With the May 19 launch of Forza Horizon 6 just around the corner, Microsoft and Playground Games have officially revealed the minimum hardware requirements for the new racing game, and, at least on the low end, Forza Horizon 6 will not ask players for a lot when it comes to hardware. The minimum spec for the game to run is an Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 1600 paired with 16 GB of RAM, an SSD, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, Radeon RX 6500 XT, or Intel Arc A380 GPU. This should make the game playable at 1080p, 60 FPS at low settings preset. For 1440p at 60 FPS and high settings, or the recommended hardware spec, Horizon 6 will demand an Intel Core i5-12400F or AMD Ryzen 5 5600X paired with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, Radeon RX 6700 XT, or Intel Arc A580 GPU and 16 GB of memory.

The "Extreme" requirements, which target 4K native at 60 FPS, call for an Intel Core i7-12700K or AMD Ryzen 7 7700X with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT with 24 GB of RAM, while the "Extreme RT" option, which targets 4K upscaled with Ray Tracing enabled, bumps up the GPU requirement to an RTX 5070 Ti or an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT as well as requiring 32 GB of RAM and an NVMe SSD. The game also supports DLSS 4, AMD FSR 3 and 4, and Intel XeSS 2.1, as well as Ray Traced Reflections and Global Illumination, and the engine aims for "high, uncapped framerates," and will support both the Valve Steam Deck and ASUS ROG Ally handhelds, although there is no word on whether there will be a graphics preset for the handhelds.

Shine-through keycaps are one of the points of contention where the enthusiast keyboard market and fans of gaming and budget keyboards clash. With the rise of enthusiast-grade pre-built mechanical keyboards, though, things have become complicated, with buyers of mid-range and more affordable enthusiast-tier mechanical keyboards often longing for shine-through keycaps on those keyboards. This was one of the common gripes about Iqunix's Magi and MQ series low-profile mechanical keyboards when they launched, despite the overall positive community sentiment surrounding those keyboards. According to a new post by the official Iqunix team on r/Iqunix on Reddit, the brand has heard the community's feedback regarding shine-through keycaps and is planning to release shine-through keycaps for its MQ80 and Magi-series low profile keyboards.

Iqunix says it has not yet confirmed production with the OEM, but has reached out to the community in an interest check, since it will be small-batch production, and the brand needs 1,000 units spoken for before entering production. The idea with Iqunix prototyping and selling the keycaps itself is that it will color-match the keycaps with the aluminium keyboard cases and ensure compatibility with the Kailh Choc V2 low-profile switches and the north-facing lighting on the MQ and Magi-series keyboards. It has not yet released images of the keycaps on the Magi-series keyboards, but the white versions of the MQ80 and the Magi keyboards are two very different colors, with the Magi taking on a sort of creamy off-white color, suggesting that there will be three colorways for the keycaps. The keycaps will be PBT and follow the same profile as the original Magi and MQ80 keyboards—that is to say, uniform height with a spherical top.

Intel just announced the Arc Pro B70 and B65 GPUs with the Arc Xe2 Battlemage architecture, featuring 32 and 24 Xe2 cores, respectively—see TechPowerUp's launch coverage fore more details—but it did not include information on pricing or availability. Fortunately, for those interested in the workstation graphics cards, Newegg has listed the Arc Pro B70 online, spilling the beans on price and a prospective launch date.

According to the pre-order page, the Arc Pro B70 will cost $949.99 and launch on April 24, 2026. Unfortunately, there is no listing for the Arc Pro B65 just yet, but that should launch around the same time as the B70 and will likely be priced somewhere between the B60's current retail price of $659.99 and the Arc Pro B70's $949.99 price, thanks to the increased VRAM on the B65.

