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.

Dagupan City, located in northern Philippines and about 100 miles north of Metro Manila, just banned all “Pisonet” computer rental shops in the town. According to the Mayor’s Facebook Post, the city passed an ordinance banning these establishments and others that offer computer rental services “for the safety of the youth.” She alleged that these shops “distract students from their studies, make them waste their time, and even lead a few to situations of abuse and other dangers.” The move comes a week after a school shooting incident in central Philippines resulted in three student deaths and 15 more receiving injuries, two of which were critical, an event that has been linked to video game violence.

“Pisonet,” a portmanteau of “Piso,” which stands for one Peso, and “net” for internet, are affordable computer rental shops that allow anyone, both young and old, to rent a computer to play games and access the internet. These establishments are crucial for many families who still do not have access to a computer inside their home. Many young people also use these services to play online games with their friends. However, the school shooting incident, which was perpetrated by kids aged 14 and 15, put these shops in the limelight, especially as many adults have started to blame violent computer games for the incident.

Senator Risa Hontiveros is spearheading an investigation looking into the shooting, and it was discovered that one of the perpetrators was allegedly addicted to the violent game Gorebox. While the Senator did not blame the title for causing the violence, she was concerned that extremists are using them as platforms to “brainwash and radicalize children.”

Other experts agree with Hontiveros, with cybersecurity analyst Art Samaniego Jr. telling local newspaper PhilStar that the authorities “should look more closely at the online communities and networks that may have urged the young suspects to commit violence.” Unfortunately, many members of the general public have begun concluding that it was the video game that directly caused the perpetrators to become violent, not the other people who are targeting vulnerable youths playing the game.

Because of this investigation, Gorebox has been temporarily banned from the Philippines, with both Google and Steam taking it down from the Philippine versions of the platforms. Despite that, these remain easily accessible through proxy networks and VPNs. Although the Dagupan City council did not directly link the shutdown of Pisonet shops within their jurisdiction, the decision and the move came so close to the incident that one cannot help but think that they are related.

The Entertainment Software Association has told a California Senate committee that private and community servers are illegal and amount to piracy, which would be news to anyone who has downloaded Minecraft's server files from the official website. The ESA gave its opinion while opposing AB 1921, the state’s “Stop Killing Games”-backed preservation bill, with ESA vice president of state government affairs Jennifer Gibbons making the claim about software that publishers provide themselves, since Mojang offers a Minecraft server for free download on its own site. The bill then failed the committee by four votes to three with four abstentions, though it was granted reconsideration.

AB 1921, the Protect Our Games Act, would require publishers of server-dependent games to give players 60 days’ notice before shutting one down, then provide a playable version, a patch, or a refund. Assemblymember Chris Ward, who authored the bill, raised community servers during the hearing as one way to keep games running after support ends. The California Assembly passed it 43 to 16 in May before it moved to the Senate. Gibbons said the ESA considers such servers “piracy,” and argued that community servers are not affiliated with the publisher and don’t uphold the same trust and safety standards.

Mojang publishes a dedicated Minecraft server as a Java file and documents how to run it, while Valve distributes SteamCMD and dedicated-server tools for hundreds of titles, letting players run their own match servers on their own systems. Running a server for a game you’ve bought obviously sits inside what those publishers permit, and for Minecraft, it’s Mojang’s own recommended setup for free multiplayer.

Minecraft isn't the exception here. Palworld, Valheim, ARK: Survival Ascended, and Counter-Strike 2 all ship official dedicated-server software that runs on a spare PC or a rented VPS. The line the ESA steps over is a technical one, since running a publisher's own server binary is a licensed activity, not the unauthorized copy its piracy comparison implies.

Gibbons cited the U.S. Trade Representative’s Notorious Markets reports as precedent for the piracy claim, which have named private servers as infringement hubs. Those entries, such as Warmane and Firestorm in the 2018 report, were World of Warcraft servers that let players skirt past Blizzard's subscription, which is an entirely different scenario from running a free-to-play multiplayer server on a game that’s already been paid for.

Those WoW servers exist only because Blizzard never released its own, leaving operators to rebuild the backend from scratch through reverse engineering, which is what drew those copyright claims. AB 1921 compels nothing of the sort; its remedies let a publisher comply by releasing official server tools — exactly what Mojang already does with Minecraft — and a company distributing its own server software obviously can't be infringing its own IP.

Responding to comments made by Ward that private servers help to keep games alive, Gibbons said, “They’re illegal. They are not in any way affiliated with Microsoft. Microsoft, for Minecraft, has gotten a lot of criticism because of those community servers not employing the same safety standards that Microsoft does on their Minecraft servers.”

Gibbons also referenced two pending lawsuits against private servers, but didn’t name them, nor did the ESA identify the cases in its written statement, which said private servers infringe publishers’ IP rights and that they reserve the right to act against them.

AB 1921 builds on California's earlier AB 2426, which requires sellers to disclose that digital purchases are licenses rather than owned copies. Back in April, a brief 30-day DRM check-in left some PlayStation buyers facing lost access to games that they had paid for due to this.

The appetite for retro computing grows ever larger, and there are probably hundreds of thousands of homebrew software projects targeting machines from the last century. However, few of those are full-featured, 32-bit, and GUI-driven operating systems that can fit in a single floppy, with some modern conveniences to boot. Enter the upcoming HamsterOS, set for release in November.

HamsterOS is seemingly targeted at using PCs from the 386/486 era, along with DOS software. After loading from the floppy disk, it'll present a user interface with most every commonly used utility: a notepad, image viewer, calculator, file finder, drive icons, and a window manager. The file browser should have up to five windows once, complete with per-type icons.

