more on that soon), RTX Remix Improvements, and some new AI game demos.
Nvidia Announces DLSS 4.5 - New Transformer Model Already Live
News Nvidia Dlss Ces Ambitious "Dynamic Frame Generation" coming "Spring 2026." Nvidia's Monday-night "GeForce On" presentation, timed with this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, NV, included an unsurprising flurry of AI-related announcements. On the GPU front, rather than emphasise any new graphics hardware, Nvidia instead unveiled DLSS 4.5, which updates two pieces of the DLSS image reconstruction family.
AMD Unveils Ryzen 7 9850X3D: Fast, Incremental
Like many other CES-timed announcements this week, AMD's opening night address at CES 2026 revolved largely around on-device AI capabilities and new products focused on that sector. Yet on the brute-force rendering side of things, AMD took the opportunity to further cement its claim to the fastest and most easily recommended consumer-grade gaming CPU.
1998's Unreal: Past, Present And A Path-Traced Future
News DF Retro Unreal Epic Games The legacy of Epic's first "Unreal" product. Subscribe to Digital Foundry on In an age where PC games were transitioning into the 3D accelerated era, Epic MegaGames' Unreal was a truly spectacular experience, pushing graphics to new heights.
Persona 3 Reload's Switch 2 60fps Patch Is A Big Improvement
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on Here's the full breakdown on the Persona 3 Reload patch 1.03 for Switch 2 users. The Atlus RPG Persona 3 Reload arrived on Switch 2 in October, nearly two years after its PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S iterations, with a modest visual makeup that we had hoped would clear the Switch 2's technical limitations. But it launched in a rough state, with frame-pacing issues, excessive input lag, image quality issues, and no high frame-rate mode option.
DF Retro Super Show: 2025's Best Retro Picks
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on DF Retro Super Show Episode #4: 2025's Best Retro Picks. The final DF Retro Super Show for 2025 revolves primarily around our panel's favourite retro games of the year. Exactly what counts as "best of the year" for a category like retro gaming is different than traditional best-of lists, so the DF Retro team of John Linneman, Audi Sorlie, Coury Carlson and Marc "Try4ce" Duddleson has divided its picks into four categories.
The Best and Worst PC Ports of 2025
News Pc Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, Doom, Monster Hunter Wilds, more! Subscribe to Digital Foundry on 'Tis the season to be equally jolly and annoyed about the quality of PC ports in 2025. Alex Battaglia and John Linneman discuss the highlights and the lowlights of the year for AAA PC gaming. From Digital Foundry's perspective, the state of PC game launches in 2025 was arguably better than what we've seen in recent years.
Layers of Fear on Switch 2: UE5 Lumen RT at 60fps - A Christmas Miracle?
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on Digital Foundry's Oliver Mackenzie and Alex Battaglia examine and discuss the Layers of Fear port that arrived just before the holiday season on Nintendo Switch 2. Does it employ software Lumen? And what does its 60fps frame-rate actually look like in action? Happy holidays! What better way to celebrate the festive season than with a tall glass of eggnog, family gathered around the fire and the horror-puzzling darkness of Bloober Team's Layers of Fear on Switch 2?
Digital Foundry's 2025 Community Awards
Ever wondered what the internet's most discriminating gaming-tech fans think of the year's best? We're happy to share such lucrative data by presenting the Digital Foundry 2025 Community Awards, as voted on and announced by members of the DF Supporter Program this week. The effort, as spearheaded by DF Patreon member A1an, included assistance from fellow Patreon members Zephyr, Trog and Joe along with support from additional beta testers to organise and tabulate the voting.
What does Batman: Arkham Knight's latest patch do for Switch 2?
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on A critical mass of rumours is strongly suggesting that Half-Life 3 will be a launch title for Steam Machine - but how does that work when the RAM crisis is making any kind of hardware launch so challenging? Meanwhile, Oliver pops in to talk about an actual patch for the woeful Switch 1 port of Batman: Arkham Knight, while Tom makes a similarly cameo-sized appearance to talk about Skyrim's anti-latency patch - which isn't quite what we were hoping for.