Lofree is no stranger to peculiar peripheral designs, with the brand having previously released devices like the Hypace wireless gaming mouse and the Lofree Flow 2, with all its ergonomic quirks. It seems as though Lofree's next release, the Hyzen keyboard, may be even more unique than even those examples. The Hyzen is a futuristic, but otherwise unassuming 65% keyboard made out of CNC-cut aluminium, but its design conceals a few nifty features and an entirely new switch design that supposedly combines the best of both mechanical and magnetic tech. The Hyzen will be a wireless keyboard with a gasket mount design, and Lofree claims that the 10,000 mAh battery can last up to 80 hours. It will launch on Kickstarter on April 23, but early bird reservations are available on the Lofree site ahead of the official launch. Kickstarter pricing plans include the tri-mode wireless version priced at $189 with a $299 claimed MSRP further down the line or a $169 wired version that will later retail for $279.

The Nexus switch is a hybrid mechanical switch, designed by Lofree in collaboration with Kailh, that features both a magnet in the stem for TMR functionality and metal contacts and pins for traditional mechanical operation. Lofree says that the new switch design, which it claims is the first of its kind, combines the tactile feedback of mechanical switches with the low latency, customizable actuation distance and analog features of TMR switches. Aside from the new switches, the keyboard also has a physical toggle that switches the number row to a function row, with the function indicated by a row of LEDs above the num row when the function row is active. The Hyzen also has a knob on the back edge for volume control and a switch to select between 2.4 GHz, Bluetooth, and wired operation. It will also be powered by a Nordic nRF54L series MCU and be capable of 8 kHz polling.

Shortly after AMD released FSR 4, claiming that the tech was exclusive to the latest RDNA 4 GPUs, the company seemingly accidentally published the libraries that make up the backbone of the tech, revealing that there may have been a version of FSR 4 planned for RDNA 3 and RDNA 2 GPUs. While this open-sourced oops was later used by modders to bring support to the aforementioned Radeon RX 7000 and 6000 GPUs, a recent Digital Foundry interview with Sony's Mark Cerny suggests that the INT8 version of FSR 4 may have been a compatibility version of the upscaling tech that would later make an appearance as Upgraded PSSR (or PSSR 2.0) on the PlayStation 5 Pro and its RDNA 2 GPU.

According to Cerny, "FSR Redstone and the new PSSR have somewhat different implementations due to the underlying hardware, e.g. FSR Upscaling uses 8-bit floating point and PSSR uses 8-bit integer." He adds that "in practice, the same model is used, but it's trained on different data, e.g. if targeting a 2:1 fixed upscale then the training data used is just for that upscaling ratio - and that different training results in different parameters...not seeing too much difference in results, the various flavors in the updated FSR Upscaling really are rather close to the new PSSR." He also mentions that, on PC, because players are generally so much closer to their monitors than living room gamers are to their TVs, the goals of FSR and PSSR differ slightly.

Asha Sharma has faced her fair share of criticism since stepping into the role of CEO of Microsoft Gaming earlier in 2026, but she has repeatedly made statements that she would try to guide the company in what she calls a "return to Xbox," with a focus on in-house hardware. According to a new report by The Information, one of Sharma's first moves as CEO of Microsoft Gaming will be to introduce a new lower-price tier of Game Pass in order to attract new gamers to the service and to make the service inticing to a broader range of consumers.

This comes shortly after Microsoft renamed the Windows Full Screen Experience to Xbox Mode, perhaps a rebranding in the name of unifying Microsoft's gaming offerings—a mission that is clearly part of Microsoft's plan, given that its next-gen console is confirmed to be a PC-console hybrid. Previously, there were rumors of an ad-supported tier for Xbox Cloud Gaming, but Microsoft also increased the price of Game Pass across the board as recently as October 2025. A Microsoft executive previously confirmed that Game Pass was profitable as a service, but that Xbox had to emphasize flexibility in its strategy, and introducing a cheaper Game Pass tier may be a viable way to draw in new Game Pass gamers, some of whom will presumably hop over to the more premium tiers, depending on Microsoft's implementation of the new entry-level tier.

There has been much said about OpenAI's Sora video app—both positive, about how the tech would make video creators and social media influencers obsolete, and negative, about how it would kill creativity and fill the internet with soulless slop—but it seems like neither side of that argument will ever get to find out if they were correct. In a recent post on X, OpenAI announced that it would be shutting down both the Sora app and API, suggesting a pivot away from video generation at OpenAI. A final date for the app and API closure has not yet been announced, but OpenAI says it will reveal more information soon.

