RPCS3, a multi-platform open-source PlayStation 3 emulator and debugger, has revealed that 2,681 of the total 3,559 PS3 titles are now compatible with its software, meaning a huge majority of games can now be played on Windows, Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD. The developers of the app said on X that RPCS3 is continually being worked on and that they’re targeting full preservation of the entire PS3 library. This is an important development for PlayStation 3 owners and enthusiasts, especially as Sony said that it will stop making physical game discs by 2028 and shut down the PlayStation Store for PS3 and PS Vita a year before that.

Ensuring that over 2,600 games are compatible with your emulation is no mean feat, especially for a project that’s mostly supported by Patreon and volunteers. The team has already achieved more than 75% compatibility with the entire PS3 library, with less than a thousand titles needing to be worked on. Of this, 816 are now playable but encounter serious glitches or performance problems, 60 reach the game’s main menu but fail to load past that, while only two titles initialize but are stuck on a black screen. If you want to check if you can now play your favorite PS3 title on your PC, you can go to the RPCS3 compatibility page and type in the name of the game.

This is a huge win for the game preservation community, as this would ensure that you can continue playing your PS3 game library even if your console no longer works. The beautiful thing about RPCS3 is that it works with a lot of different hardware — aside from support for Windows, Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD, it’s also compatible with both x86 and arm64, so you can install it on some of the best handheld gaming PCs to play your PS3 games on the go.

Emulation is quite controversial among game publishers and developers, and many companies have historically taken steps against those who make these apps. However, the courts have said that emulation isn’t necessarily illegal, as long as the people who use them only play games that they’ve already paid for. In fact, the Patreon page of RPCS3 was once hit by a DMCA takedown request from Atlus, the maker of Persona 5, arguing that “no version of the P5 game should be playable on this platform; and [the RPCS3] developers are infringing on our IP by making such games playable.”

While it ultimately failed in its request, it showed how some companies think that their games should only be played on the platform that they designed it for. They argue that emulators might introduce performance issues, meaning players will not get the optimal experience when playing their games. However, RPCS3 has proven that emulators could deliver a similar (or even better) performance than the PS3, with newer versions getting a 5% to 7% boost in FPS numbers compared to previous builds and even hitting more than 1500 FPS on the Minecraft title screen.

For years, the PS5 emulation scene has remained dormant, with updates few and far between as most projects become abandonware. However, Sony's recent decision to stop physical disc production and the impending release of GTA VI later this year have created an unprecedented demand in the market. All of a sudden, an influx of PS5 emulators has popped up online, and they're swiftly hitting development milestones, including actually being able to boot recent PS5 titles.

The most prominent name in the news cycle is SharpEmu, which serves as a PS5 emulator for Windows. It's written entirely in C# and works more like a translation layer since modern consoles and PC share the same x86 underlying architecture. SharpEmu allows the PC to execute CPU instructions natively while translating OS-specific API calls and graphics.

Since it's aiming for accuracy, only some 2D titles such as Dreaming Sarah are running on SharpEmu with solid performance and no hiccups. As far as 3D titles go, that's a different story since it's significantly harder to emulate those. At first, the PS5 remake of Demon's Souls successfully booted, but it didn't go past the startup screen. Then, in a major development, Discord user RShantila was able to boot Astro Bot, which is a PlayStation exclusive from 2024, on SharpEmu.

Getting such a recent game to run is extremely promising and shows that PS5 emulation is currently outpacing PS4 emulation at the same point in its life cycle. And SharpEmu is just one project among what's starting to seem like a sea of hopes and dreams.

The other emulator gaining traction is KytyPS5, which started as a cross-platform PS4 and PS5 emulator in 2021 but was abandoned in 2022. Fast forward four years and developer Nmzik has revived the project, creating their own fork that focuses only on PlayStation 5. According to reports online, within just a few weeks, KytyPS5 can boot commercial PS5 games running in Unreal Engine 4/5, Unity, and other custom engines.

KytyPS5 was able to boot and run Silent Hill: The Short Message till the menu screen. Remember, 3D games were previously limited to just their boot screens, so this is yet another major accomplishment. However, earlier today, the project's GitHub page was updated to show two new 3D games actually running with their graphics being properly rendered, shattering all expectations set thus far.

These two games are PowerWash Simulator and Pac-Man World, both of which are playable with functional gameplay, though we don't have any idea about performance or stability. Even more impressively, and perhaps more on-topic, the KytyPS5 version 0.0.3 successfully booted the commercial PS5 version of Grand Theft Auto V far enough to display the loading screens, main splash art, and actually navigate the in-game display settings.

KytyPS5 has also recently received updates to its shader compiler for better graphics, better memory management that leads to faster load times, and better audio support as well. The emulator works on Windows for now, but a Linux version is also planned for the future.

Finally, we need to mention RPCSX, which isn't exactly an emulator but rather just a research project dedicated to better understanding both PS4 and PS5 software. The devs are still working on being able to boot games from the user interface, but in a race like this, you need every hand on deck, and the team behind RPCS3 is one of the most experienced in the field.

The PS5 emulation scene has suddenly exploded, and the pace of these developments is astonishing. At this trajectory, it won't be unreasonable to expect GTA V to actually run on SharpEmu or KytyPS5 by next month. That being said, emulation is a marathon that takes a long time to perfect, so it's almost guaranteed that the official PC version of GTA VI will be out long before the emulated version becomes playable.

A new Nintendo Switch dock shell has been designed to mimic the sleek undulating curves of the classic Nintendo 64 (N64). Dubbed the 64BITDOCK, this Switch accessory kit can be bundled with an 'N64 cart' that will help you keep your Switch Game Cards tidy. The 64BITDOCK is available now direct from the maker on Etsy, priced from $89.

In the assorted images of the 64BITDOCK from Nintendo Switch accessories specialist Krasivoe, you can see that the ‘N64’ cradles the Switch (Nintendo Switch / Switch 2 / LCD / OLED) horizontally, so the upper curves of the ‘N64’ are uninterrupted. Pleasingly, the ‘N64’ cart slot is actually useful here as a Nintendo Switch Game Card silo if you buy the optional magnetically secured storage receptacle (with 6 slots).

● Check out this product on Etsy

This is a cosmetic kit for your original Switch Dock

The 64BITDOCK is basically a snap-on cladding kit for your existing original Switch Dock. What you are buying is a set of “custom plates inspired by the iconic 64-bit console… [which] snap onto your Switch dock in seconds, transforming it into a nostalgic centerpiece while keeping all sides open to prevent overheating.”

The Krasivoe 64BITDOCK is available in light grey and ‘original’ charcoal finishes, with matching Game Card storage receptacles. For the dock plates alone, the Etsy store asks $89. If you want a Game Card cartridge holder, the price rises to $103. Worldwide shipping is $6.99.

This isn’t Krasivoe’s first retro-inspired Switch Dock makeover kit. It also sells the 8BITDOCK, 16BITDOCK, and CUBEDOCK. Fans of retro Nintendo consoles will surely know what those look like.

The market is overflowing with Nintendo Switch docks, so Krasivoe has cannily sought to offer some eye-catching differentiation in the form of this 64BITDOCK. Its $89 starting price is quite a premium offering, though, as it doesn’t even include docking hardware – it’s just a cosmetic 3D-printed shell for your original Nintendo Switch Dock. We see that you can get basic, fully functional Switch docks from $20 or $30 on Amazon, with original ‘toaster’ style replacements priced at about $40.

A Brazilian gamer who lost his Microsoft account and all his digital games has won a court order forcing the company to hand it all back, after support staff told him to simply repurchase his library. The user, who posts as Ordo_Liberal on Reddit, shared a screenshot of a small-claims ruling in the Xbox subreddit that gives Microsoft 15 days to restore access or face fines and roughly $400 (R$2,000) in damages. He said the account had two-factor authentication enabled when it was flagged and permanently suspended, and that none of Microsoft's recovery options allowed him to regain access before he filed his lawsuit.

According to the support emails he posted, Microsoft suspended the account after detecting what it described as unauthorized access, and said an investigation found the account's security information had been changed. The company treated the suspension as permanent and directed him to buy his games again rather than reinstating the ones already tied to the account.

Anyone with a large Microsoft account might want to take note here, because the suspension didn’t target a single game or console but the user’s entire account. Microsoft accounts can carry Xbox purchases, Windows licenses, store apps, 365, and OneDrive data, and a permanent suspension blocks all of it, even, as in this case, when you’ve got strong security and two-factor authentication set up.

Brazil's Consumer Defense Code and its small-claims track allow individuals to bring cases without a lawyer and without paying court costs, meaning Ordo_Liberal was able to take Microsoft to court without incurring any costs. If Microsoft misses the payment deadline, an additional 10% penalty will be imposed. While the damages awarded in this case are minor, it's notable that Microsoft has been compelled to restore the account and its contents, which runs counter to the standard platform position that customers license digital games rather than own them.

This, of course, is a first-instance small-claims judgment, not binding precedent, and it covers one account in one jurisdiction. Courts elsewhere have gone the other way. Chinese courts have recognized game accounts as inheritable property, while U.S. rulings generally treat games as revocable licenses. The case comes as both Microsoft and Sony push players away from physical media, with Xbox testing a way to convert discs into digital entitlements and Sony ending new PlayStation disc production in 2028. Microsoft hasn’t publicly commented on the ruling.

Gamers who find themselves “limited” by SteamOS capabilities can now more confidently install Windows on their Steam hardware. Valve just released the Steam Hardware - Windows Resources page on Steam, which contains Windows drivers for the Steam Deck LCD, Steam Deck OLED, and Steam Machine. This means that those who want to replace the stock SteamOS with Windows 11 on their devices can now do so more easily, and they don’t have to hunt around the internet for drivers just to ensure that all the parts and components on their console will play nicely with Windows.

The drivers on the page include those for the APU, graphics, SD Card reader, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Audio, depending on which Steam hardware you’re driving. However, Valve said, “We are providing these resources as is and are unfortunately unable to offer 'Windows on Steam Hardware' support. If you get stuck and need a way back to the default SteamOS, please follow these recovery instructions.”

This is the main reason why Valve refuses to subsidize the Steam Machine — since owners can essentially do whatever they want to the living room PC console, selling one does not automatically guarantee that the company will make back any discounts it offers through game sales. This is why even though the Steam Machine is highly rated for Steam Deck users who want to upgrade to a more powerful device, its relatively high price puts it at a disadvantage compared to competitors like the PS5 or Xbox.

Many gamers would likely prefer SteamOS over Windows, especially as it offers far less bloat than Microsoft’s operating system. Valve is in fact working on SteamOS to make it more compatible with a general release and allow it to be installed on hardware that features Intel CPUs/GPUs and Nvidia GPUs. But because many anti-cheat apps still aren’t compatible with Linux (hence, SteamOS), installing Windows on Steam hardware is currently the only way that gamers can enjoy titles that require them.

It’s unfortunate that SteamOS doesn’t have any dual-boot capabilities at the moment, as that would give gamers the best of both worlds — use Windows and accept the performance hit if they want to play games that require specialized anti-cheat apps and then switch to SteamOS for all the other titles they enjoy. Valve said that it’s already working on this capability, but hasn’t given a fixed timeline for when it will arrive.

A Change.org petition urging Sony to keep making physical PlayStation games has passed 172,000 signatures, six days after the company announced that it intends to stop producing discs for new games in January 2028. The petition, started by Jade Pearce, CEO of Canadian retailer PNP Games, climbed from around 12,000 signatures on its first day to more than 172,000 by the morning of July 7. Sony hasn’t responded, and the factory that prints its discs has already started moving some staff and equipment onto a different product.

Pearce launched the campaign the same day as Sony's announcement, and it gathered 40,000 names within 48 hours. The petition contends that a boxed download code is a revocable license rather than owned property, references Sony's recent removal of purchased movies from customer accounts, and lists the used-game trade among the jobs at risk. "We are not against digital," Pearce writes. "We are against digital being the only option."

Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad estimated that Sony sold more than 70 million physical discs in 2025, even with digital purchases sitting at roughly 80% of full-game sales. Sony's PlayStation social accounts have stayed dormant since July 1.

Sony DADC's plant in Thalgau, Austria, produces about 600,000 discs a day, roughly half of them PlayStation titles, and has begun shifting some workers onto optical microlens production, DADC CEO Dietmar Tanzer told Austrian broadcaster ORF Salzburg. The company has put €30 million ($34 million) into new equipment, according to Engadget, expects disc output to fall to about 10% of current volume by 2028, and plans to retrain roughly 300 staff rather than lay them off.

Optical microlenses steer and concentrate light across very small distances and appear in camera modules, AR and VR headsets, fiber-optic gear, and automotive lighting. Markus Streibl, head of micro optics at Sony DADC, said mass production could begin as early as 2027.

The PlayStation 6 is reportedly in development without a built-in disc drive, which would leave Sony's hardware team to reintegrate one if the company changed course. Sony's standalone PS5 disc drive has carried a one-per-order purchase cap since at least March last year, predating the disc announcement, and leaked PS6 specifications described in earlier reports frame any drive as an optional backward-compatibility accessory. Grand Theft Auto 6, easily the biggest game of the decade so far, will ship on PlayStation as a boxed download code with no playable disc, ahead of the 2028 cutoff.

Sony has told publishers they can still book disc runs for games released in 2027 or earlier, so existing physical libraries will keep working on supported consoles. Whether the fact that the petition is now pushing 200,000 signatures will compel Sony to move or abandon the January 2028 date is unclear; Sony delayed its 2021 shutdown of the PS3 and PS Vita stores after similar backlash, though that closure is now scheduled again alongside the disc decision.

Microsoft's gaming division, Xbox, will eliminate approximately 3,200 jobs over its 2027 fiscal year in an attempt to turn around its floundering business. The cuts include offloading four studios with plans to spin off another, though no announced first-party games are being canceled.

Around 1,600 of those jobs are being eliminated today, and the rest will occur throughout the rest of the year.

"We are operating at margins that are 3-10x lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses," Xbox CEO Asha Sharma wrote in a note to Xbox employees, pointing out that investments in studios and Game Pass did not add as much value as expected. She wrote that the business typically loses 64 cents for every dollar invested. "As that happened, our core business weakened, and we added more teams, more investment, and more time, hoping for a better outcome. And now the industry is facing the most severe hardware crisis in its history. We must reset XBOX." She wrote that she has a goal for Xbox to reach more than a billion people per day.

Xbox is selling Compulsion Games (South of Midnight) and Double Fine (Psychonauts, Kiln), back to their management as independent studios, along with their catalogs, intellectual property, and funding for their next games.

Meanwhile, Ninja Theory and Undead Labs are being sold to unidentified "new ownership" and will continue to work on Senua and State of Decay 3 with Xbox, respectively.

The fifth studio, Arkane, is entering consultation to review options due to France's strict labor laws. The company is currently working on Marvel's Blade and previously worked on Redfall and Deathloop.

In Sharma's letter, she wrote that changes will come to Activision, Bethesda and ZeniMax, Blizzard, King, Mojang, and Xbox Game Studios. Some will focus more on popular franchise games. Bloomberg reports that ZeniMax will focus specifically on its biggest names, such as Fallout, Doom, The Elder Scrolls, Quake, and Wolfenstein.

Mojang and King will report directly to Sharma, who wrote that those two studios are the largest in terms of monthly active players, and bring "critical geographic, demographic, and differentiation to XBOX." But in other areas, Sharma is greatly reducing the amount of management for a flatter organizational chart.

Xbox has also found its first-ever chief operating officer. Helen Chiang, the corporate vice president of the Minecraft business, was promoted to streamlining changes to how the business operates, including "end-to-end P&L responsibility across content, hardware, platform, and services."

"These changes are about a bigger future for XBOX, not a smaller one," Sharma wrote. "The next decade of gaming will be larger, more global, and more creative than anything we’ve seen before. This year, we’ll invest as much in XBOX as we ever have, but we’ll invest with greater focus, greater discipline, and greater clarity, all in service of making XBOX where the world plays and creates."

Microsoft's other recent moves include bringing more games exclusively to Xbox consoles, such as Gears of War: E-Day, returning to an all-caps "XBOX" brand, and more public discussion of Project Helix, the company's next home console that's also set to play PC games.

Sharma was named CEO of Xbox (then Microsoft Gaming) in February, succeeding Phil Spencer. Spencer built up Xbox with major acquisitions of Game Studios and a push to bring Xbox games everywhere with Game Pass.

Sony's one-per-order purchase limit on the PS5 Disc Drive, widely cited this week as a response to panic buying after the company said it will end physical disc production for new PlayStation games in January 2028, has been on PlayStation Direct since at least March 2025. Archived captures of the product page cited by HotHardware carry the same wording, "Due to high demand, there is a limit of 1 per order," more than a year before Sony's announcement. Meanwhile, the largest petition against the disc cutoff sat beyond 74,000 signatures on the morning of July 4th, closing in on its 75,000 goal.

Sony did add something to the product page this week: a bolded notice stating that from January 2028, newly released PlayStation games will be sold on the PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital format only, and that discs for games released before that date will continue to play on supported consoles. We checked the live U.S. listing today and found both the new notice and the long-standing order limit, along with a line warning that household limits may apply.

The detachable drive, $79.99 at retail, is the only way to play physical games or Blu-ray movies on the PS5 Digital Edition and PS5 Pro, neither of which comes with one. eBay listings for the accessory reached $100 to $130 this week, according to HotHardware, which also noted that Best Buy stocks the drive at retail price with no order limit. Sony hasn't said whether it intends to keep manufacturing the drive after the disc cutoff, or how long the PlayStation Direct restriction will remain in place.

A Change.org petition organized by Jade Pearce, CEO of Canadian game retailer PNP Games, gathered more than 74,000 signatures in three days, and Push Square counted at least 15 separate petitions urging Sony to reverse course. The backlash has already spread beyond petitions, with various companies poking fun at Sony's decision, including GitHub, which announced that it'll begin offering CD-ROM copies of public repositories as a jab at the decision.

Regardless, Sony's disc manufacturing plans appear to be set in stone. PlayStation output accounts for roughly half of the volume at Sony DADC's plant in Thalgau, Austria, with new game disc orders making up around 20% of that share, CEO Dietmar Tanzer told Austrian broadcaster ORF in comments reported by Wccftech. The site's roughly 300 workers are being retrained to produce optical microlenses, with mass production of the new line set to begin in early 2027, a year before the disc cutoff takes effect.

Brian “Biscuit” Watson, a game developer whose work spans four decades, recently went on YouTube to tell some of his stories. One of the most interesting revelations he shared on The Retro Collective was the existence of the PlayStation 1 controller prototype, called the PlayStation Puga, that housed an entire PlayStation 1 console. Watson said that this “handheld” was specifically built for the Brazilian market, which had tight import regulations, and was also intended to be manufactured within the country. It was also supposed to come with 4GB of memory that could hold 10 games, and four AA-sized batteries apparently power it and connect to your TV via an included cable.