Xbox 360 Turns 20: Every Launch Game Tested, Part 1
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on In our latest DF Retro episode, see the original "Blades" dashboard on the original Xbox 360 launch firmware before we dive into the first part of our extensive look at every one of its launch games. Our ongoing look at the 20th anniversary of the Xbox 360 continues with a comprehensive look at every game that launched alongside the console in November 2005.
Monster Hunter Wilds PC Title Update 4: Now Up to 20% Faster
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on Alex Battaglia takes a quick look at the all-in-all good news found in Monster Hunter Wilds' Title Update 4 - though that net win for 8GB GPUs comes with some considerable issues of its own. We've struggled through the year with Monster Hunter Wilds' problematic PC version, a game that remained so unoptimised since its February launch that we resorted to a fan-made mod to remedy its issues with GPUs using 8GB of VRAM.
Skyrim on Switch 2 Gets Input Lag Patch - But It's Problematic
News Bethesda Nintendo Switch 2 Skyrim Our measurements, both good and bad. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition on Nintendo Switch 2 has proven a more eventful mid-December release than we'd anticipated, owing to its severe issues with input lag. Ahead of the weekend, Bethesda announced a patch meant to resolve this issue of button-tap latency. Ahead of our fuller conversation about the patch in our next episode of DF Direct Weekly, we are opting to post our immediate findings.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake Demo Impresses on Switch 2
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on Early trailers impressed by showing a Switch 2 port of Final Fantasy 7 Remake that stacked up nicely against the PS5 version - a 30fps version of PS5's performance mode. Now, with a playable demo in hand, we can get a better understanding of what this port brings to the table.
Skyrim on Switch 2: PS5-Level Visuals Marred by Input Lag
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on Thomas Morgan explores the input lag issues in the launch edition on Skyrim on Switch 2 - then discovers other far more welcome news. In the wake of our initial, incredibly negative impressions of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Anniversary Edition on Nintendo Switch 2, we've taken an opportunity to more fully investigate the game's visual makeup.
Sega Channel Preserved: Over 140 Mega Drive ROMs Recovered
In what may be the Video Game History Foundation's largest combined release of preserved software and data since its founding, the American non-profit has released a haul of 144 previously unavailable Sega Mega Drive and Genesis ROMs connected to the Sega Channel - one of the world's first formal game-download services.
Skyrim Suffers From Kinect-level Input Lag on Switch 2
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on In DF Direct Weekly episode 244, the team discuss the big reveals and the games that caught their eye at The Game Awards, with the traditional complaints about the volume of CG trailers. Beyond that, Rich shares his impressions on the first PS3 emulator for PlayStation 5, Alex gets to grips with the wobbly performance of FSR Redstone frame generation and Oliver shares some eyebrow-raising results from Skyrim on Switch 2. And as usual, questions are answered.
DF Retro Super Show: Why Do We Play Retro?
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on DF Retro Super Show Episode #003, hosted by John Linneman and featuring Audi Sorlie, Marc 'Try4ce' Duddleson and Coury Carlson. At only three episodes into the DF Retro Super Show, we wanted to pull back to a more holistic view of the hobby and get to a question that we sometimes hear from brand-new listeners and viewers. As in, why do we get excited about retro gaming? Our panel digs into many dimensions of how our own retro gaming hobbies took shape over the years.
Digital Foundry's 2025 Graphics of the Year Awards
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on Sit back for 90 minutes or so and observe the conversation between John, Alex and Oliver that dictated the content of this article. In year-end tradition, Digital Foundry focuses on the state of the art in determining our most important best-of list: the 2025 Graphics of the Year Awards. While great gameplay factors into our picks, these selections by and large honor how game developers technically master their target platforms.