Following the announcement, The Hollywood Reporter reported that a Disney spokesperson had confirmed that the media giant would be withdrawing a previously announced $1 billion investment into OpenAI's video generation model and product. Disney's statement reads: "As the nascent AI field advances rapidly, we respect OpenAI's decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere. We appreciate the constructive collaboration between our teams and what we learned from it, and we will continue to engage with AI platforms to find new ways to meet fans where they are while responsibly embracing new technologies that respect IP and the rights of creators." The closure of Sora comes after backlash and legal action against OpenAI from a number of publishers, including Square Enix, Bandai Namco, and Nintendo over AI-generated videos created with some of their characters and other IPs.

One of the reasons players loved the original Splitgate game was its fast-paced, highly kinetic gameplay that relied as much on positioning as it did gunplay and tactics. Despite its somewhat rough start to life, Splitgate: Arena Reloaded, featured many of those same mechanics. In a recent video announcing Splitgate: Arena Reloaded Season 2, Ian Proulx, CEO of 1047 Games, announced that "a small section of the team" has started working on a new movement shooter that takes inspiration from Titanfall and Call of Duty Black Ops 3. While he doesn't share much more beyond that, Proulx did ask the community for feedback on what players would like to see from a game like that and has published a form for play-testers to apply to test the new game. The fact that the studio is already recruiting play testers suggests that the game has been in development for a good while. The studio was also sure to follow up the announcement with a post on X clarifying that 1047 Games is not abandoning Splitgate: Arena Reloaded now that there's another game in the works.

Proulx says that part of the reason for pursuing a new game is that 1047 Games has always had the dream of being a multi-game studio, and the timing of the announcement suggests that a second project may have been partly motivated by the recent backlash against 1047 Games following the middling launch of Splitgate: Arena Reloaded. For its part, Splitgate: Arena Reloaded Season 2 will launch before the end of March and introduce a number of new features, many of them based on community feedback, including a more cohesive theme, a new battle pass and accompanying skins, three new maps, a new biome that's a twist on a biome from Splitgate 1, and a classic Splitgate 1 TDM gameplay starts, which have been heavily requested by the community. Season 2 will also reintroduce time trial races from Splitgate 1, replete with user-created maps with their own leaderboards. Players will also be able to buy all of the Splitgate: Arena Reloaded Season 2 battle pass with the Splitcoin in-game premium currency instead of needing to spend real money aside from Splitcoin they may already have.

Not four months ago, we reported on Steam breaking 42 million concurrent players, but much like Crimson Desert's recent success, Valve's gaming platform doesn't seem to be slowing down, even during an unlikely time of year. According to SteamDB, Steam has once again broken its own record for concurrent players, reaching 42,318,602 players on Sunday, March 22, 2026, at 14:20 UTC. Steam's own statistics report a peak concurrent player count of 42,282,922 players, which is a little less than SteamDB reports, but still a record high.

Compared to February 2026, which itself was a slower month for the gaming giant, Steam saw an increase of over a million players at its peak. This doesn't necessarily mean all of those players were in-game—in fact, SteamDB reports that there were only 13,731,783 players in-game at the time of the new record. The new player count record was set on a Sunday, which tends to be Steam's busiest day of the week both for players on the platform and in-game. This new player-count record comes in spite of a recent spate of layoffs and studio closures, which have historically signalled a downturn in the gaming industry.

Epic Games has just announced a round of layoffs in an effort to save costs following a downturn in engagement on Fortnite. A recent post to the Epic Games news page explains that "The downturn in Fortnite engagement that started in 2025 means we're spending significantly more than we're making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded," and Epic says that the layoffs are part of company-wide cost-cutting measures that aim to reduce expenses by over $500 million in order to stabilize the company's finances. These other cost-savings measures will affect contracting, marketing, and hiring at the company, and any staff affected by the layoffs will receive severance packages of at least four months of base pay—with that amount increasing depending on tenure at the company.