Crucially, HamsterOS includes an in-kernel VM86 DOS box, and a FreeDOS fallback for programs that might not run well within. Other noteworthy tech aspects include support for FAT 12/16/32 with read-back verification, dedicated format and disk utilities, a partition manager, and even SCSI diagnostic tools. The operating system defaults to 16-color VGA resolution, but the ability to use 256 colors exists as a diagnostic option. There's a neat fallback to VGA as a safe mode after three failed crashes, too.

Mean Hamster, the company developing HamsterOS, didn't publish any sort of mission statement, but judging by the feature set and integration with its HamsterWeazle floppy image management utility (for use with GreaseWeazle drives), it seems to be a more practical means of managing and/or using machines from the era.

The list of hardware support is what you'd expect for 1980 and 1990's era machines, comprising ATA IDE and CD-ROM, ISA floppies, serial and PS/2 mice (with wheel support, too). The only supported soundcard is the Sound Blaster 16, though loadable drivers should let tinkerers expand the list; plus it's possible that the built-in FreeDOS support allows for using most any type of hardware regardless.

The multitasking architecture is cooperative, meaning it's somewhat old-school in its approach, with each program in charge of regularly yielding control back to the OS. This is different and inferior at face value than the now-standard preemptive multitasking, but it ought also to allow for generally increased responsiveness with slow disks, lower RAM usage, and broader compatibility with DOS applications. To keep things running smoothly, HamsterOS includes I/O stall detection if it's frozen for over 8 seconds. HamsterOS isn't just meant to run DOS stuff, though, as it has its own app format.

Mean Hamster flatly says that "HamsterOS is well past the 'can it boot' stage" and that most every listed feature is already implemented. The company says it's focusing on stability and performance improvements as well as bugfixes. It seems to be calling the OS a "product," so it seems likely that it'll be commercial and closed-source, unlike most projects of this type. A good tool is always worth paying for, though.

Enterprising enthusiast Wenting has turned an M5Stack PaperS3 dev kit with an e-ink screen into a more-or-less fully functional Game Boy. If you're not a hardware hacker yourself, there's a fair chance you've never heard of Wenting Zhang or Modos Labs. The engineer's "Wenting Channel" on YouTube has been a favorite of niche tech nerds for a long time, showcasing all kinds of hardware hacking expertise. Zhang spent the last several years turning that expertise into Modos Labs, a company whose high-refresh e-Ink displays we've covered before.

Okay, it won't play real cartridges, the sound is kind of jank, and the performance isn't always full speed. Still, this is quite an achievement for a few reasons. The PaperS3 is an e-Ink dev kit, not really a commercial product. It's intended for prototyping and, well, exactly this sort of hardware hacking. A key detail to understand is that this device isn't powered by some multi-core Rockchip or Allwinner SoC, but rather by an ultra-low-cost ESP32-S3 microcontroller with just two cores running at clock rates measured in hundreds of MHz, not GHz. Moreover, its e-Ink display is not really intended for the kind of smooth refresh normally required for playing video games, yet Zhang pulled it off.

To understand how this Game Boy emulator is even possible, you have to understand Zhang's breakthrough with E-ink hardware, which he originally developed for his open-source monitor project, the Modos Flow. He has a whole video explaining the tech, but the summary is basically that he replaced the display controller of a typical e-Ink display with a powerful FPGA so that he could treat every single pixel as an independent display region and then only update the parts of the screen that are actually changing each frame.

How, then, did he achieve this on the embedded controller in the PaperS3? It's only possible because the Game Boy screen is very low resolution by modern standards at just 160x144 pixels. The screen on the PaperS3 is 960x540, so he was able to multiply the resolution by three to give him enough room for dithering to reproduce the four possible shades of the original Game Boy screen. This process takes up almost the entirety of the second CPU core in the ESP32, leaving just enough room for audio processing while the actual emulation happens on the first CPU core.

The end result is a very convincing facsimile of the Game Boy's display, except instead of being a tiny and dim LCD, it's a razor-sharp, crystal-clear e-Ink display. Zhang even implemented some quality-of-life features, such as partial Bluetooth LE controller support as well as dedicated quick-save and quick-load touchscreen 'buttons' to save the emulator's state. You can even load a state directly from the front-end, allowing you to instantly resume where you left off when you have to stop.

That's not to say the project is flawless, though. For one thing, it relies on touchscreen controls with no haptic feedback because the device simply doesn't have the requisite hardware for it. Perhaps more pressingly, the PaperS3 only has a simple piezo buzzer for sound, and while Zhang pulled off some real hackery to get recognizable Game Boy audio out of the mono buzzer (by using pseudo-polyphony like a ZX Spectrum hacker), it doesn't quite sound like a real Game Boy. The hacker also doesn't discuss the battery life of the device while running his emulator; given that he's pushing both CPU cores of the microcontroller to their limits, and also that e-Ink displays are actually quite power-thirsty when driven at 60 Hz, we can't imagine it's great.

If you're keen to try out "Paper Boy S3", Zhang says he's uploaded it to the M5Burner tool that serves as both a firmware flasher and app store for the M5Stack devices. However, as he notes himself in his video on the project, PaperS3 is actually already discontinued by the manufacturer, so you might have a hard time getting hold of one if you don't already. Still, the project serves as a fascinating demo for what can be done with ultra-low-end hardware and a direct counterpoint to at least one of the weaknesses of e-Ink displays.

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.

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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.

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