Review: Terminator 2D: No Fate And Neon Inferno - The 90s-Style Side-Scroller Redefined
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on John Linneman and Coury Carlson discuss Terminator 2D: No Fate and Neon Inferno as a pair of similar-yet-different retro-leaning sci-fi shooters recently launched on modern consoles and PCs, each with brilliant pixel art and tight mechanics.
The Evolution of Snow Rendering in Decades of PC Games
Features PC Snow From flat polygons to path-traced lighting over 28 years. Subscribe to Digital Foundry on As we draw closer to the Winter Holiday season, what better time to look back at the evolution of snow rendering? From CPU-driven voxels to flat polygons and simple texture maps, into the arrival of the programmable pixel shader and tessellation and - finally - into the new path-traced rendering era with unprecedented realism: DF's own Alex Battaglia reports.
Red Dead Redemption on Switch 2: A Great DLSS/60FPS Combo
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on Developer Rockstar finds further ways to improve the Red Dead Redemption console experience for Switch 2, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles in a brand new 2025 release. Via this separate native app for each system, we're getting much closer to PC's top settings - though even today, cutbacks are still necessary in grass LODs and shadows on PS5.
Red Dead Redemption Improves on PS5, Xbox Series, iOS
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on Developer Rockstar finds further ways to improve the Red Dead Redemption console experience for Switch 2, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles in a brand new 2025 release. Via this separate native app for each system, we're getting much closer to PC's top settings - though even today, cutbacks are still necessary in grass LODs and shadows on PS5.
Sonic Racing Crossworlds: Switch 2 Surprises Compared to Xbox Series S
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on DF Direct Episode #243, which includes the DF team's conversation about Sonic Racing Crossworlds on Switch 2. In September, Sonic Racing Crossworlds launched on nearly every platform imaginable, albeit with one exception. Switch 2 owners could only access the Switch 1 version at launch, with their own $10 Switch 2 upgrade path arriving in early December - discounted to $5 in its launch week.
Metroid Prime 4: How much of a downgrade is the Switch 1 experience?
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on Nintendo didn't release Metroid Prime 4 Switch 1 review code to journalists, so how does it stack up against Switch 2? Rich does some digging. Meanwhile, the team lament the end of the iconic Crucial RAM, but there's better news about the return of some kind of 32-bit PhysX support for RTX 50-series GPUs. Oliver talks Sonic Racing Crossworlds on Switch 2. John's impressed by TimeSplitters Rewind. And just how bad have things gotten for HDR support in video games?
Interview: Sektori's sole dev on Housemarque past, tuning Unity to 60fps
Interviews Sektori Unity Housemarque Features From Pascal to N-Gage, and from Resogun to solo success. Last month, indie game Sektori exploded seemingly out of nowhere onto PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S with a gameplay formula that felt instantly familiar. Its pounding techno music, retro-futuristic aesthetic and punchy twin-stick blasting rewound to the early PS3 and Xbox 360 era, when games like Geometry Wars and Super Stardust HD reinvigorated the arcade-shooter formula.
Hands-on: Helldivers 2's "Slim" PC Beta Does Wonders - Even on HDD
While Helldivers 2's latest update is mostly identical across all platforms, its PC version adds an optional, interesting toggle this week that previously sounded impossible: a "slim" installation profile. With this, the combined development efforts of Helldivers creator Arrowhead Studios and Sony support studio Nixxes have seemingly resolved the PC version's ever-ballooning file size.
Silent Hill 2 on Xbox: Series S' 30fps Comes at Quite the Cost
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on A year on from its initial release, Xbox Series X and S users can now step into Silent Hill's foggy streets. Being so heavily built around Unreal Engine 5's Lumen technology, the most fascinating subject here is Series S - where the cutbacks go further than you might expect. DF's Tom Morgan reports. After an apparent year-plus console-exclusivity period on PlayStation 5, Silent Hill 2 remake is now out on Xbox Series X and S consoles.