The Epic layoffs will affect 1,000 workers, and Epic seems to blame both industry-wide challenged and its reliance on Fortnite as its major cash cow for its financial troubles, with Epic CEO, Tim Sweeney emphasizing that "the layoffs aren't related to AI," and explaining that Epic wants "as many awesome developers developing great content and tech as we can." He also goes on to say that Epic has struggled to deliver "Fortnite magic with every season," and noting that the game is in its early stages of returning to mobile platforms, but that the goal going forward will be to focus on "fresh seasonal content, gameplay, story, and live events," while focusing on Fortnite's user-generated content and on upgrading from Unreal Engine 5 to Unreal Engine 6. The full statement regarding Epic's layoffs follows.

Mozilla has officially launched Firefox 149.0, which is now available for download in the release channel. Firefox 149 introduces a number of bug fixes, many of which were announced in previous beta versions, but there are also a handful of new features that may significantly impact the user experience. Mozilla has taken a page out of Zen Browser's books with a new split mode for loading two webpages side-by-side in split view, introduced a free VPN and added a new "share" button to the toolbar. Firefox will also now automatically block website notifications and revoke malicious websites—as flagged by SafeBrowsing—by default.

Split view can be triggered by right-clicking a link and selecting the split tabs option or by selecting two tabs and clicking the split tabs button in the address bar. Firefox's free built-in VPN, which is directed at security-conscious users, allowing users to mask their location, hide their IP, and protect their data for free. The VPN will require a Mozilla account, there is a data cap of 50 GB per month, and the rollout is starting with France, Germany, the UK, and the US as of version 149's release. Firefox Labs also now features a tab notes feature, for which the developers are seeking feedback during this release. Firefox has also officially implemented hardware acceleration for PDFs, which means documents should load significantly faster. As usual, there is also a stack of under-the-hood changes to Firefox 149, like modern API implementations and a new TrustPanel, and you can check those out in the official update notes.

It was recently revealed that Nintendo is planning an updated Nintendo Switch 2 with a user-replaceable battery that is meant to comply with new EU rules on repairability. That device is reportedly not destined for the US, but Nintendo has also made a more recent change to the Switch 2 for the US market. Specifically, according to Bloomberg, Nintendo plans to cut production of the Switch 2 handheld by as much as 33% due to unexpectedly low US sales during the recent holiday period.

The new production guidelines will reportedly see Nintendo produce an estimated 4 million Switch 2 consoles during Q2, down from its initial 6 million-unit plan. Bloomberg's sources claim that Nintendo declined to increase production targets despite the successful launch of Pokémon Pokopia, instead opting to wait and see if recent releases for the platform will continue to perform well before producing more hardware. Part of the change could also be logistical in nature. Nintendo has previously acknowledged the increased memory and storage prices that have plagued the consumer electronics market of late, and the production cut is likely a move to reduce risk during a time when hardware is more expensive to produce.

Chuwi recently made news for all the wrong reasons, with Notebookcheck finding that the CoreBook Plus and CoreBook X laptops shipped with older, significantly worse, CPUs than the spec sheet claimed. Previously, AMD issued a statement on the matter, washing its hands of the incident and placing the blame squarely—and seemingly fairly—on Chuwi's head. Now, Chuwi itself has stepped up to the plate and issued a response regarding the false CPU advertising.

In a recent blog post, Chuwi blames a production error for the CoreBook X and CoreBook Plus CPU mix-up, stating that a "limited number" of the laptops were assembled with the incorrect CPUs. It goes on to say that affected users should contact Chuwi to request a refund by sending an e-mail to service@chuwi.com or by going through the original purchase channel. Chuwi notes that any returned and refunded devices will need to be in the "original condition with all accessories included," which may be impossible in some cases. The brand has also set a deadline of May 31, 2026, for returns, which is a little over two months from the date of the announcement.

It's no secret that Borderlands 4 launched with some serious performance issues, but 2K and Gearbox have long promised performance updates and fixes to improve stability and the overall gaming experience in the latest installment in the looter-shooter franchise. In a new update, 2K Games has walked through a number of changes that have been implemented and shown off some of the performance improvements that have been made in Borderlands 4 since the game's launch. Gearbox and 2K tested the game's v 1.5 update compared to the v 1.0.2 launch version across a number of in-game quality settings and with hardware configurations representing the minimum and recommended specs, as well as a typical high-end gaming rig, and found significant improvements in both average, 1% low, and 0.1% low FPS. The blog post detailing the testing and results claims around 20% performance improvement when comparing the launch version of Borderlands 4 to the March update, but things become more interesting when you look at how performance changed depending on the hardware and resolution.