The prototype was working really well, but it encountered issues with game titles that were intended for inclusion. “The unfortunate problem is that Sony licensing couldn’t get their act together about the royalty terms for each of the games. So, it’s like they’re trying to get in touch with Rockstar and a few other places, and they were wanting way too much in the way of royalties,” Watson said. “But what really stuck in my craw with that one was even if it was a Sony game, they had to negotiate with a separate unit of Sony, and they were never happy about how much royalty they were getting.”

Since the gaming controller and console combo was designed to sell at a low price, they expected to make only 10 cents per unit sold and were unhappy with the pricing. Since it seemed Sony would not be able to ship any games with the PS1 controller console, it canceled the entire project.

Watson actually showed the completed controller to the present audience, but it unfortunately doesn’t run. It does boot into the debug stub, but he doesn’t have any of the other required software to make it run. Still, it’s equipped with an Arm-based processor running at 650 MHz and emulated the PlayStation 1 pretty well. It also lasted about 20 hours on a single set of four AA batteries, which is an impressive feat for the time (and still is today). Nevertheless, the project was not wasted at the emulator built for that system eventually found its way into the Sony Xperia Play.

An unlucky gamer has taken to Reddit after their brand-new Steam Machine was hit with a "red line of death" after just 20 minutes of use. u/me_hill posted on the r/steammachine subreddit, saying that they played No Man’s Sky for just five minutes and then updated the machine before it bricked itself. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that the Redditor could do much to troubleshoot the issue. The Steam website says that their particular issue, which is marked by the right half of the LED bar turning into a breathing red light paired with a solid red light on the indicator LED, indicates GPU failure, a possibly fatal issue harkening back to the Xbox 360's Red Ring of Death.

Well, the Steam Machine was pretty cool for the 20 minutes that it worked from r/steammachine

Valve was only able to produce a limited number of Steam Machine units for its initial run, which is why it had to resort to a randomized queue to deter scalpers. While the company did not say how many consoles it had available, it’s likely still in the thousands (if not tens of thousands), meaning there’s some chance that it will ship units that will fail within the first year. For now, it seems that this Redditor’s post is an isolated incident and it’s unclear what caused the failure. u/me_hill said that they already put in a ticket to Steam support, but they haven’t updated yet on whether the company has responded already.

The Steam Machine is one of the most anticipated console releases in the past few years, which has been delayed for several months. It was also released at a relatively high price of $,1049, making it even more expensive than the PlayStation 5 Pro, as Valve cannot afford to subsidize the hardware with video game sales. It was initially thought that the living room PC console would launch at around $750, but as the company announced it amid a memory shortage, its engineers said that the company had to increase the price by around the same level that the Steam Deck experienced in May 2026.

This is certainly a disappointment for u/me_hill, who probably initially felt quite lucky as they were one of the selected few given the privilege of buying the first batch of Steam Machines. In an ironic twist of fate, they were also incredibly unlucky to become one of the first victims of the “red line of death,” an early nickname for the failure and a nod to the “red ring of death” that indicated a critical hardware failure on the Xbox 360 launched around 20 years ago. Nevertheless, other Redditors commented that this is par for the course for customers who buy the first run of a product, with the Redditor themselves saying, “That’s early adoption, I guess.”

We’re hoping that Valve can address this issue for u/me_hill as soon as possible, and that they don’t have to wait months before they can get their hands on a replacement unit, despite its limited stock. In the meantime, they’ll have to settle with their existing equipment (or maybe even get one of the best budget gaming laptops instead) while they’re waiting for their Steam Machine to be fixed.

Yesterday, Sony revealed that the PlayStation Store will be shutting down for PS3 and PS Vita consoles in July 2027. The irony seemed to be lost on the company, pairing up a disc-killing announcement for the future of PlayStation with news that literally serves as proof of why that's a bad idea. Regardless of the rationale, digital archivists are now kicking into gear to preserve PS3 game data with whatever time they have left, and it seems like RPCS3 is leading the awareness campaign.

RPCS3 is a huge name in the emulation scene. These guys are responsible for the most prominent PS3 emulator out there right now, having recently made a breakthrough in performance for all tiers of hardware. RPCS3 is open source, so naturally the project gravitates towards a preservationist culture where everything must be protected for future generations to come.

Emulators are only as good as the software available to run on them, so these efforts are inextricably tied together. The RPCS3 team suggests using no-intro.org, which is a database that tracks everything that needs to be saved. It doesn't directly host any ROMs; rather, it hosts metadata such as cryptographic signatures (hashes like CRC32, MD5, SHA-1), exact file sizes, serial numbers, and revision histories.

It serves as a ledger for the community, so it knows what has already been verified and backed up, and what still needs to be found before it's permanently removed from storefronts. RPCS3 is actually built around no-intro.org since it features automated integrity checks for PSN content. It can check your dumped .pkg file and tell you whether it's corrupt and precisely what's missing if it is.

For instance, to troubleshoot a niche, digital-only PS3 game that doesn't emulate well on RPCS3, the team would need to look at the original, optimized copy of the game first to understand how it should work. Since the game isn't popular, there's a high chance no one ever bothered to dump it — no-intro.org actively tries to prevent this from happening thanks to its contributors knowing exactly what to archive.

Once PSN goes down for PS3 next year, we will be at risk of losing a goldmine of content that was never preserved in its physical form. With the state of the gaming and hardware industry in general, there hasn't been a warning call like this in ages that has reminded people just how illusory an all-digital future could be.

Hardware is so expensive right now that even researchers from Google are suggesting cloud gaming as the way forward, or that leasing silicon would be more viable than buying it. PlayStation stopping disc production in 2028, with Xbox rumored to follow, means that it won't be long before ownership becomes an ephemeral concept cloaked by debates on efficiency and convenience, all while the actual art itself becomes lost media.

Microsoft is reportedly working on a feature that would enable the digitization of disc-based titles, according to the Verge. This would assist players in playing older games on newer consoles, especially if Microsoft follows Sony's PlayStation in abandoning physical game production.

According to the report, employees at Xbox are testing the "Disc2Digital" feature, which will work on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S discs, but not the original Xbox or Xbox 360. This restriction is likely due to Microsoft's plans to move more games online with the Xbox One.

Discs will continue to work after you've enabled the digital entitlement, but you'll lose your digital rights to the game if you transfer the disc to someone else by loaning it or selling it. The digital games will also reportedly be able to be streamed if they're part of Xbox Play Anywhere.

The Verge also claims that some Xbox One games may not have the feature, quoting a Microsoft warning to testers: "It all depends on how and when the disc was manufactured and it may not have the features we need for this program."

But reporter Tom Warren says Microsoft hasn't made a final call on whether Project Helix, the next-generation Xbox, will come with a disc drive. On the Series X, Microsoft has options with and without the disc drive, though it had one at launch. If Microsoft does opt to go all-digital, this might help soothe some wounds for Xbox players who rely heavily on a physical collection and want to play on the new system.

It would still be a step back from backwards compatibility on the Xbox Series X and Series S, however, which includes most Xbox One games, many Xbox 360 games, and over 50 original Xbox games, many of which you can play with the original disc.

Project Helix is also heavily rumored to play PC games from third-party launchers.

Sony's announcement this morning that it would stop producing first and third-party discs for the PlayStation in 2028 drew vocal opposition from fans who prefer physical media or preserving console games. PlayStation has previously detailed (PDF, see page 10) that approximately 8 out of 10 PlayStation games are bought digitally on the PS4 and PS5 (78% for the fiscal year 2025, but as high as 85% in Q4).

The PlayStation maker's plans have led some analysts to believe the PS6 will launch in 2028.

Some developers and publishers aren't waiting for the change. Take Two Interactive and Rockstar Games is set to launch Grand Theft Auto 6 on November 19, and it will not sell the game on a disc. If you buy a box at retail, it will have a download code.

Well, it's official: Sony has just announced that it will stop production of PlayStation game discs starting in January 2028. After January 2028, no more game discs will be produced, and games will only be available through the PlayStation Store and "at retailers in digital formats only." It's a move that anyone could have guessed was coming but which is nonetheless frustrating to many fans, as it essentially rings the death knell for physical media in cutting-edge gaming.

I say "anyone could have guessed" because you'd have to have your head in the sand to ignore all the factors pointing this way. The biggest of such factors is arguably the reality that Blu-ray drive production has sharply wound down outside of game consoles. But there's also the fact that the vast majority of games purchased today are already purchased digitally; in Q4 2025, 85% of PlayStation games were purchased digitally, and if you zoom out to look at the entire US video game market, the PC and mobile markets are already effectively 100% digital.

That's what Sony is talking about when it says it's making the change "in response to shifting trends in consumer preference." Still, the majority isn't everyone, and there are absolutely die-hard gamers out there who demand physical copies because a digital license isn't ownership. All you need to look at to understand this stark reality is the incident just three days ago where PlayStation announced that it is removing over 500 movies from customers' accounts in the UK and Europe because of an expired licensing agreement.

Defenders of the move will point to the aforementioned 100% digital nature of PC gaming as a counterpoint against the pushback to the death of physical media. But there's a key difference, and that's that PC gaming is done on PCs, opening up tools like backups and private servers for game preservation. This is possible on consoles too, of course, but it's a lot more work.

In January 2028, when the move takes effect, the PlayStation 5 will have just passed its seventh birthday; obviously, the PlayStation 6 will have either just launched or be on the horizon, depending on whose leaks you believe. Those same leaks have claimed that the PlayStation 6 would have the option for a detachable or optional disc drive, and that might still be true, but if so, it would exist exclusively for backward compatibility reasons. If that ends up being the case, we will have to applaud Sony for taking care of its customers that way; it would have been just as easy to leave PS4 and PS5 owners with large physical libraries in the lurch, with no way to play their old games on the new machine. Of course, if those rumors of an optional drive turn out to be false, "leaving players in the lurch" is exactly what Sony will be doing.

It's impossible to deny that there is a certain satisfaction in cracking open a plastic case, pulling out a physical disc, and inserting it into the console to select your game. It's also undeniable that it's really nice to be able to scroll a list of all my games and then click on any of them and be playing in seconds. The cold truth is that digital game downloads are more convenient and easier to manage for everyone at every step of the process, and so this move was coming eventually, no matter what.

However, it is darkly ironic that Sony announced this news in the very same tweet where it announced that it's shutting down the PlayStation Store on the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita systems. After the first attempt at this was walked back in 2021 after community outcry, the company has decided five years later that it simply has to cut off support because the old storefronts supposedly can't be updated to support "modern commerce systems," including contemporary global payment processing security standards. There's no technical reason that's true, of course; the reality is simply that Sony doesn't want to continue supporting these nearly 20-year-old machines anymore.

That's wholly understandable, but at the same time, it really does provide the perfect backdrop for the death of discs, as later PlayStation consoles can't play PS3 games, neither disc nor digital. That means that, when the PlayStation Store for PS3 finally dies in July 2027, there will be no official way to acquire and play those games... besides used discs, of course. As for PlayStation 6, that stands to be one of the first consoles to never have a used game market, a momentous end of an era.

Sony has unceremoniously informed its PlayStation customers in the United Kingdom that 551 movies from StudioCanal will be removed from their accounts on September 1, 2026. If you bought any of the films included in this list, you'll no longer be able to access them. There is no workaround, no method to offload them to another device; just absolute, emotionless deletion that doesn't even offer refunds.

The lineup includes some truly legendary movies such as Terminator 2, Apocalypse Now, Mulholland Drive, Moonlight, and Dawn Till Dusk — essentially every film that StudioCanal distributed in the UK. Sony cites licensing agreements between it and the French company as the reason behind the sudden removal. The announcement doesn't include any other details beyond the list of the affected films.

Sony began selling movies and shows on the PlayStation Store in 2008. During the PS3 era, you could actually transfer the content to view on other devices, but that feature was removed on the PS4. In 2021, after the PS5 had launched, Sony stopped selling films and TV series entirely on PSN, which meant that it likely wouldn't renew contractual agreements with studios and distributors going forward.

The only exception to this rule was in 2023, when Sony began a similar deletion spree of Discovery Network shows but signed a new licensing deal to keep them on the platform. It remains to be seen whether public backlash can usher in a similar response for StudioCanal movies this time. You might not have heard its name before, but the studio is responsible for bringing countless popular movies to the UK.

For now, this is yet another distressing reminder of the digital precedent corporations have set for us. You no longer truly own any digital content you purchase; rather, it's just being licensed to you indefinitely. And you agree to this precedent "willingly" when you accept all those terms and conditions that veil ownership rights under fine print.

The moment the provider decides it's not viable to maintain said content, you're at risk of losing access to something you already paid for. It's like a subscription service with extra steps — as if people aren't growing wary enough of those already — except it was never advertised like that.

Despite Valve’s efforts to prevent scalpers from taking advantage of the Steam Machine’s limited supply, there are still a few opportunists out there who are taking the risk of selling the pre-order slot that they have won. A quick search for “Steam Machine” on eBay would pull up results for pre-order slots sold at a significant premium above Valve’s own $1,049 retail price.

We see various listings for the 512GB version selling between $1,363.70 to $2,800 — a 30% to 167% premium. Scalper prices for the 2TB version are far more egregious, with listings priced between $2,399 and $2,899, making it 93% to 140% more expensive than buying it directly from the Steam Store.

Valve has already anticipated this event, especially given the massive interest in the Steam Machine and limited supply. This has happened multiple times before, especially with the arrival of the PlayStation 5 and every Nvidia GPU launch since the 30 series. To avoid frustration among legitimate gamers who couldn’t score a console during the first run of pre-orders but see several listings from third-party sellers with excruciatingly tall markups, Valve set up a randomized reservation system to make buying the Steam Machine as fair as possible.

“A launch that starts at a specific day and time tends to reward bots, people with fast internet connections, talented gaming fingers for quick F5/refresh reactions, and those who can schedule their life around that moment. By accepting reservation signups over the course of a few days, without any incentive to be first, we're hoping to take away some of that friction,” the company said on the Steam Machine FAQ section. “The longer timeframe also allows us to do some extra validation on the signups to make sure they're real accounts, with only one per household.”

There are some stringent requirements before a Steam account can be considered for the privilege of buying a Steam Machine. This includes: a Steam account in good standing, a Steam purchase on or before April 27, 2026, and only one Steam Machine per household. These criteria will make it quite difficult for professional scalpers to scoop up multiple Steam Machine units and sell them at a premium on the used market. Despite that, it seems a few people are willing to trade their slot for cash and have put their reservations up for sale on eBay.

If you weren’t lucky enough to secure a Steam Machine reservation, you might get tempted to pick one up from these scalpers. However, we strongly advise against that, as you’re taking several risks. For one, there is no guarantee that the seller you’re talking to is legitimate. Even though they may have 100% rating, it’s quite easy to game the system to achieve this. You might end up getting scammed out of your hard-earned cash, especially if they ask for payment first before shipping the item.

While being among the first to get a Steam Machine might bring a good feeling, you shouldn’t let FOMO dictate your spending decisions. In fact, it might even be better to wait a little longer because the first batch of Steam Machines will only have one 16GB stick of RAM, meaning it won’t have the advantages of dual-channel memory. While there’s no guarantee that future releases will use two 8GB sticks instead, Valve said this may change.

Last fall, a family member asked me for help with an older PC, which was trying to run Windows 10 and several programs on a cramped 110 GB SSD. At first, I figured I could clone the boot drive onto a more spacious drive so the OS and programs had more space to stretch out.

But the thought of juggling USB enclosures or shuffling drives in and out of my desktop filled me with dread as I pictured sitting there for hours, getting the system back up and running. So I looked into getting an M.2 SSD cloner, and was surprised to see they can be found for less than $50. And Rosewill’s upgraded Rosewill M.2 NVMe Cloner + Eraser, which just dropped down to its lowest-ever price of $47, is even more handy than a basic cloner, also offering four one-touch offline erase modes, or all your data deletion needs.

• Check out this deal at Amazon

I don't love the plastic shell of Rosewill's cloner and eraser, but it's one of the more affordable options with these capabilities. I own the stepped-down model that doesn’t have the erase function (also on sale for $39, and using it is pretty straightforward. You plug in the included USB-C power adapter, put your source drive in the left slot, the destination drive in the right slot, press the power button on the back, and a few logos light up, letting you know you're ready to go. Press the clone button on the top, and drive cloning will commence (provided your destination is the same size or larger than your source).

That's assuming you want to do an offline clone. But because I needed resize the partition between the old 110 GB and the newer Team Group 512 GB SSD, I used the second included USB-C cable and connected my Rosewill cloner to my laptop and powered up the device. Both drives were recognized in Windows within seconds, so I fired up the excellent free DiskGenius software, cloned the old partition to a new drive with a few clicks, and then used the software to drag the boot partition to the full size of the new drive. The whole process took just a few minutes, since the Rosewill cloner supports 20 Gbps USB, and I wasn't exactly copying a huge partition.

The Rosewill cloner is also handy for just checking the contents of old M.2 drives you may have lying around. But if that's all you need, you can buy an NVMe enclosure or a single-drive dock. I also own a version of this model from Suitok, which costs $21.

More Prime Day Tech Deals

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SOLD OUT: As expected, this deal was extremely popular and has now sold out. Keep an eye on our live blog to stay informed when hot deals like this one arise.

The Nintendo Switch 2 has seen several price increases in recent months. Right now, however, you can score a brand new console for just $399 if you're a new customer at the Amazon outlet website Woot with code CHEAPSWITCH2.

If you're a returning Woot customer, you can still save $30 off MSRP with the same code, bringing the price to just $419.

• Check out this deal at Woot

As noted, Woot is Amazon's outlet website, so you'll sometimes see used, open box, or factory reconditioned items. However, this item is brand new and sealed. As you can imagine, there's a limit of one per customer, and we expect this deal to sell out extremely quickly.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is Nintendo's ultra-popular handheld gaming system. The console comes with a 7.9-inch 1080p screen, and it can be docked with a TV for 4K gaming at up to 120 fps. The Joy-Con 2 controllers (included in the purchase) can be used attached or detached for flexibility.

The console comes with 256GB of internal storage and supports expansion through microSD Express cards. Obviously, if you stack up a few titles, you might want to think about buying some extra microSD Express storage.

The best deal right now is this Samsung P9, which is down to just $40 right now. Again, act fast, as there's no guarantee how long this deal will last.

As noted, this is an amazingly good deal on the Switch 2, even if you just use the code for returning customers to score one for $419. If you're new to Woot or Amazon and get one for $399, however, it's an absolute bargain.

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Price hikes! Get your price hikes here! Hot on the heels of Apple's upward push of dollar figures, ganging up with Framework, and harnessing the disillusion caused by the price of Valve's Steam Machine... It's now Microsoft's turn. The ailing division is enacting yet another increase to the price of the Xbox Series consoles, at $100 more for the 512 GB versions and $150 more for the 1 TB model. The pricing will come into effect in roughly a month and change, on August 1st.