Review: Assassin's Creed Shadows Switch 2 impresses in handheld play
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on Oliver Mackenzie digs deep into the Switch 2 version of Assassin's Creed Shadows. Has Ubisoft followed up Star Wars Outlaws with a similarly impressive "impossible" port? Assassin's Creed Shadows saw Ubisoft transition its Anvil Engine to current-gen consoles with a range of forward-looking features, a fact that we've covered extensively - so where does this leave Nintendo's Switch 2 console hybrid?
Metroid Prime 4 is Switch 2's first true 120Hz 3D showcase
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on John Linneman's full video review of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, which uses slow-motion cameras in select sequences to emphasise the 120Hz mode's smoothness. Finally, in the comfort of our own testing labs, Digital Foundry can confirm exactly how Metroid Prime 4: Beyond utilises the Nintendo Switch 2's 120Hz mode in both handheld mode and on compatible TVs - and why we think you should play it that way.
Review: Metroid Prime 4 Proves Retro Studios' Prowess On Switch 2
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on John Linneman's video review of Metroid Prime 4. It's been 11 years since Retro Studios's last new video game, and even longer - nearly two decades - since their last Metroid Prime game launched on the Wii. At the same time, we've waited nearly seven years since Metroid Prime 4: Beyond was announced, with its seemingly troubled development reigns eventually being handed to Retro Studios in 2019.
Review: Marvel Cosmic Invasion Successfully Reboots Shredder's Revenge
As a 2D beat-'em-up, Marvel Cosmic Invasion ticks many positive boxes. Its hand-drawn sprite artwork is impeccable, in terms of translating the ever-familiar cast of Marvel superheroes into a refreshing, semi-"chibi" style with bountiful frames of animation. Its aesthetic, both in art and sound, resembles a Sega Saturn classic and recalls equal parts X-Men Arcade and Marvel vs Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes.
Ghost of Yōtei's 1.1 Update: Frame-Rate Unlocks, Impressive Results
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on After talking at length to Sucker Punch staffers about their recent launch of Ghost of Yōtei, we wondered how long we might wait until the game received any kind of visual-specific patch. The answer came late last week in the form of patch 1.1 on both base PS5 and PS5 Pro consoles, which delivers a new graphics mode and a frame-rate unlock for all modes on both systems.
The DF Retro Super Show Takes On The Brilliant Analogue 3D
News Analogue FPGA N64 DF Retro Plus, Everdrive updates - and original N64 quirks are missing. Subscribe to Digital Foundry on Weeks after we reviewed the Analogue 3D system and its impressive ability to run N64 games on modern TVs, we're taking an opportunity to refresh our impressions based on updates in the wild.
Is Switch 2's "Tiny" DLSS better than FSR 3?
News DF Direct Nintendo's lower quality AI upscaling option vs AMD's compute alternative. After years of hypothesising if or how Nvidia's machine learning-driven DLSS system would work on Nintendo Switch 2, we have finally pieced the picture together. The information is important in analysing present and future Switch 2 software, between ambitious DLSS-enabled ports like Star Wars Outlaws and first-party non-DLSS games like Kirby Air Riders. How does it work?
Review: Kirby Air Riders Surprises With Forward-Thinking Rendering
Reviews A fascinating new engine with great performance. Subscribe to Digital Foundry on In our 2025 bingo card, we admittedly did not predict this one: high marks across the board for Kirby Air Riders as one of the most technically sound and visually compelling Switch 2 games in the new console's first year. That statement, about a cartoony racing sequel to a coolly received 2003 GameCube game, admittedly lands inside the vacuum of the Tegra T239's limitations as a "current-gen" chipset.
Review: Tomb Raider Definitive Edition: painful downgrades on Switch 2
Subscribe to Digital Foundry on Tomb Raider is still worth playing all these years later - but the Switch 2 version is a big opportunity squandered. Last week, the Tomb Raider remastering team at Aspyr delivered an unannounced, surprise port of another Tomb Raider game: the 2013 series reboot in its Definitive Edition guise, now running on both Switch and Switch 2 consoles.
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