The biggest changes noted in the test results were seen in the native resolution with no DLSS, with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 and Intel Core i7-9700K gaining around 43% FPS at 1080p Low, while the RTX 3080 and i7-12700K gained 26% at 1440p native and high graphics presets. Lastly, the NVIDIA RTX 4080 paired with an Intel Core i7-13700K went from 54.96 FPS to 78.43 FPS at 1440p native with very high graphics settings. The performance improvements with DLSS upscaling were less impressive, at between 17 and 35%, although that's still a notable improvement, especially on the low-end, where frame rates jump from 53 to 67 FPS. 1% and 0.1% lows are up across the board, with some tests seeing 0.1% lows get nearly a 100% improvement, which will make the game feel significantly smoother. The Borderlands development team attributes the performance uplift to general efficiency improvements as well as refinements to the Shader PSO process (Pipeline State Objects). The developers also worked on reducing polygon counts for effects and optimizing features like effects, physics, cloth simulations, and Unreal Engine 5's Virtual Shadow Maps, all of which helped reduce CPU and GPU usage during gameplay.

When news broke about Ubisoft's recent layoffs at Red Storm, which saw 105 people lose their jobs and resulted in the studio being relegated to a support studio for other development outfits and for Ubisoft's Snowdrop engine, it was unclear whether any games would be affected by the layoffs and transition. Now, it has been revealed by Insider Gaming that Red Storm was working on 10 games at the time, including five new games: the next Ghost Recon game (Project OVR internally), a turn-based tactics game reminiscent of XCOM, Tom Clancy's The Division 3, Beyond Good and Evil 2, and a new unannounced project that was very early in the development stages. It's unclear what the studio's role in these new games was, or what their future holds, but Ubisoft has not yet announced any game cancellations or even acknowledged the changes at Red Storm.

Red Storm's full game list is as follows:

via Insider Gaming

• Beyond Good and Evil 2
• Brawlhalla
• Ghost Recon (Project OVR)
• Rainbow Six Siege seasonal content
• Rainbow Six's Slice & Dice
• Splinter Cell
• The Division 2 (audio work)
• The Division 3 conceptualization
• Watch Dogs Director's Cut (support development)
• Unannounced project in conceptualization

Crimson Desert has had an eventful launch, rife with backlash over the use of generative AI, a lack of Intel Arc GPU support, and somewhat mixed reviews painting a different story to the game's player count. Regardless of all the aforementioned issues that Pearl Abyss faced surrounding the launch of Crimson Desert, the game had an objectively strong launch weekend, topping 230,000 concurrent Steam players on launch day and reaching a peak of 248,530 concurrent players on Steam just three days later.

A stronger indicator of the game's success, though, especially a game with strong loot and exploration mechanics, is its player retention after the initial launch, and here, too, Crimson Desert seems to be keeping pace. On Monday, March 23, following the game's launch weekend, Crimson Desert managed a 205,834-player peak, according to SteamDB. Crimson Desert also maintained strong positioning on the Steam sales, where it currently occupies second place for revenue generated, following the seemingly unbeatable Counter-Strike 2. Of course, data on player retention on console platforms may be a different story altogether, but that data is not publicly available.

One of the biggest pain points for Windows 11 users in recent years is Microsoft's insistence to log into an online account to access Windows 11. Seemingly as part of the Windows team's recent initiative to address community feedback, Microsoft may be moving towards a Windows 11 that no longer requires that online account login at the initial setup. While no official plans have been confirmed, Scott Hanselman, a Microsoft Partner Product Manager and VP of Developer Community, recently hinted at the change in a post on X. This announcement comes after Microsoft revealed plans to improve Windows 11 memory management and the overall user experience.