The firm is also killing the 2 TB version of the Xbox Series X, in an echo of Apple slicing away the higher-RAM variants of its Mac Studio computers. If you were on the fence about buying one of those, it would be wise to rush, as at the current price of "only" around $799.99, stocks are unlikely to last. Here's the new pricing, in all its glory:

• Xbox Series S, 512 GB, Digital Edition: $499.99
• Xbox Series S, 1 TB, Digital Edition: $599.99
• Xbox Series X, 1 TB, Digital Edition: $749.99
• Xbox Series X, 1 TB: $799.99

Microsoft is also adding a few options for payment and alternative purchases. Buy Now, Pay Later for splitting purchases across short-term installments for consoles bought at the Microsoft store, confirming rumors of a partnership with well-known payment processor Klarna. If that's not quite your jam, there's also interest-free 12-month financing available at Amazon for Xbox hardware.

The company is expanding Xbox trade-ins, stating that it's "working with retail partners" to enable players to sell their consoles to stores for cash or store credit. This isn't a new thing in the gaming world, as GameStop and Amazon have historically had this feature, but Microsoft's wording makes it sound like the program will be expanded to more retailers. As always, you can buy a certified refurbished console from the Microsoft Store and a number of retailers.

The highly anticipated Steam Machine is being shot down by flak due to its high release price, but all of a sudden, the $1,349 on ask for the 2 TB version doesn't sound so absurd, considering the superior hardware, gigantic game library, and low prices for games. Following Microsoft's logic, the upswing for the now-dead 2 TB version of the Xbox Series X would be $300, putting it at a nice round $1,099.99. Are you not entertained, if not excited, to be living in such interesting times?

Valve has confirmed that the first batch of Steam Machines will only come with a single stick of 16GB RAM, limiting the device to single-channel memory. The company confirmed this in a correction to Gamers Nexus (GN), after its engineers initially said that Steam Machines could either come with a single 16GB stick or two 8GB sticks. “We misspoke here,” Valve wrote in its email to the media channel. “All units will actually have one 16GB stick of RAM.”

Tests have shown that using single-channel memory can reduce performance by about 9% to 13% compared to dual-channel memory, meaning gamers will feel the difference, especially in 1% lows. This is especially hard on the Steam Machine, which uses already aging hardware — a semi-custom AMD Zen 4 CPU and RDNA3 graphics with only 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM. Note that AMD launched Zen 5 in 2024, while the RDNA4 GPUs dropped in early 2025. We also already have details for Zen 6 CPUs and have heard rumors that RDNA5 GPUs will arrive next year.

However, the company probably made this decision to keep the costs for the Steam Machine as low as possible. The device’s $1,049 base price is already steeper than what many are willing to pay for — an estimated $300+ price increase from the $700 to $750 target price that Valve presumably targeted. While its engineers did not confirm these numbers, they also said that the Steam Machine would have gotten a “probably similar” price hike to the one the Steam Deck experienced recently. Nevertheless, there is hope that later batches will have dual-channel memory, with Valve telling GN that there is a chance of this happening in the future.

This is another blow to the much-awaited living room PC console that is supposed to finally give PC gamers a chance to enjoy their Steam library with a console-like experience. Valve originally announced the Steam Machine and the Steam Controller in November last year, which was also around the same time that memory chips have started to be in short supply due to the massive demand from AI hyperscalers. The device was originally slated to launch in the first quarter of 2026, but the ongoing memory crisis forced Valve to hold off until it finally released the console this summer.

Although having only a single stick of RAM is a disadvantage to any system, more optimistic gamers can consider this a boon as they could easily upgrade the console to 32GB if they have an extra matching 16GB DDR5-5600 SODIMM stick lying around at home (or are willing to spend extra to buy one). Upgrading the console’s RAM is a rather involved affair, though, requiring you to remove a lot of components and sub-boards just to reach the RAM slots. But if you’re the adventurous kind and could score a good deal on laptop RAM, this might be a viable solution to getting more performance out of your Steam Machine.

The Steam Machine was finally released on Monday, and many gamers were disappointed with its $1,049 starting price, which doesn’t include a Steam Controller (you have to pay an extra $79 to bundle one). Unfortunately, Valve’s hands were tied in this due to the current RAMpocalypse, where even the cheapest RAM kits now cost four times as much as before. While engineers Pierre-Loup Griffais and Yazan Aldehayyat said that they cannot give a hard number for the console’s original price point, they told IGN in an interview that it would have experienced a “probably similar” price increase to the one the Steam Deck got in May 2026.

Given that the Steam Deck 512GB and 1TB experienced a price increase of around 45%, it stands to reason that the Steam Machine would have received the same hike if it were already in the market. So, if we extrapolate the numbers, the Steam Machine would’ve been originally priced at around $729.91. The 1TB Steam Deck’s price jumped by 46.22%, but we can’t just apply that increase to the higher-tier Steam Machine because it has double the storage capacity. But if we check our SSD price tracker, the price difference between the cheapest 1TB and 2TB SSDs was just at $28 when they were at their lowest. If we add this to the 1TB "version" of the living room PC console, then we can safely estimate that Valve’s target price for the 2TB Steam Machine is around $950-$1,000.

The Steam Machine is still more expensive than the PlayStation 5 Pro, even at its original prices, because Valve refuses to subsidize its hardware sales with the sales on the Steam store. After all, the Steam Machine has an open hardware philosophy, allowing buyers to do what they want with the console. You can install Windows 11 on it and just stick with PC Game Pass to play your games on the console, meaning Valve will make zero dollars on game purchases from you.

This stark price difference could make the Steam Machine unpalatable to console gamers who are interested in switching to PC gaming through the living room PC console. After all, several tests reveal that the PlayStation outperforms the Steam Machine in several titles (although the Valve hardware still performed well enough). But the advantage that gamers are paying for in the Steam Machine is the abilities of a desktop PC (you can pretty much install anything you want on it without going through the Steam store and you don’t have to subscribe for online play), combined with the convenience of a living room console (like HDMI-CEC and the ability to switch the console on or off from the controller). Interested gamers will also likely have a library of titles ready to play.

Hopefully, the Steam Machine’s price will come down once the memory supply finally stabilizes, but it will probably be years before this happens, if at all. Valve’s new gaming console is quite a niche product — it’s built for PC gamers with an extensive Steam library who want to play games on their living room couch or while lying in bed without going through the hassle of building an SFF PC. But if you prefer playing games on your desk or already have a substantial game library on your PlayStation, you’re probably better off sticking with your current hardware.

Do you or someone you know have a Nintendo Switch 2? What about accessories for your new console? Whether you want to play with others, increase your storage, or add functionality, you may want some extras to deliver the best gameplay experience possible, and now is the best time to score a big deal on them during Prime Day 2026.

• Check out all the Switch 2 accessories deals in Amazon's Prime Day Sale

There are many official, licensed accessories alongside third-party extras available at a wide range of prices. It's Prime Day 2026, so now is an excellent time to hunt for deals and the best prices on Switch 2 peripherals and accessories.

One of the most important extras you'll most likely want to pick up is a microSD Express memory expansion card. The least expensive out now is Nintendo's own (SanDisk) 256GB card, but there are other, faster models available for a pittance more (see below). If you know that's what you want, check out our handy list of the best Prime Day microSD Express card deals for the Switch 2. Just be aware that pricing has absolutely skyrocketed, along with RAM, Storage, and video cards, in the last several months, so don't be shocked. Still, we found the best deals that we could.

Other accessories to consider are screen protectors, carrying cases, and peripherals such as controllers, headsets, and cameras, as listed below.

If you're thinking about, or already using a camera for your Switch 2, most of the styles out there are pretty boring. Most are just a camera on a stick, or may even clip to the device. I found something unique, the officially licensed Piranha Plant Camera! Relive your days of Mario and the feared plant that comes out of the pipes, but on your desk - and for less than the price of the official Nintendo Switch 2 camera-on-a-stick.

We also added another Switch 2 Pro-class controller on top of the official Nintendo Pro controller. 8bitDo's Ultimate 2 bluetooth controller is one of my kids' favorites. For less than the cost of the Nintendo controller, the Ultimate 2 offers TMY joysticks, switchable hall effect/tactile triggers, vibration and motion control. It is a lower resolution (640x480), however. The best part? It's it's on sale right now.

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Also, you can join the Tom's Hardware deals Discord for up-to-the-minute hardware deals.

It’s hard not to be impressed by what manufacturers have achieved with the numerous options that are now available among the best PC gaming handhelds. What was once a domain left largely to Valve with the Steam Deck has evolved into a broader market, with the bulk of the systems available running Windows 11.

These devices pair sleek exteriors with high-refresh IPS or OLED displays and pack powerful (for a handheld) computing hardware inside. However, even the gaming handheld market has been squeezed by rising component prices, leading us to the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, the subject of this review. It’s by far the most powerful gaming handheld we’ve ever tested, thanks to its Intel Arc G3 Extreme SoC, but it’s also the most expensive ($1,799).

At every turn, the Claw 8 EX AI+ impressed with its performance, but the staggering price tag incessantly looms over the experience.

Design of the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+

We hope you like purple, as that’s the only color currently available for the Claw 8 EX AI+. Purple isn’t my favorite color in the world (that distinction belongs to blue), and it gives me Joker vibes from the 1989 Batman starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. Not only is the top of the chassis molded in purple plastic, but it also has a sparkly finish that makes it look a bit jewel-like. The lower half of the system is constructed of traditional black plastic.

The handgrips on the Claw 8 EX AI+ are well-spaced, perfectly sized for my hands, and evenly distribute weight, which helps mask the system’s 785-gram heft. Speaking of the handgrips, there’s a laser-etched dot texture molded where your palms and index fingers rest on the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ — this helps keep it in place instead of sliding around in your hands (especially if they perspire during long gaming sessions).

Controls-wise, the Claw 8 EX AI+ doesn’t break any new ground, which is generally a good thing. If you’re familiar with an Xbox controller, there are backlit ABXY buttons on the right, with a joystick just below, along with another joystick on the left side, with a D-pad (which features a metal dome) below it. Both joysticks sport an RGB ring at their bases. There are also four buttons on the face of the handheld, flanking the display, with the bottom-left button assigned to bringing up the MSI Quick Settings overlay for the Xbox Game Bar. The bottom right button launches MSI Center M, for launching and configuring games.

You’ll find the usual allotment of bumper and triggers at the top of the Claw 8 EX AI+. While the triggers feel nice, the bumpers are a smidge “wiggly,” but that’s a nitpick on my part. If you’re a fan of macro buttons, you may be disappointed to find that there are only two on the back of the Claw 8 EX AI+, versus the three or four you’ll find on competing systems like the Steam Deck.

Unlike Lenovo’s Legion Go series of handhelds, you won’t find a touchpad on the Claw 8 EX AI+. So all of your screen navigation will be limited to touching the screen with your finger, or using the joysticks in the Xbox overlay or MSI Center M.

All of the I/O ports are located at the top of the unit; here you’ll find a power button that doubles as a fingerprint reader, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a microSD reader, a 3.5mm audio jack, and volume buttons.

There are two intakes (one for each cooling fan) located beside the macro buttons, while vents below the IO panel exhaust heat.

Although I’ll talk about the screen in detail later on, I must mention that the display doesn’t fit neatly within the confines of the center mass of the Claw 8 EX AI+. Instead, the bottom portion of the screen extends roughly half an inch below the body. It looks a little wonky at first, but it seems to be the only way that MSI could fit the 8-inch display, at least without making the whole device bigger.

The Claw 8 EX AI+ measures 12.6 x 5.12 x 1.98 inches, compared to 11.42 x 4.76 x 2.00 inches for the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X, 11.64 x 5.38 x 1.66 inches for the Lenovo Legion Go 2, and 11.73 x 4.6 x 1.97 inches for the Steam Deck OLED.

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ Specifications and Components

Gaming and Graphics Performance on the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+

The Claw 8 EX AI+ features the new Intel Arc G3 Extreme SoC, which includes a 14-core GPU (4.7 GHz max clock) and a 12-core Arc B390 GPU that clocks up to 2.3 GHz.

The default power mode is MSI's AI Engine, which typically runs games at 25 watts, but can vary between 15 watts and 30 watts depending on the workload. There's also an Endurance Mode, which leverages the Intel Endurance Gaming Efficiency Preset. This limits the chip to 15 watts and targets 30 frames per second (FPS) while gaming. Finally, Manual Mode allows you to run PL1 Max at 35 watts.

For our testing, we used the default AI Engine Mode when on battery, and Manual Mode when plugged in (35 watts PL1 Max, 45 watts PL2 Max). We ran games at 1280 x 800 and 1920 x 1200 resolutions on the handheld, leveraging the Xbox Full Screen Experience to limit resource consumption from additional Windows software. Please note, however, that the ROG Xbox Ally X benchmarks were run at 720p/1080p due to its 16:9 aspect ratio display, while the Steam Deck is limited to 1280 x 800 resolution.

While playing Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, I was able to easily achieve 150-160 FPS on medium graphics settings at 800p with XeSS Balanced and the AI Engine power mode engaged. Battlefield 6 saw performance in the 70 fps range at 800p, with Auto detail settings and XeSS Balanced enabled.

Spoiler alert: the Arc 3 Extreme powering the Claw 8 EX AI+ is an absolute beast (in the handheld segment), delivering a 20 to 30+ FPS advantage over its peers across all the games in our benchmark suite. Starting with Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark (Medium, DX12), the Claw 8 EX AI+hit 98 FPS at 800p on battery power and 112 fps when plugged in (a 30+ FPS advantage over the ROG Xbox Ally X. Bumping the resolution to 1200p, the Claw 8 EX AI+ was faster at 1200p on battery power (67 FPS) than the ROG Ally X and Legion Go 2 were at 720p/800p on battery power. The system also impressed, reaching 72 FPS at 1200p when plugged in.

When benchmarking Cyberpunk 2077 (Steam Deck preset), the Claw 8 EX AI+ again showed its performance might, crushing all rivals. It delivered 78 FPS on battery power and 85 FPS when plugged in at 800p. At 1200p, those figures fell to 48 FPS and 52 FPS, respectively. We're at least getting a semblance of playability at 1200p resolution in the handheld space.

Red Dead Redemption 2 (Favor performance, Vulkan) saw the Claw 8 EX AI+ run the tables again, hitting 115 FPS at 800p and 87 FPS at 1200p while plugged in to the wall. Of course, those numbers fell slightly on battery power, but were still above anything that the ROG Xbox Ally X or Legion Go 2 could muster.

It was more of the same in Borderlands 3 (Medium, DX11), which saw the largest performance variance between the Claw 8 EX AI+ on battery power and when plugged in. The handheld hit 94 FPS at 800p while plugged in, a full 18 FPS faster than with battery power. At 1200p while plugged in, it still managed to pull 78 FPS at 1200p.

Forza Horizon 6 is the newest addition to our benchmark suite, so we only have Steam Deck numbers to compare with the Claw 8 EX AI+. The Claw 8 EX AI+ hovered around the 100 FPS mark at 800p and managed 72-76 FPS at 1200p, depending on whether it was running on battery power.

For stress testing, we ran Metro Exodus 15 times at 800p at Medium quality settings to simulate roughly 30 minutes of gameplay. The Claw 8 EX AI+ hit an average frame rate of nearly 70 FPS on the benchmark. For comparison, the ROG Xbox Ally X managed 63.44 FPS using the same settings.

The Claw 8 EX AI+’s two performance cores averaged 4.06 GHz, the eight efficiency cores averaged 3.18 GHz, and the four low-power efficiency cores averaged 3.0 GHz.

Windows 11 and MSI Center M on the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+

The Claw 8 EX AI+ supports the Xbox Full Screen Experience, just like the ROG Xbox Ally X. However, it doesn't have its own dedicated Xbox app. You can access the interface by opening the Xbox app and selecting Full Screen from the top-right corner. You'll then be able to reboot the system directly into the Full Screen Experience, bypassing unnecessary Windows 11 components that could affect gaming performance.

All the benefits and limitations of the Full Screen Experience, as discussed in our ROG Xbox Ally X review, apply here, so I won't belabor those points. I would like to elaborate on the MSI Center M, which provides its own dedicated, gaming-centric interface. The full-screen interface can be navigated using the thumbpads, eliminating the need to tap the screen.

MSI Center M pulls in all of your games from multiple sources, including the Xbox Store, GOG Galaxy, Epic Games, and Steam (among others). It pulled games from all those sources, and most of them displayed a nice, high-resolution thumbnail. One exception was Cyberpunk 2077, which only displayed a low-resolution Start Menu icon that was blown up to a blurry mess.

You can customize navigation within MSI Center M to use the joysticks in Gamepad Mode (for gaming) or Desktop Mode (for using the standard Windows 11 interface). You can tweak sensitivity for the joysticks, and the Desktop Mode provides key mapping so that you can see which UI shortcut each button corresponds to.

Another component of the software package is MSI Quick Settings, an overlay that appears in the Xbox Game Bar. It can be recalled using the MSI Quick Settings button beside the left joystick. MSI Quick Settings features a sleek, easy-to-use interface that provides access to power profiles, screen brightness, gamepad control modes, display refresh rate, and screenshot capture (among other things).

Display on the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+

The Claw 8 EX AI+ features an 8-inch IPS display with a 120 Hz refresh rate and a 1920 x 1200 resolution. Given the $1,799 price tag, it would have been more fitting for MSI to include an OLED display, as we saw with the Legion Go 2. I think that’s a big miss by MSI, and one that I hope will be rectified in future versions.

Unfortunately, due to time constraints, we were unable to perform detailed, instrumented tests on the Claw 8 EX AI+’s display. So you’ll have to trust my eyeballs and the manufacturer’s specs for the time being. MSI claims that the display on the Claw 8 EX AI+ covers 100% of the sRGB color space and offers a peak brightness of 500 nits.

Although I didn’t have a Legion Go 2 on hand for a side-by-side comparison, I do have a Legion Go and a Legion Go S on my testing bench. We measured the former at 476.7 nits, and the Claw 8 EX AI+ seemed at least as bright (at maximum brightness) as the Legion Go, if not brighter, across multiple games and while using the Windows 11 interface.

Games generally looked good on the Claw 8 EX AI+, with good color balance. I racked up plenty of hours in Battlefield 6, trying my best to soak in the lush reds, oranges, and greens of the city architecture of the Saints Quarter map without getting my head blown off. Forza Horizon 6 looked magnificent in the colorful Japanese landscape, with vibrant city centers and majestic outdoor environments reflected in the vehicles' finishes. Everything looked good, but color vibrancy and overall visual “pop” would have been even better with an OLED panel, but I digress.

Battery Life on the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time recently playing more laid-back games; ones that won’t make my blood boil because of tense online matches. In particular, I’ve spent time playing Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight.

