Technology Editor, Digital Foundry
Richard Leadbetter is the founder of Digital Foundry and Technology Editor for Eurogamer.net. Digital Foundry began life in 2004 as a video production facility and videogames consultancy business, before moving into video game capture technology in 2005 when solutions for acquiring HD video - 720p and 1080p - were non-existent on the market.
The ability to acquire lossless video from HDMI sources combined with Rich's existing editorial experience effectively kickstarted Digital Foundry's transition to editorial via the popular Face-Off articles, concentrating on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 platforms. In 2008, Rich devised the concept of using captured HDMI data to analyse performance in video games, revolutionising the way we understand how games present and play. As the popularity of Digital Foundry grew, Rich formed a team to help expand coverage on Eurogamer and beyond. In 2015, Digital Foundry fully embraced an expansion into video, where data, analysis and narrative were combined to create a new style of game technology review. In October 2020, Digital Foundry passed the 1m subscriber threshold.
Rich's career began directly after leaving college at age 18 in July 1990, after successfully interviewing with Julian 'Jaz' Rignall for a position as Staff Writer on Computer and Video Games magazine at EMAP. Here, he wrote not just for CVG but also in a freelance capacity for Mean Machines magazine, the defining UK games magazine of 1990s. Within 18 months, Rich had moved over to Mean Machines full-time and when the title was split into separate Sega and Nintendo magazines in 1992, Rich became Editor of Mean Machines Sega, aged 21. Subsequent to MMS, Rich worked on the official Sega Magazine followed by the multi-format mag, Maximum, before moving onto the official Sega Saturn Magazine.
In 1999, Rich moved on from EMAP to join Computec Media's expansion into the UK, working as joint Editor on PlayStation World magazine, and creating the firm's DVD video production facility, adding direct-feed quality video to the magazine's written words. In the four years that followed, Rich moved on into an editorial director role at Computec, before the firm was acquired by Future Publishing at the tail-end of 2003, where he left the business and founded Digital Foundry the next month.
Rich has been in the games business for over 30 years, covering seven of the nine console generations - and wants to bring back Mean Machines.