"Ya I hate that. Working on it," reads Hanselman's response to a comment on a post asking about removing the login requirement on Windows 11. While it's unclear what exactly "working on it" means—it could mean he's actively working on the code to remove the login requirement, or that he's working on convincing higher-ups to commit to the change. Either way, in a recent blog post Microsoft announced that it would be making changes to Windows 11 in the name of delivering a quality user experience, such as returning the ability to move the task bar and removing much of the recent flood of Copilot integrations from certain apps. Microsoft removed the known mechanisms to bypass the online account sign-in requirements in October 2025, citing issues that arose because users would accidentally skip setup screens when using those methods, "causing users to exit OOBE with a device that is not fully configured for use."

There's been quite the din about DLSS 5 since NVIDIA previewed the AI-powered tech mid-March, with some gamers calling it "AI slop," NVIDIA's CEO firing back a dismissive response, and an official NVIDIA statement that seems to call into question many of the earlier claims NVIDIA made about the technology's capabilities. Now, Chloe Appleby, a program curator at Sydney's Powerhouse Museum, has weighed in on the issue in an interview with GadgetGuy, expressing concerns about the implications about the repeatability and state of a game when DLSS 5 comes into play.

Part of the driving force behind game preservation is that it allows gamers and researchers to go back and experience games throughout history, but technology like DLSS 5 may make that complicated, as Appleby explains: "If these new AI technologies become essential for making and playing games, it has the potential to not only add another layer of potential copyright complexity but bring into question what version of a game should be preserved. Do we preserve both DLSS off and on? Is the DLSS 5 version consistent amongst players and if not, what version represents the collective experience?"

More and more game studios are leaning into generative AI as a solution to speed up their game development workflows, with some using the tech in early development—as was supposedly the case with Crimson Desert recently—while others openly use generative AI for final game content. Capcom recently revealed in an investor briefing that it falls into the former camp, not the latter, claiming that the studio uses generative AI for in-game content, but that is experimenting with the tech in order to find ways to use it in a variety of fields in order to speed up game development.

"Our company will not implement the materials generated by our AI into game content. However, we plan to actively utilize this technology to improve efficiency and productivity in the game development process. Therefore, we are currently exploring ways to use it in various areas, such as graphics, sound, and programming." This is the same approach we have seen a handful of game developers use. Take-Two Interactive's CEO, for instance, recently mentioned that the company was "already seeing instances where generative AI tools are driving costs and time efficiencies," despite being adamant that no generative AI was being used in the creation of its game content. Capcom's approach seems to be similar to that of Sandbox Interactive and Pearl Abyss, both of which used AI-generated in-game assets during early development with the intention of replacing those assets before the game's release, albeit with varying degrees of success.

Square Enix previously revealed that it would be leaning into generative AI tech for coding and bug fixing, aiming to rely on the tech for as much as 70% of its QA and debugging by the end of 2027. It seems as though the game publisher is experimenting with AI in a much more public way, according to a new report by The Sankei Shimbun. The Japanese publication reports that Square Enix announced a new AI integration into the Japan-exclusive Dragon Quest X MMORPG, which will take the form of a ball of slime—appropriately named Chatty Slimey—in order to help players feel less lonely and guide them through the start of the game.

The AI chatbot will receive text input, combined with the context of the player's on-screen content as context, and will respond with a generated voice when called upon. There will also be instances where the chatbot will appear without being summoned, like when the player beats a particularly difficult enemy or obtains a rare item—presumably this will help players learn about the game's systems and loot. Square Enix says that, despite Dragon Quest X's large player base, the game has a particularly steep learning curve, which can be a barrier to entry for new players, which is why it was chosen for the AI chatbot. It's unclear if similar tech will be introduced in other games at the time of writing, but given the studio's previous interest in AI, it seems likely that this test, which is currently seeking beta testers, will inform future implementations.

Adding to the recent controversy surrounding Intel Arc GPU support—or lack thereof—in Crimson Desert, gamers recently flagged a very peculiar in-game painting, among other assets, as evidence of use of generative AI in the game. The image depicted a battlefield filled with cavalry, but many of the soldiers and their horses were blended into one another, and there were general inconsistencies in the image that stood out as being AI-generated. Despite the almost obvious use of generative AI, Pearl Abyss did not use Steam's generative AI disclosure on the Crimson Desert store page. Now, three days after the AI-generated in-game art was discovered, Pearl Abyss has issued a statement, via the @CrimsonDesert_ account on X, acknowledging that it was AI-generated but also claiming that the artwork was not meant to make it into the final game.