I played the game at 800p with medium settings, Intel XeSS Balanced, power mode set to AI Engine, and display set to 50 percent. After playing for an hour (with an average of around 150 FPS), the battery dropped from 100 percent to 52 percent. Switching the power mode to Endurance, locked at 30 FPS, I still had 66 percent battery after an hour (when starting at 100 percent).

If I were to drop the brightness a bit, I could see battery life extending past 3 hours in Endurance mode.

Audio on the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+

The Claw 8 EX AI+ has a pair of 2-watt speakers, which are fine. They’re perfectly serviceable for most games. Given that I spent plenty of time playing Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, I noticed that the character voices sounded pretty good, and the plastic “clicking” sound of Lego stacking together during building exercises came through loud and clear.

Sound output was a bit more muddled in Battlefield 6, although I prefer to play games like that with headphones on anyway. In fact, given the mobility of handheld gaming PCs, most people will likely default to headphones for the best possible audio experience with the Claw 8 EX AI+.

Heat on the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+

While running the Metro Exodus stress test, the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ registered around 90 degrees Fahrenheit on the back of the chassis, close to dead-center. Moving towards the top of the unit, heat levels rose sharply to around 109 F near the cooling fans' exhausts.

The Arc G3 Extreme chip averaged 77.3 degrees Celsius.

Upgradeability on the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+

Cracking open the Claw 8 EX AI+ is incredibly easy – only six Phillips-head screws hold the back panel in place. Once the screws are removed, you can use a well-placed plastic pry tool to insert it between the black and purple halves of the chassis where they meet. Once you pry open a small section, the rest pops off easily.

Once inside, you’ll see the battery in the lower portion of the chassis and a full-length 2280 PCIe 4.0 SSD nestled between the two cooling fans (secured with one screw). In our review unit, the SSD was a 1TB Micron 2500 with QLC NAND.

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ Configurations

As of now, there’s only one configuration available of the Claw 8 EX AI+ with an Arc G3 Extreme SoC. Our system came with the aforementioned Arc G3 Extreme chip, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and an 8-inch 120Hz 1200p IPS touchscreen, for a whopping $1,799.99 at Best Buy.

Bottom Line

The MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ is an impressive machine that offers a solidly-built chassis, good ergonomics, and good battery life. However, the most impressive aspect of the handheld is its performance. The Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip allowed the Claw 8 EX AI+ to absolutely dominate our gaming benchmarks, delivering anywhere from a 20 to over 30 FPS advantage at 1200p or 800p resolution.

But that performance comes at a steep price: $1,799. That’s more than just expensive; it’s MacBook Pro pricing for a handheld, which is shocking, to say the least. For comparison, the Lenovo Legion Go 2 with 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and an OLED display retails for $1,349.99, and we already had extreme reservations concerning its price tag.

The Claw 8 EX AI+ is $450 more expensive and doesn’t even have the OLED display of the Legion Go 2. The saving grace for the Claw 8 EX AI+ is the Arc G3 Extreme chip, which gives unmatched performance across the board. However, it remains to be seen if the price premium is enough of a draw to more casual gamers.

While the coming availability of the Steam Machine is stealing headlines about Valve, the company quietly announced that it’s also working on SteamOS to give it wider compatibility. Pierre-Loup Griffais, one of the engineers Tom’s Hardware talked with to dig into the details of the upcoming console, told The Verge that the company is collaborating with Nvidia “very closely” to develop support for Team Green GPUs. Additionally, he mentioned the possibility of dual-booting SteamOS with Windows or other operating systems in the future. The measures would allow users to build their own DIY Steam Machines in future.

SteamOS 3.0 was built from the ground up for the Steam Deck, which uses AMD hardware. For years now, enterprising users could install the operating system on other systems that feature Team Red hardware. However, if you use parts from other brands like Intel and Nvidia, you’re going to run into a lot of complications. One enthusiast made SteamOS work with an Intel Arc B580 desktop GPU, but it required a lot of advanced steps and troubleshooting that would certainly turn off more casual users.

Valve released the latest version of the gaming operating system, SteamOS 3.8.10, just last week, and it comes with compatibility updates for Intel and AMD platforms, including upcoming Intel-powered handhelds. While support for Nvidia graphics cards isn’t expected to arrive this year, Graiffais told The Verge that “it’s certainly something that we’re working on in the background.” He also mentioned a SteamOS installer that would make it easier for users to wipe an existing operating system and replace it with SteamOS. While it cannot partition a drive for dual-booting yet, Pierre-Loup hinted that the feature might eventually arrive in the future.

Windows is still the most dominant OS for gaming, and we can see this in the latest Steam survey results, with Windows 11 getting nearly 70% of the market share. However, Linux, especially through SteamOS, is quickly gaining ground. Although it still has a negligible 3.99% share (compared to Windows’ overall 93.85%), it has already overtaken macOS’s 2.16%. This result is likely driven by the popularity of the Steam Deck, despite its recent price hikes, and we expect this to jump even higher once gamers get their hands on the Valve Steam Machine in the coming weeks.

Valve's Steam Machine is launching, finally, with reservations starting today. While the hardware is the same as it was when it was announced late last year, almost nothing else in PC gaming seems the same. There's a massive component shortage. Prices are high on tech in general, and speculation about how the Steam Machine would be priced took over the conversation about the entire launch.

Ahead of the system's launch and reservation queue opening, I talked to Valve engineers Pierre-Loup Griffais and Yazan Aldehayyat to discuss the system: how it was engineered, why Valve made the decisions it did, and how the company came to pricing that starts at $1,049.

"It's definitely the case that you know our original design was based on memory and storage prices from, you know, two years ago or so," said Griffais. "And so we were in a different segment than we were hoping to be, but I think it's more of a reflection of where the market as a whole is than Steam Machine itself, right?"

The engineers didn't dare forecast the reception to the price, nor how that would affect sales. But Griffais suggested that Valve expects anyone who wants the power in a Steam Machine would still have to pay a similar amount in another device, but highlighted what's unique to the Machine — the form factor, how quiet it is, the CEC integration, and the dedicated Bluetooth controller antenna.

I posited the possibility of people going for a console, instead. Even the PlayStation 5 Pro is currently cheaper, at $899. But the two engineers suggested that's not the right comparison.

Griffais said there's more to compare than just specs and price. He suggested that PC gamers would also have to rebuy games they want to play, and that some of them would have to get used to the idea of paying to play games online.

"I think the value of the Steam machine is inherently tied to the value of your Steam library in a lot of ways, right?" Aldehayyat said. "Like, the more games you have on Steam, the more valuable the Steam machine is to you, and the Steam machine makes your existing library even more valuable. So, those two kinds of decisions are very much intertwined. And I think at least early on, we suspect that it's for people who already have a big Steam library… it's just going to make a lot of sense to them."

The lack of subsidies

A lot has been made of the fact that Valve is not subsidizing the hardware, which the company has said would turn the PC into a more closed ecosystem. There has always been an assumption that Valve has subsidized the Steam Deck off of the profits it takes from the sales on the Steam Store.

That's not quite the case, the Valve engineers said."

If you look at like certain SKUs at certain points of time, it might be below or above cost bya small margin," Griffais said. "I think there's some comments that we made around it, you know, being painful and all that early on, that was more about being as close as possible to cost than anything, yeah, same thing [with the Steam Machine], right?"

In fact, Griffais claimed that despite recent cost increases to the Steam Deck OLED due to the component shortage (and, now, the Steam Machine), they're being more aggressive on pricing now than they used to be.

"We understand that the higher price is less accessible to people… and so we're even more aggressive now, trying to be as close as possible to the actual cost of the parts that we're shipping," he added."

But it's important that the Valve hardware is a self-sustained program, it's not subsidized by software sales," Aldehayyat said. "So that's kind of the important piece that we can get across."

8GB of VRAM? 4K support? Really?

As soon as the Steam Machine was announced, enthusiasts honed in on one very specific point on the spec sheet: the semi-custom AMD RDNA3 graphics with 28 CUs and, to many, a sparse 8GB of VRAM.

Griffais said that Valve is "very aware" that it is being "kind of aggressive" with 8GB of VRAM. But the way he talked about it, it seemed that the team was also taking a sort of artistic license with what players want out of a small box like this. He said that the team did calculations that that for "the kind of stuff that you would want to play" 8GB could support the level of detail and performance one would expect out of a small, TV-based system."

The cases where you're running out of VRAM are actually cases that you would not want to be playing on a system like that," he said. "Yeah, it'd be too slow… The cases where you're exercising the VRAM limits are actually cases that you wouldn't want to play as a real user, in my opinion" He admitted however, that it's possible that in the future that some games may need more VRAM to reach the same performance.

Still, on SteamOS, the team has been working to make VRAM more efficient. For starters, the current iteration of SteamOS was really only meant for APUs, but now has logic for discrete GPUs and VRAM. That came with a different set of features to add, like handling VRAM under stress to get the best possible outcome. The team at Valve is still working on it.

In Aldehayyat's opinion, the upgrade cycle for PCs has been "slowing down dramatically," and that they're seeing games come out with a better ability to scale across CPU and GPU generations, and that the PC ecosystem isn't designed with a single fixed performance target in mind.

"So, again, like for us, the metric that we care about is, can you play the games on Steam? Can you play every game on Steam? And we think the Steam machine absolutely can, right now, and we think the longevity for it is actually quite good, given the current reality of the upgrade cycles," Aldehayyat said. "I mean, maybe 10 years ago a device like this wouldn't last as long, wouldn't have the legs to be competitive for as long, but… given what the market is doing right now, and the upgrade cycles, it still has the longevity to be a good device for people for many years to come.”

But that 8GB of VRAM wasn't in isolation on the spec sheet. It also highlighted the idea of playing at 4K at 60 frames per second, provided you have AMD's FSR upscaling technology running. In my testing of the machine, that's possible for some games, but the Steam Machine really feels like a 1080p or 1440p box.

"A big part of that messaging actually came because we found a lot of people who are not as familiar with tuning their gaming settings want to just make sure that it's compatible [with] their 4K TV," Aldehayyat said, pointing out that not everyone understands the difference between render resolution and native TV resolutions. He agreed that 1080p and 1440p are probably the sweet spot.

Despite that messaging, 1080p is set as the default resolution across SteamOS globally out of the box, which Grifafis said was to have the "baseline be on the safe side." Like the Steam Deck and Steam Controller, Valve doesn't provide a ton of instructions when you start, so that's something players will need to figure out, whether they decide to change this on a game-by-game basis or across the system (or at all).

Griffais said the team wants to "make that more visible," though he didn't specify how Valve may do that. He also suggested that because Valve is testing games as part of the verified program, it could have different base resolutions on a per-game basis, like a higher resolution for a low-res indie game or an older game that doesn't need as many resources.

Several components, one big heat sink

Inside the Steam Machine's small frame is a massive heatsink and 120 mm fan that cools almost all of the critical components, including the CPU, GPU, and memory. That decision lets Valve make the smallest box possible, but it's certainly not the easy way of doing things.

One other benefit of not having two separate heatsinks big enough for a worst-case scenario is that the large, single option can be allocated to the CPU and GPU as needed.

"So, if the CPU is not eating up its entire thermal budget, the GPU can use that, or if the GPU is not eating its entire thermal budget, the CPU can share that," Aldehayyat explained.

But covering all of the components is difficult. Ideally, you want the smallest gap possible between a thermal module and a CPU or a GPU.

"In reality, things vary; the CPU is tall, and the GPU is taller, and the motherboard bows and the thermal module has tolerances, so actually getting the design to have enough compliance in the right places to accommodate all those tolerances was by far the hardest challenge we had to overcome," he said. "But by overcoming it, I think we ended up at the most compact design, cost-effective design. It's also the quietest."

Having one heatsink also allows for one fan, which Valve spins at lower rotations per minute to keep the system nearly silent.

The design requires just a single screw to access the components — a Torx T9 bit. Valve will partner with iFixit again on repair guides, and also plans to have them sell replacement parts, including the many daughterboards that attach to the mainboard under the heatsink, such as the ports.

The SSD is easily accessible, beneath the power supply. But if you want to access the other major replaceable part — the memory SO-DIMMS — you'll have to take off the whole heatsink.

"I don't say it was impossible, it was just, given the time and engineering resources we have, we just could not come up with a solution that that worked," Aldehayyat said. The SSD is on a flex cable, but they weren't able to do something like that with memory because of signal integrity. Trying to make an access hatch through the power supply, he said, was a safety problem.

Shortages and availability

Valve has opened a randomized reservation system for the Steam Machine. That new portion — the fact that you don't have to be on Steam at a specific time to try to get in the first batch of systems — was built on the back of the existing Steam Deck reservation process. But other console shopping experiences were also an influence.

"My experience trying to buy a PS5 painted a lot of that stuff," Griffais said. "We think the broad strokes of the system are good, but there's still an effect where people are rushing at the door, trying to refresh. Our websites might have problems, and then that seems unfair to people that run into that, right? We want to make sure that there's an even playing field initially, and then work from there.

At the moment, Valve is predicting that the reservation queue will go through the end of the year, with the waitlist picking up spots on canceled orders. But depending on supply, things could change.

“Six months was as far as we were willing to make predictions," Aldehayyat said. "If there's more demand, we are obviously planning to make more."

Memory and storage are by far the biggest choke points in the supply chain, but they're not the only ones. Aldehayyat noted shortages in FR-4 (a material used to make printed circuit boards) as well as some capacitors, stating that that "if this was a normal time, people would be concerned about these things," but that in supply shortages for memory and storage "this just doesn't really crack the top 10 problems."

This led Griffais to think openly about what it means to find more supply right now. Getting supplies from a wide variety of vendors, he said, also means getting a bunch of different prices, suggesting that you could make more in a way where the pricing comes out differently.

"And so we're still trying to figure that out," he said. "If there's ever a bunch of people that want the machine, but the supply is not there on the back end, we'll have to make hard decisions about, okay, what are we doing to secure more supply,” Griffais pondered. “And does it still result [in] the product at this price? Or would we have to rethink that,” he said.

Finally, Griffais admitted, much like the rest of us, that Valve doesn’t know how the hardware shortages will evolve. “Maybe things are going to go back down, and then it's all good, and it can continue to go like that, but maybe not,” he said. “So I guess what we're trying to convey… is that it seems like all bets are off, and we're going to work through it, just [like] the users as well.”

For a long time, the best gaming PCs were relegated to desks. Under the TV has long been the realm of the console, even if some, myself included, have hooked midtowers up to their living room screens. Valve's Steam Machine is an attempt to bridge that gap, letting people who play games on their rigs and on their handhelds also play comfortably on the couch.

The hardware isn't brand new. Like the Steam Deck, Valve has turned to AMD for semi-custom chips using some older technologies. In the case of newer, intensive games, this makes the Steam Machine a 1080p or 1440p computer, though it can support 4K on older games and in some cases with FSR.

But the Steam Machine is pricier than many had hoped, coming in at $1,049 for the 512GB version and, in our review unit, a $1,428, 2TB bundle that includes two faceplates and a Steam Controller. That's largely a result of the current state of the component market, but it will leave a lot more people asking if the Steam Machine (can or should) fill their needs, given the cost.

Design of the Steam Machine

The Steam Machine really looks less like a gaming PC than a mini PC. It's a black box that, at 5.98 x 6.14 x 6.39 inches including the system's feet, can fit discreetly on a TV stand or a desk.

The one part that really stands out is the integrated LED strip with 17 addressable RGB LEDs, which can share the Machine's system status or be customized to your liking. For instance, you can see the strip appear like a light bar when you download updates, and you can choose from solid colors, rainbows, or animations, like breathing. You can even control each of the 17 lights individually for a truly chaotic look. My preference was mostly to keep it off entirely for a minimalist effect.

The front of the Steam Machine is effectively a faceplate, which pops on and off with magnets. Valve ships two extras with the 2TB version: a fuzzy cloth-like red plate, and one with dark wood, which went well with my furniture. The company has also committed to releasing files for people to 3D print their own. (They have a good track record of this, having recently released CAD files for the Steam Controller and its puck.) It doesn't, however, have plans to sell the wooden and red plates separately.

Located at the base of the system are the front ports: a pair of USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, a microSD card slot, and the power button.

The rest of the ports are on the rear: DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0, the AC power connector, an Ethernet jack, two USB-A 2.0 ports, and a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port. (Despite not being officially labeled HDMI 2.1, the HDMI port does support 4K at 120 Hz, and has some other niceties, like HDMI-CEC to turn on televisions).

Also on the rear is the exhaust for the 120 mm fan attached to the heatsink that cools the APU. It's much more obvious than the intake, which is behind the front panel and draws air in from the sides. That fan is truly whisper-quiet. Even while benchmarking, I barely even heard it, and I had to pay attention and move my head near the system to notice anything at all.

Steam Machine Specifications

You can decide whether you believe the Steam Machine is a PC or a console. In Valve's eyes, it's a PC, and the spec list certainly looks like one. On paper, it's easy enough to see the significant jump from what Valve uses in its other gaming system, the Steam Deck, simply by nature of moving from Zen 2 to Zen 4 and RDNA 2 to RDNA 3.

The processor is a semi-custom AMD Zen 4 chip with six cores and 12 threads, going up to 4.8 GHz with a 30W TDP. Meanwhile, the integrated graphics are also semi-custom, using AMD's RDNA 3 with 28 compute units, going up to a maximum sustained clock speed of 2.45 GHz and a 110W TDP. The big number people are thinking about here is the 8GB GDDR6 RAM, which many enthusiasts feel is no longer enough to play some games above 1080p, let alone future-proof a system.

The system is powered by a 300W power supply, smaller than both the one in the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5.

Like the Steam Deck OLED, Valve has integrated a discrete Bluetooth antenna alongside the Wi-Fi 6E connection, which should help with latency. There's also a built-in antenna for the Steam Controller.

The Steam Machine starts with a 512GB SSD, but a more expensive option (the one we're testing) comes with 2TB. For further storage, you can add a microSD card (or swap out the SSD entirely).

Gaming and Graphics on the Steam Machine

If you're coming from the Steam Deck, the Steam Machine is a powerful upgrade. If you compare it to other gaming PCs on the market, you'll see that its GPU's aging technology is far from the most powerful option on the market.

First, let's put this GPU into context. Based on testing, we found that the Machine's graphics card would land somewhere towards the bottom of our GPU benchmarks hierarchy. To figure this out, we put together a Linux machine running Bazzite, with an AMD Ryzen 5 7600X and 16GB of DDR5-5600, memory along with both the Radeon RX 6600 — the bottom GPU on our list — and the RX 7600, which is the next AMD-branded step up.

In the Unigine Superposition (1080p Extreme) and GravityMark benchmarks, both of which run natively on Linux, the Steam Machine's graphics ran in between those two Radeons. Using our Cyberpunk 2077 configuration for raster testing desktop graphics cards, the same happened, with the Steam Machine producing 79.98 frames per second, behind the 7600X at 85.48 FPS. This is capable gaming performance, but bottom-rung compared to modern desktop GPUs.

I spent some time playing Resident Evil Requiem on the system. With the resolution set to 2560 x 1440 without any upscaling or advanced features like hair strands, the game ran largely smoothly through the Cedarbook Apartments section, as Leon sneaks past zombies, takes on a violent boss, and escapes through the other side of the building, though there were a few hiccups as he first entered the dark building. The game typically ran between 60 and 70 FPS, though there were some drops to around 20 FPS during the environmental transition, which were extremely noticeable. Here are my recordings from MangoHud, showing how the game ran:

On SoulCalibur 6, the game ran great at 4K, hitting the game's 60 FPS frame limit with maximum graphics settings as I progressed through Arcade mode as Siegfried. Granted, that game came out in 2018 and isn't super intensive, but people have all kinds of games like that in their Steam libraries, and they should play well.

Games that barely run on the Steam Deck, like Black Myth: Wukong, can be made to easily run on the Steam Machine. It's just clear that Valve isn't aiming for people looking for the highest-end performance on every game.

In my time playing around on the Machine, I did notice some crashes and slowdowns, often (but not always!) related to changing settings. One time, this led to the entire Steam Machine crashing and leaving artifacting on-screen when it booted back up. (Another reboot fixed this.)

Some of this may be due to the fact that some games see the Steam Machine as a Steam Deck. You can turn off that auto-detection, which helped to a degree. Valve says it is updating its APIs ahead of availability to avoid these kinds of problems.

One way we tested the Steam Machine was in comparison to the Steam Deck. On paper alone, it's no surprise that the Machine blows the Deck away, but we wanted to see exactly what kind of gains you could get when moving a game from the handheld to the desktop. Here, we tested at our typical handheld settings, though we ran the Steam Deck at native 800p while the Steam Machine was tested at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K.

When I tested, I found that most games would only run at 1080p, unless I went into game settings and changed the maximum display resolution to 4K. Valve reps told me that "1080p is the system default game resolution on Steam Machine to ensure a good gameplay experience out of the box," but you can change it on a global level in Settings > Display, or, like I did, on a per-game basis.

What this reveals is a vision of SteamOS that is significantly stronger than we've ever seen, playing most of our test games at 4K better than the Steam Deck can at 800p, including Forza Horizon 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2. But again — that's at settings designed for the Deck. And it also proved that not all games can run at 4K on the Steam Machine, including Cyberpunk 2077 on the Steam Deck preset. If you were someone plugging your Steam Deck into a dock and outputting that to your TV, you would get a better experience on the same settings.

You'll see some things missing. Shadow of the Tomb Raider, one of our go-to systems-testing games, wouldn't allow the game to run above 60 FPS, even with V-Sync off. That game was tested exclusively at higher settings, where that wasn't an issue.

When comparing to prebuilt PCs, we chose the CyberPowerPC Gamer Xtreme and Acer Nitro 60 that we tested last year. These were two of the last sanely-priced systems we saw before the component crisis got really bad, priced at $1,099.99 and $1,599.99, respectively. The CyberPowerPC boasted an Intel Core Ultra 5 225F and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060, while the Acer had a Core i7-14700F and RTX 5070. Each offered 32GB of RAM. Notably, you can't find these systems at these prices now, which simply highlights the type of problem Valve had in pricing the Steam Machine. (The newer Acer Nitro 65 is over $2,000.)

For the most part, those larger boxes with desktop-class GPUs significantly outperformed the Steam Machine without any upscaling, FSR, DLSS, or similar technologies. Most importantly, the highest-end settings were playable on those machines. But those boxes are also significantly larger and have room to fit power-hungry components – and they cost a lot more now.

Valve definitely has size on its side. If you want something smaller than a mini-ITX build that comes with SteamOS installed, this is for you. But on paper, if you have nearly any GPU from the last three to four years, you already have a faster machine. And given that the Steam Machine starts at $1,049, that matters a lot.

When testing using our prebuilt desktop methodologies, which include some aspirational settings, it is clear why Valve says you need FSR to get 4K at 60 FPS. Based on the aging hardware alone, it should be clear that you won't be playing games at their top settings. But FSR can certainly help the Steam Machine along.

For example, on Red Dead Redemption 2 at medium settings, the Machine played the game at 20 FPS at 4K. But with FSR 2.0 in Performance mode, it reached 60 FPS.

On Forza Horizon 6's Ultra settings, the game ran at 30 FPS at 4K, but turning on FSR 3.1.5 Performance nabbed an extra 10 FPS.

Still, Cyberpunk 2077 was unplayable on Ray Tracing Ultra even at 1080p. Here, FSR 3.0 performance made it technically playable (up to 41 FPS from 15 FPS), but given the latency that could introduce, I wouldn't try it. (You can play this game on the Machine though — see the Steam Deck comparison above.)

If 60 FPS is your goal, the Steam Machine isn't a 4K machine, and I'm not sure Valve should have advertised it as one. It's much more suited for 1080p or 1440p gaming with appropriately middling-to-high settings, depending on what you're playing.

Upgradeability of the Steam Machine

The only exposed screws on the Steam Machine are on the rear. The two captive Torx T9 screws are in the top corners of the machine, so at least you don't have to worry about losing them. From there, a small pry tool pushed into in two purposeful-looking indents on the bottom lifts the back cover right off.

From in there, you'll see some studs coming in from the bottom. If you look closely at the feet, you'll see they have the same Torx indents in the center of the rubber, and that they're actually screws. This is way better than how some devices require you to remove adhesive to take off screws that are under feet. It's a neat trick that shows Valve had repairability in mind.

Back inside, two more T9 screws hold the fan assembly to the chassis. With these out, you can remove the internals in one massive piece.

From here, you'll be able to see all the ports on small daughterboards, as well as the antennas for the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. But the real jewel is at the bottom: an easily accessible M.2 SSD slot mounted below the power supply. Ours came with a 2TB drive, which is fairly roomy, but this may become a must-have upgrade for 512GB Steam Machine owners if storage prices ever come down. And this drive is also held in with the same Torx screw, so you can use one screwdriver to make that swap.

Getting to the memory is far more involved and is more of a repairability compromise than we typically like to see. You need to remove the giant heatsink, which cools all of the components with the single fan, in order to get to the DDR5 SO-DIMMS. Given how tightly packed the Steam Machine is, with many cables and ribbon cables to daughterboards throughout the outside of the heatsink and PSU, that's a complex order that takes time and more risk than I think many Steam Machine owners may want to take. But given that the daughterboards are there, you should be able to replace broken ports, even if you have to do it in groups. Valve tells me it will partner with iFixit on repair manuals, similar to the Steam Deck.

Productivity Performance on the Steam Machine

The semi-custom, six-core/12-thread Zen 4 chip in the Steam Machine can hold its own against some current mobile chips.

The closest modern chip we had a record for is the AMD Ryzen AI 7 445, which has the same core count (with four Zen 5c cores and two Zen 5 cores), with a max boost clock of 4.5 GHz and a configurable TDP of 15-54 W. Valve's chip has 30W, but the GPU is discrete and isn't included here.

The Ryzen AI 7 445 ("Gorgon Point") in the Acer Swift Go 16 AI was marginally faster in single-core performance, but significantly faster in multi-core performance. On Handbrake, the Gorgon Point chip was 23 seconds faster than the Steam Machine, which completed the task in 6:33.

In our charts, you can also see comparisons to Intel's Panther Lake Core Ultra 7 355, a weaker chip than Valve's, and the Core Ultra X7 388H, which was stronger (but in far more expensive systems). Apple's M5, under air in the MacBook Pro, was the fastest of the bunch on both tests.

SteamOS and KDE Plasma Desktop

If you've used a Steam Deck before, everything on the Steam Machine will feel familiar. SteamOS 3 is the same here as it is on the handheld, just running on more powerful hardware. If you haven't used a Steam Deck before, but have used Steam's Big Picture Mode on a PC, you'll still be mostly at home, as the interface is very similar.

SteamOS continues to be Valve's primary advantage over the largely Windows-based ecosystem of gaming PCs. It's easily handled entirely with a controller. If you've used SteamOS on the Steam Deck, you might want to consider the Steam Controller, as you'll have all of the same buttons to navigate the operating system (and that's before you get into the fact that gameplay will feel similar).

Valve has adopted the Verified program from the Steam Deck to the Steam Machine. In Valve's documentation, it states that you need to hit 30 FPS at 1080p to be verified, which is pretty low stakes. Games that already run on Steam Deck should be shoe-ins, while the stronger hardware should enable more games to run on the Machine and earn the badge.

If you want a more typical desktop PC experience — perhaps you're playing at a desk – you can use the KDE Plasma desktop. While I suspect most people will never enter the desktop mode, Valve has added some significant updates here over the years, and I appreciate that you can use your computer as a computer. If you like to tinker and install extra software that isn't available through Steam, it's a great option.

Still, not all games run on Steam. While you can add most games to Steam through the "Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library" flow, not all work well. Some launchers have unofficial versions you can run through Linux, like the open-source Heroic Games launcher that will run Epic Games and GOG.

I wish that Valve offered a way to dual-boot Windows and SteamOS on both the Machine and the Steam Deck for these edge cases. The company said it would back when it announced the first Deck. With a 2TB drive, there is plenty of room.

"While Steam Deck is fully capable of dual-boot, the SteamOS installer that provides a dual-boot wizard isn't ready yet," Valve's page on Windows resources reads. "This will ship alongside SteamOS 3 once it's complete."

The Steam Machine is part of an ecosystem

There is a point in using the Steam Machine where I saw it as more of a platform. It was no surprise that the Steam Deck was built around playing games on a Valve platform, even if you can install other OSes. But with the Steam Machine in play, there's a fuller picture: playing your Steam games on the go, uploading the save to Steam Cloud, plopping yourself on the couch, turning on your Steam Machine, and resuming the same game, running locally, with the same controls thanks to the Steam Controller.

Perhaps one of the coolest things you can do is move your SD card from device to device. If you have an SD card in your Steam Deck, you can move it to your Steam Machine, and the games will be immediately playable. (Or, if you prefer, you could quickly move the games to the internal SSD.)

There are plenty of parts you can sub in there: You can play Steam on any handheld, or come home to your own custom-built rig, or use another controller. Despite its hardware, Steam still supports a ton of devices and ways to play.

But if you do have Valve's hardware, it starts to feel like an ecosystem on the level with Apple's, just focused exclusively on gaming. You get some benefits there — sleep and wake work just as well on this desktop as it does on Valve's handhelds. SteamOS is the best version of Steam's Big Picture mode out there. And this is way smaller than most DIY PCs. If you're all in on Valve, this is the way to go. But if you want more power and future-proofing, subbing in a more powerful PC will last you longer in the long run.

One thing that has been notable about the Steam Deck is Valve's commitment to updates. There have been a ton, adding features, squashing bugs, and making it more stable. In fact, that history is the one thing that makes me feel reasonably confident that the bugs I have seen will eventually be fixed.

Of course, Steam doesn't have every single game. Some won't run on SteamOS because of anti-cheat issues with Linux. Others simply have compatibility problems. Valve does have a method for running non-Steam games through Steam, but some, notably Epic Games' Fortnite, don't play well with it. You can install Windows or other launchers via Linux, but you will lose some of the ease the ecosystem offers. Valve offers minimal support for Windows, but at least it's something.

Steam Machine Configurations and Warranty

There are four configurations of the Steam Machine. First, there are two models of the computer; Both of them are identical with the exception of the storage. We reviewed the more expensive $1,349 version with a 2TB NVMe SSD and two extra faceplates, and bundling it with the Steam Controller brought it to $1,428.

The base model is a cheaper $1,049 option with a 512GB SSD. Bundling that with a Controller brings you to $1,128.

512GB isn't huge for a gaming system. Valve's spec sheet highlights that no matter which option you get, it comes with a high-speed microSD card slot. Luckily, the SSD is easy to access (See upgradeability above).

The $1,049 starting price is higher than consoles, including the more powerful PlayStation 5 Pro ($899) with 2TB of storage. A base PS5 Digital Edition is $599 with 825GB of storage. An all-digital Xbox Series X starts at $599.99. If you're looking for a living room solution to play games and don't care specifically about settings and your Steam library, those consoles are a better value.

In Asia, the Steam Machine will be sold through Valve's partner, Komodo, which also sells the Steam Deck. It will be available in Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, but will not be sold in South Korea.

If you're buying this for a Steam library, you could also put Steam on any other computer and run it in Big Picture Mode. And given that supply is tight, that may be a better option for those willing to consider alternatives.

When we put together a parts list to estimate what a custom build looks like to match the Steam Machine, including a Ryzen 5 7600X, Radeon RX 7600, 16GB of DDR5-5600 RAM, a Gigabyte B650M Gaming Plus WiFi Micro ATX AM5 Motherboard, a 650W PSU, a case, cooler, and 1TB of storage, we hit $1,048.83. While our build gets you double the storage of the base Steam Machine, it doesn't get you the small case, dedicated Bluetooth or Steam Controller antennas, or super quiet operation. So if you're only comparing the Machine to other PCs, the price isn't terrible — it’s just the market, in general, that is.

Valve sells the Steam Machine with a one-year warranty.

Bottom Line

Valve's Steam Machine is a complicated little box. It was clearly designed for a simpler time, when components were plentiful, and it would be a somewhat affordable desktop that could be a more powerful option for Steam Deck owners to play their Steam games at home.

But it's not a simple time. The Steam Machine is still cute, still has a good selection of ports, still has an easily upgradeable SSD, and, most importantly, still runs SteamOS and gets all of the benefits that come with it. If you were docking your Steam Deck to the TV and wanted more performance, this will get you there, once Valve irons out the last of the bugs.

If you're just looking to get into gaming, a base-level PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X is a better deal. You can buy one and a Nintendo Switch 2 and spend less than the Steam Machine.

You can also get many of the benefits of the Steam Machine on other devices. If you have an effective gaming PC or laptop, Steam Big Picture Mode will do most of the work there. Valve is also working to bring SteamOS to more machines, though currently it's only working on Radeon GPUs.

But if you want something small for your living room that plays years of Steam titles and maybe even has a cute little wooden faceplate, the Steam Machine is for you, but you should go in understanding its limitations.

The Steam Machine is finally here, and Valve is aiming to get its small gaming PC into the hands of more gamers and fewer scalpers. While the Machine starts at $1,049 and goes up from there, the company is still expecting intense interest and has limited components.

The company is instituting a new, more randomized reservation system that aims to ensure that bots, people with faster internet connections, and people who "can schedule their life around that moment" aren't prioritized.

Reservations are open now on Steam, and you can sign up for the Steam Machine configuration or bundle that you're interested in anytime before Thursday, June 25th at 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET. When the sign-up period ends, Valve will randomize the list in order to determine the order. After that time, all new sign-ups will join the end of the waitlist.

Following the randomization, people who signed up will get one of two emails on that day. They will either be added to the reservation queue, and there's a Steam Machine with their name on it, or you’ll be on a waitlist and will be informed when units become available. The waitlist consists of people further down on the list than there are Steam Machines in this production run, and you're waiting for people with reservations to cancel or for future batches.

To sign up, you need a Steam account in good standing, with a purchase made on the platform before April 27, 2026. Only one reservation is allowed per household, with Valve looking at payment methods, shipping addresses, and "other information" to remove duplicates. While the purchase limitation stops scalpers from making new accounts to get on the line, it also may prevent new potential Steam customers from getting into the ecosystem.

You can sign up for multiple configurations, and if you're given a spot for more than one, you'll get a reservation for the "highest end one" and be removed from the other lists. If you sign up for multiple and don't make any lists, you'll be placed on a waitlist for the system you were closest to getting. The lists are also broken down by region: North America, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Australia.

The week of June 29, Valve will start emailing customers in the reservation queue. They'll get an option to purchase, with 72 hours to buy before Valve skips to the next person in line. The reservation queue is expected to last through the rest of the year, suggesting many waitlist customers will be waiting quite a while.

Pricing and a lack of subsidies

The Steam Machine comes in four configurations: 512GB, a 512GB bundle with a Steam Controller, 2TB (including two extra faceplates, a wooden one and a red one, pictured above), and a 2TB bundle with a Steam Controller. Here are the prices:

The company said increases in the cost of components led to these prices. "The overall effect is that our original goal for the price of Steam Machine is no longer viable," the blog reads. "So the prices we're sharing today reflect the state of the world for manufacturing; or, more accurately, it reflects the price [of] the components as we've secured them over the past 6 months."

The company added that they couldn't source some components at all, which reduced the number of systems available at launch.

Valve said it's not subsidizing the Steam Machine because it goes against its belief in the "openness of the PC ecosystem."

"When companies sell their hardware under cost for competitive advantage, or buy exclusive content for it, they're doing that to build a more closed system, one where you don't get to choose what software you want to use," the blog reads. "We don't want that for PC hardware, and we don't think you should want it either. You shouldn't feel like you have to buy Valve hardware; you should be able to view it as just one option alongside all the devices for playing games, and select the one that makes sense for you."

Previously, Valve had said there would be no subsidy, but suggested it was because it was competing with PCs and because of the engineering work the company had done.

For those who can't get a Steam Machine or want to use other hardware, Valve says it's working on getting SteamOS to work on more hardware. Beginning with SteamOS 3.8, Valve says you will be able to put the OS together with a DIY rig, though for now, it only supports AMD GPUs.

SOLD OUT: Alas, this was a popular deal and has run out. You can still pick up a Switch 2 for $449 from Amazon, which is still better than its pricing in recent months.

The Nintendo Switch 2 has suffered several price increases in recent months, most recently rocketing to $499. Right now, however, you can score a brand new console for just $399 if you're a new customer at the Amazon outlet website Woot with code CHEAPSWITCH2. Used Woot before? You can still save $30 with the same code, bringing the price to just $419, an $80 saving on the current MSRP.

• Check out this deal at Woot

As noted, Woot is Amazon's outlet website, so you'll sometimes see used, open box, or factory reconditioned items. However, this item is brand new and sealed. As you can imagine, there's a limit of one per customer, and we expect this deal to sell out extremely quickly.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is Nintendo's ultra-popular handheld gaming system. The console comes with a 7.9-inch 1080p screen, and it can be docked with a TV for 4K gaming at up to 120 fps. The Joy-Con 2 controllers (included in the purchase) can be used attached or detached for flexibility.

The console comes with 256GB of internal storage and supports expansion through microSD Express cards. Obviously, if you stack up a few titles, you might want to think about buying some extra storage, and the ongoing Amazon Prime Day sale isn't a bad shout for this. The best deal right now is this Samsung P9, currently $70, although this was $47 a few days ago, so it might be worth grabbing the Switch 2 now and waiting for a better deal.

As noted, this is an extremely good deal on the Switch 2, even if you just use the code for returning customers to score one for $419. If you're new to Woot or Amazon and get one for $399, however, it's an absolute bargain.

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MSI unveiled its Claw 8 EX AI+ handheld at Computex earlier this month, and it has just appeared on the company's website for $1,799, while Newegg has it listed for $1,699. It features Intel's new Arc G3 Extreme APU with flagship Arc B390 integrated graphics and 32GB of LPDDR5X memory. MSI says it tried everything to keep costs as low as possible, and that it'll be a tough year ahead with chances of even more price hikes.

Andy Chu, the brand's product marketing lead, told FRVR that "it’s a really difficult year for Intel and especially the OEM like us [...] because we also need to take those cost hikes for those key components like memory and also storage.” It's no secret at this point that DRAM and NAND prices have skyrocketed over the past few months, and even major vendors are struggling to keep up.

Every console is now more expensive than it was at launch, including the once bastion of affordability: the Steam Deck. The OLED version of Valve's handheld retails for $949 despite featuring last-gen hardware. The MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ brings a huge performance boost over it, so the price almost looks justified in comparison. The ROG Xbox Ally X with the Ryzen Z2 Extreme is available for $999 everywhere, and that's AMD's mainstream rival to the Arc G3 Extreme at the moment.

"All I can say is we have tried every approach to get the memory and also storage at a lower cost. Like, deepen the relationship between us and also those suppliers, like to have some deals… and I think we have done everything we can do to make our system as affordable as possible," continued Chu. Not much you can do when hyperscalers annex all the production lines, offering fatter margins to these manufacturers.

It's a bit ironic to explicitly market your product as "AI+" while publicly complaining about the very consequences of said AI boom, but we digress. "Unfortunately, I think the situation, the result is what you see right here. So, I would say, yes, it will be a tough year for us and for the gamers,” warns Chu. We've already heard plenty of admonitions from various companies, but it's disheartening nonetheless to see the situation perpetually spiral out of control.

The executive goes on to say that "there’s much room for another price hike," so even the $1,799 price tag could go up in the following months. For context, you can find AMD's Strix Halo-equipped handhelds above the $2,000 mark, and they are significantly more capable machines. Even though they're far and few in between, let's not discount laptops either that have Panther Lake silicon and cost less than $2,000.

To be clear, the Claw 8 EX AI+ is a competent device that we were impressed by in our hands-on at Computex. Since Intel is only launching the Arc G3 Extreme right now, there was no cheaper base Arc G3 to put inside this thing either. Intel has mandated memory speeds for Panther Lake, but MSI could've surely cut down on the 32GB pool to save costs and make the handheld more affordable overall with 24GB or even 12GB configs.

Game speedrunning enthusiasts once discovered that a greasy disc was the key to enabling a big time-saving trick in SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom on the original Xbox. Speedrunner SHiFT, the current leaderboard champ in the game, reveals how, with the right console generation choice, the right drive, the right configuration of greasy smudges, and with mastery of the 'lag clip' technique, you could complete SpongeBob running from the optical drive in record time.

The above video is partly a detective story, as the competitive speedrunning community focuses intensely on any not-so-obvious speed advantages that can be achieved. The dream is to slice seconds off the completion time of this game and achieve a speedrun of under 40 minutes. SHiFT discusses how the gunked-up game disc tactic was confirmed as a winning strategy, while not breaking any community guidelines.

The original Xbox version of the SpongeBob game is the default choice of the speedrunning community, as it has faster loading than the PS2 and GameCube versions. However, there were various versions of the Xbox, too. For example, there are four different optical drive manufacturers, among other nuanced differences. So, detective work and experience were used to narrow down the best vintage machine.

Speedrunners, including SHiFT and Zim, worked for hours testing various combinations of optical drives, laser modules, and connector cables. They even wondered if the video chip (which varies between production years on Xbox) or the TV connector method had an impact on timings. In a daze from a super-long streaming session, they eventually decided to look at the condition of the disc. It was smudgy, but it could be worse...

An inspirational moment then occurred, and they tried making the disc filthy and smeary with grease and sweat. However, it was ultimately found that a strategically placed pattern of smears, with eight strokes emanating from the center like the petals of a flower, was a winning choice. This grease config made it easy for the player to induce the elusive lag clip timesaving technique – no hardware tinkering necessary – without making the optical disc unreadable.

They had found “the holy grail” of SpongeBob lag clipping speedrunning. SHiFT’s conclusion was confirmed in some correspondence with the then-champion among SpongeBob speedrunners, who goes by the unimproveable handle swagmasterdoritos. The master admitted, “I clean my discs via licking them then using a pillowcase to wipe and clean.” An image shared by swagmasterdoritos showed the spit-cleaned disc featured petal-like streaks. That’s how they had been enjoying super-slick lag clipping throughout the game: there was nothing particularly unique about their original Xbox.

Two new entrants have broken into the top five of the leaderboard in the last five days, but SHiFT's time of 40m 27s is still more than 90s ahead of the nearest challenger. Nowadays, the community has given up on optical disks. You will see that all the top SpongeBob speedruns play the game from the Xbox HDD. Some thought lag clips were too inconsistent, and that potentially damaging game discs by smudging or scratching them was unethical.

Xbox embarked on an impressive course-correction spree earlier this year, thanks to a leadership swap bringing in Asha Sharma as the new CEO. A hundred days later, she has penned a candid internal memo along with Xbox strategy chief Matt Brody, going over the future of the company. It was released online as a blog post, with the main takeaway being the surge in component costs — even a giant like Microsoft will be forced to pay over 5x more for storage next year, compared to 2025.

The situation is a bit ironic considering Microsoft is one of the biggest constituents of the AI boom, and a central player in the AI phenomenon that is driving up storage and memory prices globally. Despite that, in February 2026, Xbox paid 2x as much for storage as it did last fall, and those costs have already doubled since then. By 2027, the price hike is set to the 5x multiplier; Xbox will shell out more than 500% of what it originally used to pay two years ago. RAM has followed a similar trajectory, Sharma says.

The blog post explains how everyone in the industry is affected by the component crisis, but that Xbox is impacted more harshly because of "the choices [we] made over the last half decade." Such dire circumstances have made it harder for the company to make as many consoles as the players want, forcing "a new business model and partnerships for hardware" to be considered.

"Going forward, this cannot continue," said the Xbox executives while revealing the company has invested over $20 billion in the past five years, but lost $500 million in annual revenue during the same period. That wording suggests that perhaps the next-gen console needs to be built by someone else. Third-party OEMs can help offset some of the cost that would otherwise be spent subsidizing the console.

The blog post reaffirms that the team is still committed to Xbox Helix through all the hardships, but it doesn't seem like it would be a direct competitor for the PS6 anymore. The console-PC hybrid approach has likely pushed it well past affordable territory. CEO Asha Sharma has even recently talked about how spending thousands of dollars in a single console generation is not feasible.

So, it'll be interesting to see how the Xbox Helix would be justified during this era, especially with component costs piling up. Current estimates put it well over $1,000, which sounds egregious in a vacuum. Unfortunately, a PS5 Pro now costs $900, and a 1TB Steam Deck OLED will run you $950 today. The Xbox Helix almost doesn't sound bad by comparison when you take into account the massive generational leap.

The rest of the blog post talks about how Xbox only has a 3$ operating margin — for every $100 made, only $3 are left as profit after everything is deducted, for example. Realities like those are what pushed the company to only have two exclusives for 2026 and 2027. Bloomberg also reports that a layoff is on the cards, claiming it will be announced on June 30, 2026, right after Microsoft's fiscal year ends.

The radical new business models being teased at the moment could point toward more subscription services, deeper financing plans, or simple hardware partnerships, as we mentioned earlier, where OEMs build the console for Xbox. It's a bit too early to speculate all that, but it's clear that the company is not giving up easily. A lot hinges on the success of Xbox Helix next year, which is now all but confirmed to be a luxury device.

If you thought the hype around GTA 6 was already at a fever pitch, baby, you ain't seen nothing yet. A Redditor has been posting some concerning information on the /r/GTA6unmoderated/ subreddit that he believes points to the forthcoming release of a third trailer for what will likely be the largest entertainment product launch of all time. That information consists of acoustic recording data, traffic monitoring, and, incredibly, even oxygen concentrations, all allegedly collected live in person at Rockstar's HQ.

To say this is unprecedented for a video game launch would be an understatement. This person is purportedly spending a significant amount of their time literally crouched in bushes outside the Rockstar North headquarters in Edinburgh, Scotland, to record this data and observe employees coming and going from the studio, all in an attempt to predict when a new video game trailer will come out.

HQ oxygen analysis. Executives working weekends. from r/GTA6unmoderated

The poster claims that increased oxygen levels at the HQ point to executives working weekends, while spikes in acoustic and decibel levels point to increased activity. The user also posted a significant set of "Rockstar Carpark Data," which purportedly shows a significant increase in cars arriving at the HQ, including several "notable" models such as a Rolls-Royce Cullinan and a Ferrari 296 GTB.

Needless to note, this could of course all be an elaborate prank. The user has only posted on Reddit four times, and the data that they're posting really doesn't seem like it would actually correlate with anything. There's also the sheer absurdity of someone going to such lengths for this purpose. However, in comment replies, the user claims to be someone who "contracted with the government for audio surveillance" for "years". He also claims that he's "not doing anything illegal", and that he "literally just did it for [his] side hustle and [because he] was bored." He also claims to make upwards of £300,000 a year at whatever he does for work now.

Further, when a Redditor sarcastically asked, "Why not just bug the place at this point?" he replied in earnest, "I wouldn’t be able to pull it off," before admitting he doesn't want to "go the illegal route." Kudos to him for avoiding actual illegal activity, we suppose, but we're not convinced that his current surveillance operations aren't already over the line. He's supposedly already had one set of monitoring gear (pictured above) confiscated by, presumably, Rockstar's security staff, and frankly, if this is legitimate, we're surprised he hasn't had a run-in with the Police Service.

The obvious comparison to make is to the Pentagon pizza theory, which states that you can use spikes in fast food orders, especially pizza delivery, to determine when US government agencies are about to take decisive actions. As amusing as that is, this is decidedly a step further. We do have to acknowledge that the enterprising surveillant is at least not harassing employees directly or trying to enter the building, but we find it very unlikely that the poor employees trying to crunch and complete what might be the biggest video game of all time aren't aware of this cad—again, assuming this is all real and not some kind of complicated troll.

Even others in the GTA community, who are no doubt just as enthusiastic about the game, have condemned the user's behavior. After GTA6 Countdown posted about his behavior on X, GTABase posted the quote tweet above, calling the overeager fan's actions "unnecessary and dangerously obsessive." It's good to see that calmer heads are prevailing, even as many in the Reddit threads seem to be aiding and encouraging the dubious investigator, including suggesting laser listening devices.

Folks, we're excited for GTA 6, too, but as the kids say, this ain't it. Hiding in bushes, setting up microphones, monitoring cars coming and going, and monitoring oxygen levels might (or might not!) strictly be legal, but that doesn't make them reasonable or rightful things to do because you want a company to tell you more information about its upcoming game. GTA 6 is still scheduled for launch on current-generation console platforms in mid-November, which is a little over five months away from today. If you're primarily a PC gamer and you're itching to play, keep in mind that the PC release is not even formally confirmed yet, so it's time to start shopping those console deals—sooner rather than later.

Argentine developer Dante Leoncini has gotten the original Half-Life running at 30 FPS on a Nokia N95, the Symbian slider phone that launched in 2007, and has added mouse and keyboard support, he said in a post on X this week. Leoncini says that while some slowdowns remain, he has pinned down the cause and is working on a fix, the latest step in a series of efforts to run heavyweight software on the dual-core, 332 MHz handset. Half-Life shipped in 1998, needing a 133 MHz Pentium and 24MB of RAM at minimum, specs the N95 clears on paper. To date, Leoncini has managed to run Quake 3, Crash Bandicoot, and emulate Sega, ScummVM, and NES on the handset.

The N95 pairs a 332 MHz Texas Instruments OMAP 2420, a dual-core part built around the ARM11 design, with a PowerVR MBX 3D accelerator, 64MB of RAM, and a 240x320 display, all under Symbian OS 9.2 and S60 3rd Edition. An 8GB storage variant, released later in 2007, doubled the memory to 128MB.

Because the phone runs an Arm processor and a non-Windows operating system, getting Half-Life onto it requires a native Symbian build rather than emulation of the PC version. Leoncini has said before that the limiting factor on his earlier Quake 3 work was the CPU, which aligns with the slowdowns he’s now chasing.

Ports of Half-Life to unusual platforms generally lean on Xash3D, an open-source engine compatible with Valve's GoldSrc that’s been built for Android, the Raspberry Pi, and the Meta Quest. Whether Leoncini's N95 version uses it isn’t confirmed, however.

The OMAP 2420 architecture has managed to carry a game running at 30 FPS before. Way, way back in 2008, GMSArena reported that developer Olli Hinkka had ported Quake III Arena to S60 3rd Edition phones running the same chipset, with Bluetooth keyboard and mouse support and the option to host a multiplayer server on the phone itself. That port ran on the N95 8GB, N82, and E90, but not the original N95, which carried half the RAM of the 8GB model; Leoncini hasn’t said which N95 variant he’s using.

Half-Life is one of several things Leoncini has built or ported for the N95, alongside a from-scratch Blender clone called Blendersito and his own game engine, both on his GitHub. Running. In terms of the N95 as his choice of hardware medium, it’s far from the weirdest one we’ve seen.

Nintendo has officially disclosed that it's planning on releasing a new version of the Switch 2, updated to comply with European Union regulations. According to these new rules, certain devices, including portable handhelds, need to have easily user-replaceable batteries if they wish to be sold in the region. The law goes into effect from February 18, 2027, so we can assume Nintendo will have an updated Switch 2 out by then.

The company has a dedicated "Compliance with EU Directives and Regulations" page on its website that was just updated with a new "Batteries Regulation" section. It mentions how the EU's Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive has made replaceable batteries mandatory and that "Nintendo is implementing measures to comply with these requirements by preparing versions of products to meet the Regulation."

The last part of the sentence is the important bit; it confirms that the company will launch a Switch 2 with user-replaceable batteries sometime between now and February 2027. The products falling under this category come with model numbers starting with "BEE," and in the future, they'll have an additional code "OSM" visible on the package to indicate "separate products for regulatory purposes."

That specific wording makes it sound like the Switch 2 units that comply with the new battery rules are different from a regular Switch 2, almost discouraging users from opting for it willingly. Moreover, the "BEE" model number is also designated to Switch 2 Joy-Cons and the Pro Controller, so it remains to be seen whether they'll be updated with replaceable-battery models as well.

Whatever ends up happening, it's important to keep in mind that we're talking about the European Union only, so don't expect to see a potentially revised Switch 2 being sold in North America or Asia. Of course, it can be imported, but we don't know whether Nintendo will region-lock the consoles to ensure they only work in the EU. Currently, Switch 2 models and games (outside of Japan) are not region-locked.

Lastly, you can still swap out the batteries in a regular Switch 2 today, but it's a very involved process, similar to a modern smartphone — if not harder. There are about 36 steps listed in iFixit's guide just for getting the battery out, and another 27 after for reassembly. The console overall has a 3/10 repairability score, lower than the original Switch, and much lower than even the latest iPhone 17 Pro lineup.

MSI has long been a partner of Intel's with its Claw handheld, but at Computex, the company's Claw 8 EX AI+ looked like the strongest version yet. That's largely based on the fact that it's using the Intel Arc G3 Extreme, based on the company's Core Ultra Series 3 (Panther Lake) chips, with integrated graphics ready to take on AMD.

The system, which comes in one color, 'void purple,' has two extended grips on the sides. On the ground at Computex in Taipei, Tom's Hardware's Jeffrey Kampman confirmed that the Claw 8 EX AI+ "felt excellent in my hands," and that "the grips are large and well-contoured and distribute the weight of the system well."

Those grips also feature hall-effect triggers and sticks, and what MSI refers to as a "highly responsive D-Pad," along with a linear motor for rumble feedback.

Ergonomics have become a big deal. When Asus moved to its ROG Xbox lineup, it added some pretty serious grips to the sides. It makes the system wider, but also far more comfortable to hold. The same holds true here.

The system boasts an 8-inch, 120 Hz display with a variable refresh rate. The screen isn't totally flush between the grips, and juts out below them a bit in a weird style choice.

In our hands-on time with the device, Hogwarts Legacy ran well on the integrated B390, but we'll need to spend time testing in a less controlled environment to learn more for sure.

While MSI is still using its own Control Center M, its integrated into the Xbox Full Screen Experience, so you shouldn't have to deal with the Windows desktop unless you truly want to.We're hoping that the 80 WHr battery (the same size that you find in the Asus ROG Ally X), will allow for at least a few hours of gaming on a charge. Panther Lake has proven to be fairly efficient, but gaming is a pretty heavy workload.

Variations of the Claw will come with up to 32GB of RAM. MSI hasn't listed storage, but points out there's a single M.2 2280 SSD slot on the Claw. While MSI has yet to announce specifics on release dates or pricing, an early page on Best Buy that has since been pulled down suggested that a version with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage may be $1,699.99. But like much at Computex, there's not official pricing, so it's all still up in the air.

What initially seemed like a promising and legitimate foray into the retro gaming handheld market has rapidly evolved into a PR challenge for Lenovo. The company has cracked down on unauthorized Chinese merchants who were illegally selling Lenovo G02 to international buyers, violating the device's regional restrictions. To make matters worse, several unscrupulous sellers were reportedly preloading thousands of pirated games onto the G02.

Lenovo made it abundantly clear to Tom's Hardware that, despite licensing its branding for the G02 retro gaming handhelds, any distribution or sale outside China was strictly prohibited. In recent days, multiple sellers from Chinese e-commerce platforms, including AliExpress and Alibaba, have started selling the G02 globally. The breach not only violated Lenovo’s explicit restrictions but also caused the company potential legal complications, as some G02 units were later found to contain thousands of illicit ROMs.

Lenovo’s swift investigation into the unauthorized sales of its G02 retro gaming handheld has already yielded positive results. The first waves of AliExpress and Alibaba listings for the G02 are no longer available for purchase and effectively halted international purchases that extend beyond the device's intended market.

As soon as one listing is taken down, another sprouts up almost instantaneously. Resellers are persistent in profiting from the G02, so they will do whatever to circumvent Lenovo's crackdown. Shortly after the delistings, another Alibaba merchant had already begun offering the Lenovo G02 for $41.40, albeit with a minimum order quantity of 40 units. The bulk-sale approach will make it difficult for Lenovo and Chinese platforms to track and control the flow of the devices. Bulk sales appeal to international resellers and gray market operators, so who knows how much the Alibaba seller will move before Lenovo pulls the listing.

Needless to say, the G02 has turned into a nightmare for Lenovo. The company will likely have to employ additional resources to police Chinese e-commerce platforms and tighten its distribution channels to prevent the G02 from leaving China.

Different companies are responding to the global memory shortage in different ways. While some, such as Sony, Nintendo, or Valve, choose to raise prices to offset higher component costs, others opt to downgrade hardware specifications. According to Redditor Pixogen, Anbernic has quietly reduced the memory capacity of its RG34XXSP retro gaming handheld yet again without any official announcement. However, the company says that the standard memory capacity for the device remains 1GB and that this is an "unexpected error."

The RG34XXSP, which debuted in May 2025, quickly established itself as a popular retro gaming handheld thanks to solid specifications with a competitive price tag. The Game Boy Advance SP-inspired device launched with a generous 2GB of LPDDR4 memory. The ample memory enabled the RG34XXSP to run tons of classic games flawlessly, with very smooth emulation. However, the global memory shortage has significantly affected Anbernic, which has reduced the RG34XXSP's memory capacity.

In January 2026, Anbernic implemented the first downgrade to the RG34XXSP by halving the memory. Instead of 2GB, the clamshell retro gaming handheld device shipped with 1GB, but at the same price. The move understandably led to disappointment and frustration among retro aficionados. Now, a new report has surfaced claiming that Anbernic has once again halved the memory capacity, bringing it down to just 512MB, resulting in a 74% reduction compared to the original.

512 ram RG34xxSP - Update - Samsung 740 K4E4E324EE EGCF - 512 LPDDR3 from r/ANBERNIC

In the latest teardown of the RG34XXSP, the gaming handheld in question features a single Samsung K4E4E324EE-EGCF chip, which is a 512MB LPDDR3 memory module. The change reveals that Anbernic has not only reduced the device's memory capacity from its original specifications but also slapped an older, slower memory module into the RG34XXSP.

In a statement to Tom's Hardware, Anbernic says that the "current standard memory capacity is 1GB," and said that if a customer has received a 512MB version, this is "an unexpected error." Notably, the company didn't deny that this could have happened, and recommended that any affected users should contact the company's after-sales service team, who will "assist with a replacement as a priority." The company did not address the disparity between the listed LPDDR4 spec and the inclusion of LPDDR3.

The implications of the memory swap extend beyond the simple reduction in memory size. LPDDR4 is faster and more power-efficient than LPDDR3. Anyone with a 512MB RG34XXSP will probably experience reduced performance, especially with more demanding emulation. So customers should definitely reach out if they find this is the case.

The RG34XXSP’s prior hardware downgrade reflects the struggles many companies face as they attempt to deliver affordable products amid the memory shortage. As such, the company is claiming that this latest memory twist doesn't seem to be a downgrade or intentional, and claims that the handheld should still be shipping with 1GB of RAM.

After teasing the range earlier this year, Intel has officially revealed its Arc G3 range of chips designed for the best handheld gaming PCs. The Arc G3 range includes two SKUs, the Arc G3 and Arc G3 Extreme, that are built on Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3, or Panther Lake, silicon, and packing either the Arc B390 or Arc B370 integrated GPU, which are still the only two graphics processors on the market with Intel’s Xe3 architecture.

Intel has previously tried breaking into the handheld market with partner MSI, but it’s a space that’s been dominated by AMD’s Ryzen Z-series processors. Valve launched the Steam Deck with a custom AMD SoC, which was refined in the Steam Deck OLED, and both the ROG Ally X and Lenovo Legion Go S have stuck with Team Red. Intel’s G3 series looks like an attempt to establish Intel as a name in PC gaming handhelds, rather than just throwing laptop SKUs in the unique form factor as we’ve seen with devices like the MSI Claw.

Both chips use a 14-core CPU with 2 P-cores, 8 E-cores, and 4 LP E-cores. The main difference between them is the integrated GPU. The Arc B390 comes with 12 Xe3 cores while the Arc B370 comes with 10. Intel has yet to confirm clock speeds and power draw for the new range.

It has provided some other details, however. For starters, the G3 Extreme series will feature Intel Precompiled Shaders. AMD has recently partnered with Microsoft to provide something similar on desktop with Advanced Shader Delivery. The idea is that you download a precompiled set of shaders rather than compiling them at runtime, vastly reducing the time it takes to get into a game.

We’ve yet to see a true head-to-head battle between the Arc G3 and Ryzen Z ranges, but our testing of the B390 shows that it’s one impressive iGPU. Using high settings at 1080p with XeSS set to Balanced, we were able to achieve above 80 fps in Cyberpunk 2077. Mind you, that performance was inside a 16-inch Lenovo reference laptop. Expect lower performance inside a thermally-constrained handheld.

As with all recent Intel Arc graphics, Arc G3 chips come with full support for XeSS 3, including multi-frame generation, AI upscaling, and latency reduction. You’ll only be able to access those features in supported games, however. Unlike AMD, Intel doesn’t currently offer driver-level frame generation along the line of AMD Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF).

Intel says the chips will also arrive with Wi-Fi 7 R2, dual Bluetooth 6, and Thunderbolt 4. Partner systems from Acer, MSI, and OneXPlayer will start rolling out "in the coming months." Intel will be showing off several handhelds with the new Arc G3 range at Computex, and Tom's Hardware will have folks on the ground in Taipei to check them out in the flesh.

Acer and Intel are hoping to shake up the mobile handheld market with the Predator Atlas 8, a portable gaming device that takes on AMD’s dominance in the space with the new Intel Arc G3 and G3 Extreme processors, packing Arc B370 or B390 iGPUs. Acer is also promising up to 10% better AeroBlade cooling compared to the company’s previous systems, thanks to a dual-fan setup with what the company says is the first metal fan in a gaming handheld.

Other key features include an 8-inch 1920 x 1200 (16x10) touchscreen with 500 nits of peak brightness and a 120 Hz variable refresh rate. Acer lists the “IPS-level” screen as delivering 100% of the sRGB spectrum and 77.68% of the Adobe color space. The battery is listed as “up to 80 Wh,” with a 60Wh option that will likely be paired with the lesser, non-Extreme, chip.

That’s a fairly large battery for a handheld (80 Wh matches the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X), but it’s unclear at this point how the power consumption of Intel’s new chips will compare to the (mostly aging) AMD silicon in existing handhelds, like the Ryzen Z2 series. And the screen, while not OLED, sounds like it could suck down its share of power as well. But of course, as with all mobile gaming devices, battery life will vary widely depending on the kind of game you're playing and the settings.

You’ll also get the main features of Intel’s modern graphics, including ray tracing support and XeSS 3 upscaling. And Intel’s Endurance Gaming software is on board to balance frame rate and unplugged longevity. An XBOX Game Pass subscription is also included with this Windows 11 handheld; Acer says you’ll get two months of Game Pass Premium and three months of PC Game Pass.

Interestingly, the trigger switches are dual-mode, using both a micro switch and Hall effect, letting you switch between the former for speed in FPS titles and the latter for games that require an analog touch. Acer is also tossing in its PredatorSense software (for the first time on handhelds), providing system monitoring, performance mode switching, and access to game settings via a dedicated PredatorSense button.

Port selection and connectivity are about what we’d expect in a modern gaming handheld (especially one with Intel-based internals). You get two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a UHS-II microSD slot for expanding storage, and Wi-Fi 7 / Bluetooth 5.4.

At 810 grams (1.79 pounds) for the 80 Wh model, the Predator Atlas 8 will weigh less than Lenovo’s Legion Go (854 g), but more than the Steam Deck OLED (640 g). In the couple of photos that Acer has shared thus far, this doesn’t look like the sveltest handheld on the market, and we’re curious to get some hands-on time with it once we hit the ground for Computex 2026 in Taiwan.

Acer says the Predator Atlas 8 will be offered in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Australia in October (sorry, Asia). We’re still waiting on pricing, but given the volatility of the RAM and SSD markets, we likely won’t know that until we’re a lot closer to launch.

Valve's Steam Deck OLED is seeing a massive price increase. Widely considered one of the best handheld gaming PCs since its launch in 2023, the 512GB model is now $789, while the 1TB version is $949. Those are $240 and $300 increases, respectively.

In a blog post, Valve wrote that the price increases are "due to rising memory and storage costs."

"Steam Deck itself hasn't changed; these new prices reflect the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges across the industry as a whole," the post reads.

The 512GB Steam Deck OLED was previously $549, while the 1TB upgrade was $649. As low-end gaming laptops have dried up, these were seen as a great value. But back in February, the handheld started going out of stock due to those same component shortages.

In this light, the Lenovo Legion Go 2, which we reviewed at $1,349.99, and Asus ROG Xbox Ally X, at $999.99, don't seem quite as outrageous anymore. The entry-level Asus ROG Xbox Ally, despite some performance issues and technical problems, may look more attractive than ever if it keeps its $599.99 price.

Memory and storage have also wreaked havoc with Valve's plans to launch its upcoming Steam Machine PC and Stream Frame VR headset. Those were delayed from the first quarter of 2026 into a murkier time. This price hike also suggests that those systems, which use newer technologies, will be even more expensive. Valve did launch its Steam Controller earlier this month.

The Steam Deck OLED follows a pattern of years-old machines getting price hikes as their manufacturers deal with the current component landscape. Microsoft increased the standard Xbox Series X to $649, while Sony's PlayStation 5 recently jumped to $649.99 for the base model and $899 for the PS5 Pro. In September, Nintendo will raise the price of the Nintendo Switch 2 by $50 in September. (If you're doing the math, yes, a 1TB Steam Deck costs more than a PlayStation 5 Pro.)

The Steam Deck OLED's prior pricing had previously led the market, leading us to question the expense of some Windows-based alternatives. We'll have to see if this price holds, but if it does, it may reorganize the entire value proposition of this product category in the first place.

Under normal circumstances, any brand would be delighted to get its product in the spotlight, but some publicity can indeed be bad publicity. Lenovo’s G02 retro gaming handheld has become the center of a growing controversy after users who purchased the device reported it was seemingly preloaded with thousands of illegal game ROMs. In response to these allegations, Lenovo has contacted Tom’s Hardware to clarify the situation and has confirmed that it has launched an investigation into the matter.

To understand the G02's situation, it's necessary to start from the beginning. Although the G02 proudly sports Lenovo branding, Lenovo didn't design or manufacture it. Instead, the G02 is a white-label device. If you're not familiar with the term, it refers to mass-produced products that typically come from a single manufacturer and are re-branded and sold under other companies' labels.

As a result, the G02 is subject to a strict regional brand licensing agreement that limits its sales to the Chinese market. "Lenovo does not authorize the sale of this device outside of China, including third party platforms such as AliExpress or other reseller sites. Any such sales are not conducted or sanctioned by Lenovo or its authorized licensees," a company spokesperson told us.

That explains why Lenovo never officially announced the G02, nor did the device appear on the company's website or in its marketing channels. The G02 doesn't officially form a part of Lenovo's global product lineup, and its existence remained largely unknown to the public until foreign customers managed to buy one off a Chinese online e-commerce platform.

Lenovo made it clear in its statement to Tom’s Hardware that the company doesn't sell or distribute the G02 outside China under any circumstances. The prohibition also includes sales through third-party platforms such as AliExpress and other international reseller sites, which often serve as channels for gray-market imports.

Lenovo highlighted that G02 devices shipped by Lenovo or an authorized licensee do not include memory cards or preloaded games. Therefore, Lenovo suspects that a third party may have added the illegal ROMs to the G02 without the company's knowledge or approval once the device left the authorized channels.

AliExpress sellers generally refrain from explicitly advertising the G02 as bundled with any preloaded games, likely to avoid drawing attention to potential copyright issues or to avoid violating platform policies. Despite this, user feedback on this specific listing revealed a different story. Notably, one customer left a review stating that their device allegedly arrived with an astonishing 40,000 games pre-installed, four times more than the initial report. The claim is plausible given the G02's support for over 30 emulators, so that's a lot of Sony, Sega, and Nintendo ROMs.

"Devices officially distributed by Lenovo or its authorized licensees in the China market do not include memory cards or preloaded games. Any software or content found on devices sold outside of authorized channels may have been added by third parties without Lenovo’s knowledge or approval," the spokesperson said. "Any content installed by the user—and any issues that may arise—are the sole responsibility of the user of the device, as explicitly stated in its instruction manual."

In light of recent reports about third-party vendors selling the G02 with preloaded ROMs, Lenovo says it has launched an investigation into the matter. The company will probably have to thoroughly check its supply chain, distribution networks, and vendor partnerships to find any bad apples. The company says it will take swift and appropriate action as necessary.

The Lenovo G02 was never supposed to leave China, but it has. Now, Lenovo is in firefighter mode to correct the situation, because many companies, specifically Nintendo, don't take matters lightly when it comes to piracy. While any ensuing lawsuit would surely span international jurisdictions and encompass a complex set of facts about who did what and when, it's simpler and cheaper to nip the problem in the bud before lawyers ever have to darken a courtroom door.

Intel is expected to host a grand reveal for its rumored "Arc G3" series of chips for handhelds at the upcoming Computex 2026 show. According to Videocardz, one of those handhelds is being cooked up by Acer and is called the "Predator Atlas 8," suggesting it's an 8-inch device, likely going up against the MSI Claw 8.

The Arc G3 series is Intel's expected handheld push based on Panther Lake silicon, customized for maximum efficiency and competing against the Ryzen Z2 platform, which it teased at CES (though without the "Arc G3" name).

The Predator Atlas would be Acer's fourth handheld following the three models from its "Nitro Blaze" lineup: Blaze 7, Blaze 8, and Blaze 11. You might've never heard of those names because Acer hasn't released the Blaze 8 and 11 in global markets, while the Blaze 7 was never marketed enough to make a splash. Donning the new handheld in Predator branding, though, would suggest a more serious attempt at converting some of the Acer Predator laptop audience to a handheld.

Apart from the fact that it may reportedly feature an 8-inch screen, we don't know anything else about the rumored Predator Atlas 8. We do know quite a bit about Panther Lake, however. The Arc G3 was known as "Core G3" up until a couple of months ago, with leaks suggesting that the series has been delayed into Q2 2026. Intel has also famously taken digs at AMD's Z2 series, claiming it uses "ancient silicon," so it'll be interesting to see how G3 performs.

As mentioned, Intel teased its handheld push earlier this year alongside the Core Ultra Series 3 launch, but we didn't really get any details at the time. Since then, rumors have pointed toward two different SKUs: a standard Arc G3 and a G3 Extreme — both are tipped to have the same 14 cores split across a 2P+8E+4LP-E configuration, with integrated graphics where the silicon is expected to differ.

The base model likely has an Arc B370 iGPU with 10 Xe3 cores based on the "Celestial" architecture. The same graphics, core config, and a (P-core) boost clock speed of 4.7 GHz are also seen on the Core Ultra 5 338H processor, so the G3 could be an offshoot of that silicon. The Arc G3 extreme reportedly houses an Arc B390 iGPU instead, which would consist of 12 Xe3 cores; the Core Ultra X9 388H and Core Ultra X7 386H have the same iGPU.

Given Panther Lake's advances in gaming performance and efficiency across the board, the Arc G3 lineup should easily stand its ground against AMD's Ryzen Z2 family. We should expect the Red and Blue Teams to trade blows at mid to high power levels, but at lower wattages, Intel may be hard to beat, considering Lunar Lake was already impressive in that department.

Backing up physical media on older consoles such as the GameCube, Wii, original Xbox, and Xbox 360 has long been a frustrating experience for retro gamers. However, according to a YouTube video from Archades Games, modern Blu-ray players can now rip physical media from these consoles to a PC with new specialized firmware from OmniDrive.

The OmniDrive firmware unlocks the ability for compatible Blu-ray players to read the proprietary formats of physical media on older consoles. Compatibility is strictly limited to select external and internal Blu-Ray disc drives that use the MediaTek MT1959 chipset and are compatible with the firmware OmniDrive provides.

The YouTuber showed the process of getting the firmware installed on compatible Blu-ray players. Users will need to check OmniDrive's support list to see if their Blu-ray player is in the list, then install the right firmware appropriate for their drive. OmniDriver offers two firmware options, one designed for full-sized Blu-ray players and the other for external slim drives. Currently, compatible Blu-ray players include models from Asus, LG, Buffalo, and Verbatim.

Game consoles that are supported include the original Xbox, Xbox 360, GameCube, Wii, and Dreamcast. Physical media from other consoles, such as PlayStation 3, 4, 5, and the Xbox One/Series consoles, technically work, but the content on physical media for these consoles is encrypted.

The YouTuber demonstrated the firmware's capabilities by ripping an Xbox 360 game using the Media Preservation Frontend, an open-source disk-dumping tool. The tool was able to see the Xbox 360 game perfectly in a Blu-ray player equipped with OmniDriver's firmware and convert the game into an ISO file.

The ability to rip old console game discs with modern Blu-ray drives is a drastic improvement over previous methods that gamers have been forced to use to extract game data from retro consoles with unique formatting previously. In the past, copying a retro game often required the console itself to be modified. With OmniDrive’s firmware and a compatible Blu-ray player, ripping these older games is nearly as simple as ripping a traditional DVD movie.

This method of ripping physical game media will likely become the norm moving forward for retro gaming enthusiasts for the purposes of game preservation and game emulation. However, if you plan on using this firmware yourself, be sure to check if your Blu-ray drive is compatible, as flashing the firmware on an incompatible drive will almost certainly brick the Blu-ray player.

Gamers receive hope once again that Valve’s long-delayed Steam Machine is moving forward towards a launch and not ending on the chopping block. The Khronos Group, which created the Vulkan graphics API standard, and is its developer and maintainer, has just listed the AMD Steam Machine as the latest entry in its list of conformant products. While this is in no way, shape, or form a confirmation that the console is arriving soon, it’s still a step in the right direction. It indicates that Valve is still actively working on the console despite the setbacks driven by insane memory and storage prices.

This certification does not mean that all Vulkan games will play well on the console — instead, it only says that the future Valve console complies with all the standards set by the body. In other words, the hardware, operating system, and drivers behave as expected with Vulkan, giving developers peace of mind that the entire stack would work consistently. The console’s inclusion in the list does not indicate performance or game compatibility, though.

Valve announced the Steam Machine along with the Steam Controller and the Steam Frame in November 2025. This has got many fans excited, especially as the Steam Deck brought SteamOS to a level of polish and compatibility that allowed users to play a big chunk of their Steam libraries on the handheld console. Unfortunately, this was also the time the memory and storage prices started to spiral out of control. Because of this, the Steam Machine runs the risk of becoming too expensive and moving out of reach of its target customers, especially as Valve is adamant that it will not subsidize its hardware.

Even though Valve announced the three gadgets simultaneously, the console, controller, and VR headset weren’t intended to launch simultaneously. So, even though the Steam Machine was delayed several times, the company saw no reason to hold back the Steam Controller. Fans could finally get their hands on the $99 accessory after it launched in late April, with Tom’s Hardware giving it four out of five stars in its review.

The gaming giant still hasn’t announced an official release date for its latest console, but we hope that the company can secure an affordable memory and storage supplier sooner. That way, it can deliver Steam Machine before the end of the year at a price that most gamers can afford.

A Lenovo-branded G02 retro handheld launched in China earlier this month, coming in at an affordable $63.56 on AliExpress compared to the thousands you have to pay for the Lenovo Legion Go 2. There were some questions if this was a legitimate Lenovo product or just another hardware manufacturer using the logo of a prominent brand, but a Lenovo employee in the company’s Product and Licensing department reportedly confirmed to Retro Dodo that it was an official, white-labeled device the company intended to sell only in China. More interestingly, they have unearthed that the handheld ships with thousands of copyrighted games, mostly from Nintendo.

“The G02 device is produced through a regional brand licensing agreement meant for the China market only and is not part of Lenovo’s official global product portfolio,” the company told the publication. “As such, products developed through these agreements may differ from Lenovo products sold through authorized channels.”

However, it wasn’t the handheld’s branding that caught Retro Dodo’s attention — instead, it was the fact that it came with thousands of copyrighted titles out of the box, most of them from Nintendo. It’s unclear if these games are licensed at all; after all, Nintendo is famously protective of its intellectual property, and it’s unlikely that it would readily allow a third-party hardware manufacturer to include Nintendo titles. Furthermore, the Japanese company built a reputation as a litigious company, targeting anyone that poses a threat to its IP.

The G02 is just a white-labeled device, meaning that its manufacturer just signed a deal with Lenovo to use its name for marketing purposes. However, the maker of the Legion Go handhelds still approved the regional licensing deal, even though we’re unsure if it reviewed the final product before it went on sale. One possibility is that the factory behind this retro handheld console loaded these ROMs after approval to boost sales, even though its AliExpress product page does not advertise that it comes with these games. Another alternative hypothetical scenario is that the developers behind this console accidentally included all the titles they were using to test the device in the general release.

Whatever the case, this could become a legal problem for Lenovo. After all, even if it’s just a white-labeled device made by a third-party manufacturer, it still carries the company’s branding. The company, in theory, could do some damage control to prevent this from becoming a bigger issue, like recalling the affected products or remotely deleting them, if possible. But the fact that Nintendo games were likely distributed outside of official channels would catch the attention of the Japanese company’s lawyers.

A modder by the name of tschicki has built a custom "PlayStation 2 Portable" from scratch, powered by a reverse-engineered motherboard that features original PS2 silicon. The hardware sits inside a 3D-printed shell with proper controls, USB-PD charging, and a bespoke cooling solution. The project is entirely open-source and available on GitHub for anyone to follow along with, if you have the right skills and patience required.

Work on the PS2 Portable actually began way back in 2022, but it was only made public last year. The four-year development period really shows when you take a look at how polished the finished product is. The design is inspired by modern handhelds such as the ROG Ally; it has an ergonomic shape with large grips that house two 5000mAh batteries to enable up to 4.5 hours of playtime on a single charge.

On the front, there's an asymmetric control scheme that actually features hall-effect joysticks and face buttons from the PS Vita 2000 model. There's a blue accent piece running along the top, enveloping the triggers and the USB-C port, providing some variety in an otherwise minimalist aesthetic. You'll also find vents up there for exhaust. The rear is largely plain with a few threaded screws and a cutout with a grill for intake.

The entire assembly is broken down into just two parts: a top half and a bottom half that screw into each other. The cooling is handled by a custom heatsink solution that uses the fan from the Switch Lite to keep the ICs under control.

This transitions us nicely into the actual crux of the project. The modder took six original ICs from the SCPH-7900x or SCPH-9000x PS2 models and put them on a custom motherboard.

Built upon the existing work of community veterans who have mapped out PS2 mainboards over the years, Tschicki reverse-engineered the entire circuitry of the console. They were then able to manually draw up a new motherboard layout that integrates the aforementioned original chips with completely new traces, video routing, and power management.

The donor ICs handle the bulk of the processing, such as the Emotion Engine (EE) and the Graphics Synthesizer (GS), while RP2040 microcontrollers are responsible for secondary tasks like thermals, controls, sound, and more. The modder used a custom FPGA-based video processor to get direct video out from the GS instead of going through an analog-to-digital converter that'd otherwise degrade the quality.

As such, the PS2 portable supports many resolutions, but it's wired up to a 5" 480x800p IPS LCD running at 60 Hz. To ensure the controls work on this screen, the RP2040 is utilized to convert data from the buttons and joysticks into native DualShock 2 signals, with full rumble support. Another RP2040 monitors the battery and controls power, allowing for fast charging or "charge and play" at 5V, 9V, or 12V.

Finally, to actually use the console, tschicki customized the original boot ROM to directly launch into homebrew, from where you can use the two microSD card slots present on the device to access your games. One slot hooks directly to the PS2 Memory Card's data lines and tricks the system into thinking one of those bulky 8MB Memory Cards is plugged in. You can use this for boot files and game saves, for instance.

The other slot bypasses the PS2's memory controller entirely and uses the open-source MX4SIO routing standard that doesn't try to emulate a memory card. Instead, it relies on custom homebrew apps running on the console to talk directly to the SD card's native storage interface. Once the custom MX4SIO driver is initialized, you can load up any game you want, which means this slot is better for library storage.

This is possible because the BIOS chip from the actual PS2 is one of the six ICs lifted from the original console, along with the CPU+GPU, the RAM (two separate chips), the I/O processor, and the SP2 audio processor. Anyhow, after the games are loaded, the handheld can play PS2 titles natively via custom software like OPL (Open PS2 Loader) or NHDDL, and supports PS1 games via DKWDRV. There is no emulation happening here.

Because of the sheer stature of custom modding work done, the PS2 Portable is one of the most impressive community projects in recent times. The fact that everything from the 3D printer files (STLs), the PCB schematics, the FPGA code, and the software firmware is open source is just the cherry on top. You can build your own identical handheld, but it's not going to be easy, and Tschicki even warns against it.

All of the relevant resources are available on GitHub, including the BOM (bill of materials) for the mechanical assembly and each PCBA. There's a 10-part documentation with steps you can follow, but they're incredibly detailed and only meant for experts with high-level soldering and programming knowledge. Do not attempt this as a fun DIY project, but then again, curiosity killed the cat.

Now, technically speaking, a portable PS2 already exists — it's called the PlayStation Portable (PSP), and it was one of the most successful consoles of all time. But it doesn't have the PS2's massive catalog of classics, so there's an argument to be made there. That being said, emulation has come a long way, and your phone can even play AAA PC games now, so stick to emulation if you're only after the nostalgia and not the microsoldering anguish.

Following industry-wide speculation and murmurs from Nintendo executives themselves, the rumors have finally come true. Nintendo is raising the price of its Switch 2 handheld by $50 from September 1, 2026 — the Switch 2 will now cost $499 in North America, the same as the Mario Kart 8 bundle did at launch. Japan will actually see price bumps in just two weeks across every Switch model, including last-gen ones.

In the States, the Switch 2 currently costs $449, and it will continue to remain at that rate for at least a few more months, so you still have time to buy one if you're interested. Similarly, in Canada, the Switch 2 costs $629.99 CAD, but it'll be going up to $679.99 CAD in September. European prices are already comparatively higher, going from €469.99 right now to €499.99, which translates to over $700 USD.

The Japanese-only model of the Switch 2 goes for ¥49,980 ($320), but it'll shoot up to ¥59,980 ($383) on May 26, 2026. The previous-gen Switch OLED model will go from ¥37,980 ($242) to ¥47,980 ($306), the Switch Lite will see its price rise from ¥21,978 ($140) to ¥29,980 ($191), and finally, the Switch V2 model that costs ¥32,978 ($210) at the moment will soon sell for ¥43,980 ($280) instead.

The prices of Nintendo Switch Online, the company's equivalent of PlayStation Plus, are also being hiked, but only in Japan and South Korea. Every tier of the subscription is getting more expensive from July 1, 2026, to "support appropriate alignment among region," implying that it was relatively cheaper in those regions up until now.

Nintendo's reasoning behind the console price hikes is the same as every other company who's done the same. The current global market conditions created by the AI boom and uncertain geopolitical rhetoric have made it difficult to source components even for large corporations. Memory and storage are significantly overpriced, while silicon in general is hurting, too.

Just last month, Meta raised the prices of its Quest 3 lineup and two days ago, Sony made refurbished PS5 Slim consoles $100 more expensive. Sony had another price increase across all its PS5 models in March of 2026. Before that, last year, the company hiked PS5 consoles by $50 already. Even laptop prices are reportedly up to 40% higher now, while companies keep pouring in more and more money into AI.

Lenovo has seemingly entered the handheld gaming world with the silent launch of the G02, a retro-inspired gaming device that’s selling for $63.56 on AliExpress. The company is no stranger to the handheld gaming market, having released high-end gaming devices, such as the Legion Go 2 or the Legion Go S, that retail for over $1,000. The G02 is a step down from Lenovo's premium lineup and a move to attract a different audience.

• Buy the Lenovo G02 for $63.56 at AliExpress

X user Retro Gaming With Deadfred was the first to give the world a hands-on look at the Lenovo G02. In the post embedded belwo, you can see the “Lenovo Handheld Game Console G02” arriving in official packaging with the Lenovo logo. The short demo video features the device booting up and displaying the Lenovo logo on its startup screen. Adding further credibility, mentions of the G02 can also be found on Lenovo’s official Chinese website (though there is no noticeable mention on the U.S. site).

Diving into various retailer listings, the Lenovo G02 seemingly packs the Rockchip RK3326 SoC, which combines a 64-bit quad-core Arm Cortex-A35 processor up to 1.5 GHz with Mali-G31 MP2 graphics. The device reportedly includes 1GB of memory and 4GB of onboard storage, which you can expand via microSD cards up to 1TB. Although the Rockchip RK3326 is a bit long in the tooth, the eight-year-old chip is still a popular choice among retro gaming handheld manufacturers. It handles NES, SNES, Genesis, and Game Boy titles perfectly and holds its own even in PlayStation 1 games. However, it may struggle with Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, and PlayStation Portable games.

Lenovo has equipped the G02 with a 4.5-inch IPS display with a classic 4:3 aspect ratio, ideal for retro games. The screen resolution is crisp at 1024 x 768 pixels. The G02 provides a more visually pleasing experience than your typical 3.5-inch device. Its screen size also puts it in the 4- to 5-inch range, alongside competitors such as the Anbernic RG405M and the Retroid Pocket 3+.

Unlike some retro gaming handhelds that run Windows or Android, the G02 leverages a Linux-based operating system. While the retailer listings don’t specify the exact Linux distribution, they do confirm it’s a 64-bit platform that supports over 30 emulators. The choice of Linux means that the overall experience on the G02 should be smooth. And given that Linux is more lightweight, the G02's 4000 mAh battery should give you between three hours and six hours of playtime on a single charge. The G02 charges through a USB Type-C port.

The G02, available in black, white, or red, is a lightweight device thanks to its durable plastic shell. It measures just 5.9 x 3.9 x 1.3 inches (149 x 99 x 34 mm) and weighs in at only 0.6 lbs (258 grams). This compact footprint makes it easy to fit inside a backpack or even a large pocket. The G02 features a full set of buttons, including an analog stick with cRGB lighting, adding a modern touch.

Retro gaming aficionados will immediately notice that the Lenovo G02 has an uncanny resemblance to the Anbernic RG40XXV. They may have the same OEM. Under the hood, the G02 and RG40XXV are actually quite different. The Anbernic RG40XXV sports a smaller 4-inch display with a 640 x 480 resolution, compared to the G02’s 4.5-inch 1024 x 768 screen. Additionally, while the RG40XXV has the Allwinner H700 Soc, featuring a quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 CPU and Mali-G31 MP2 graphics.

The Lenovo G02 is $63.56 on AliExpress before any discounts or promotions. For comparison, the Anbernic RG40XXV, a close competitor both in looks and functionality, sells for $86.99 on Amazon. If you’re seeking an even better deal, Alibaba offers the Lenovo G02 for as low as $40 per unit. Alibaba caters to B2B customers, though the seller requires a minimum order of 40 units. Therefore, the $80 price tag on AliExpress could be introductory or a result of fluctuation. Keeping an eye out for AliExpress coupons or flash deals could bring prices down to a more attractive level.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced on X on Tuesday that the company is winding down its Copilot for Gaming feature on mobile and canceling its planned console launch.

Sharma also unveiled a broad leadership overhaul, bringing in four senior executives from her former CoreAI engineering group at Microsoft, according to an internal memo reported by CNBC. Sharma called the Copilot pullback part of a push to "retire features that don't align with where we're headed."

Microsoft first unveiled Copilot for Gaming at GDC in March 2025, positioning the AI assistant as a real-time sidekick that offers gameplay tips, coaching, and session recaps. A beta rolled out to the Xbox mobile app, then expanded to the PC Game Bar in September, and the ROG Xbox Ally handheld. Then came a privacy backlash in October after a user discovered that it was sending screen-activity data to Microsoft's servers by default.

Sharma hasn’t addressed the status of Gaming Copilot on the PC Game Bar or the ROG Xbox Ally handheld, leaving the future of those versions unclear. In the memo, Sharma wrote that Xbox needs to "evolve how we work" and acknowledged the division spends "too much time inward instead of with the community."

She appointed four executives from CoreAI: Jared Palmer, formerly VP of product at CoreAI and a senior VP at GitHub, will serve as VP of engineering and technical advisor to Sharma; Tim Allen, previously CoreAI's VP of design, becomes head of Xbox design; Jonathan McKay, who held growth roles at OpenAI and Meta before leading CoreAI growth, takes on the same function at Xbox; and Evan Chaki, a CoreAI general manager, will lead a new team focused on simplifying development workflows. A fifth hire, David Schloss, joins from Instacart to oversee Xbox's subscription and cloud business.

Two senior Xbox executives are departing. Kevin Gammill, corporate VP of gaming ecosystem organization, is leaving the company. Roanne Sones, corporate VP of Xbox devices and ecosystem, will take a leave of absence after the summer, then transition to an advisory role.

Sharma took over as Xbox CEO in February after Phil Spencer retired following 38 years at Microsoft. Since then, she has axed the "This is an Xbox" marketing campaign, cut Game Pass prices, rebranded Microsoft Gaming back to simply Xbox, and outlined a back-to-basics strategy focused on console and community. The leadership changes arrive as Xbox continues to struggle financially: gaming revenue fell to $5.3 billion in the most recent quarter, down from $5.7 billion a year earlier, and hardware revenue dropped 33%.

The wonders of miniaturization never cease to amaze in the tech business. A case in point is provided by a new video demo of the Nintendo Kawaii project – a GitHub project that had successfully shrunken a lumpen boxy GameCube down to a keychain. That’s just 2.36 × 2.36 × 0.62 inches (60 × 60 × 15.8mm). Moreover, the project has been completed in cool blue anodized CNC aluminum style.

In the above video, Tito from retro gaming channel Macho Nacho Productions goes hands-on with an original Nintendo Kawaii as created and fabricated by YveltalGriffin, Wesk and Ding. At the heart of this project is not the Raspberry Pi Zero, or similar, you might typically expect. Instead, the Kawaii relies on original Nintendo-used processors and ICs.

Vintage Nintendo console lovers will be aware that the firm’s Wii retained backward compatibility with the GameCube. Because of the former’s renowned extreme trimmability among the modding community a trimmed Wii motherboard is used in this project. Specifically, the Kawaii packs in the Omega Trim Wii. The GitHub source doesn’t compare the original and Omega motherboards, but the video shows the original GameCube next to the Kawaii.

Other tech tweaks to make this a successful project include the NAND Flex mods, to stack certain motherboard features / ICs. Then, the Thundervolt mod is used to undervolt the CPU so it doesn’t boil in the confined case. Thankfully the Wii processors can still handle GameCube titles with aplomb, even when power constrained.

A nice touch in this build is the CNC aluminum shell which elevates the finished look above similar projects, and on one side we’d like to think the organically ribbed metal fins might help a little with the passive cooling. It is still gratifying here to have original silicon to run your GameCube (and some Wii games that work with GC controllers) titles. Users are expected to load games onto a microSD card. One drawback of this neat design is the flash card becomes captive with the case assembled.

Clearly, the Kawaii isn’t a self-contained console. It has an elegant docking method, though, with discrete pogo pins. The dock actually looks larger than the keychain, and then you’ll need the hefty GameCube controller, a USB power brick, two sets of dongles, and a TV to plug it into.

Though the GitHub page is complete with MCAD, ECAD, and BOM files, the team hasn't gotten around to putting together instructions. Those wishing to replicate this meisterwerk are directed to a thread on BitBuilt that follows the assembly of two Kawaiis.

We previously reported on the Kawaii project, ahead of this hands-on demo, in July 2024.

Sony just increased the price for refurbished PlayStation 5 Slim consoles by $100, bringing the Digital Edition to $499 and the disc drive model to $549. The original PS5 and Fortnite bundle now also appears out of stock at the time of writing, so you can no longer get a brand-new PS5 Digital Edition for just $399. You can see these changes on the Sony website, with u/FernandoRocker sharing the bad news to the r/PS5 subreddit yesterday.

At the moment, the cheapest PS5 you can get is still the original console for $399, although this is a refurbished model. If you want a brand-new unit, you have no choice but to shell out $599 for the PS5 Digital Edition console, or get the Ghost of Yotei Black Limited-Edition Bundle for the same price if you want the version with an optical drive.

The original and Slim versions of the PS5 have almost the same specifications, except for a couple of minor changes — the latter has a larger 1TB internal storage (versus 825GB) and comes with two USB-C ports (instead of a USB-C and a USB-A port). Otherwise, you’re not missing out on much. So, if the budget is tight, you can get the cheaper original refurbished model and then upgrade your console with one of the best PS5 SSDs later, when you have extra cash.

The company did not make any official announcements about the price increases, so this came as a surprise to some of its fans. This also isn’t the recent price hike that Sony made on the PlayStation 5. Just last month, it increased prices across all its new consoles, with the Digital Edition models (both original and Slim) getting a $100 bump, while the PS5 Pro went from $749.99 to $899.99. Even the PlayStation Portal now costs $50 more, at $249.99.

Price hikes for brand-new consoles are understandable, especially given the ongoing memory and storage chip crisis. However, it’s unclear why refurbished PS5 Slim consoles now also cost more. After all, the original refurbished PS5 still costs the same, so we cannot chalk this up to increased labor costs.

Unfortunately, without official guidance from Sony, we can only speculate about why it increased its prices. It’s possible that the company did this to reduce demand for used Slim edition PS5s so they wouldn't run out of stock. After all, if the price difference for a new console is just $100, quite a few buyers would rather go for a brand-new model than a refurbished one.