According to the announcement, the development team used "experimental AI generative tools" during early iteration to generate 2D props to "explore tone and atmosphere," and that it was always the studio's intentions to replace these AI-generated assets with final artwork after an internal review by the art and development teams. Pearl Abyss says that it "acknowledge that we should have clearly disclosed our use of AI," adding that it apologizes for the oversights. The studio also notes that it has started an internal audit of all in-game assets in order to replace any affected content, and that those updated assets will appear in upcoming patches. The game's Steam store page has also been updated with the corresponding generative AI disclosure following the statement and community backlash, which reads "Generative AI technology is used in a supplementary capacity during the creation of some 2D prop assets. Any such assets are replaced through our production pipeline by our art and development teams, ensuring they meet our quality standards and creative direction." Pearl Abyss's full statement follows.

With every Windows 11 update seemingly introducing a new bug or somehow breaking some core functionality, it seems as though trust in Microsoft and Windows is at an all-time low, with the recent "Microslop" insult popping up in online tech circles as a sort of culmination of the recent spate of issues. Microsoft has apparently been following the backlash against Windows 11, with Pavan Davuluri, President of Windows + Devices, stating in a new Windows Insider Blog post that "over the past several months, the team and I have spent a great deal of time analyzing your feedback," and subsequently laying out a plan that walks back many of the contentious changes that have been made in recent Windows 11 updates and promising to add highly requested new features and return features from older Windows versions that likely shouldn't have been removed in the first place.

One of the earliest complaints about Windows 11—before Copilot launched—was that the task bar could not be relocated to other screen edges, but Microsoft will soon introduce more taskbar customization, including moving it to the top, left, or right screen edges as needed. Microsoft will also walk back many of the Copilot integrations, stating that it will be "more intentional about how and where Copilot integrates across Windows." It specifically calls out removing Copilot from Snipping Tool, Photos, Widgets, and Notepad. The other two important changes that will come from the new plan for Windows 11 is giving users more control over updates to reduce interruptions—essentially allowing users to go longer without restating without an update and skipping updates during device setup, and restarting and shutting down without updating. Microsoft also plans to address File Explorer and speed up launch times in order to deliver "smoother navigation and more reliable performance for everyday tasks," as well as polishing the user experience overall.

Sony recently introduced Upgraded PSSR—aka PSSR 2.0—on its PlayStation 5 Pro consoles with the launch of Resident Evil, finally unlocking the additional AI chops of the PS5 Pro's APU. If recent comments by Sony's Mark Cerny to Digital Foundry are anything to go by, PlayStation's console hardware will be following a similar trajectory to gaming PCs when it comes to these ML and AI-based features. Specifically, it seems as though frame generation will be one of the next advancements to make its way to the PlayStation platform, although it seems as though gamers will need to wait a little longer for that to be implemented—if it is implemented during this console generation at all.

Addressing a question regarding FSR Frame Generation on PlayStation, Cerny commented that "FSR Frame Generation is also based on co-developed technology...and an equivalent frame generation library should be seen at some point on PlayStation platforms." He goes on to say that frame generation will not be making it to Sony's consoles in 2026, stating that "we have no more releases planned for this year." Given that the next-generation PlayStation hardware is slated to arrive somewhere between 2027 and 2028, it almost seems likely that Sony will announce FSR Frame Generation at the same time as the PlayStation 6 with a cut-back version available for the PS5, although it's potentially possible for Sony to update the current PS5 Pro with FSR Frame Generation, since FSR Redstone was developed in partnership with Sony, to begin with. There have already been modders who have run FSR 4 Redstone Frame Generation on RDNA 3, as well, so it may be possible for the PS5's RDNA 2 APU, as well, although at the cost of a higher performance penalty.

It recently came to light that NVIDIA may be planning a GeForce RTX 5070 Mobile GPU with an upgrade to 12 GB of GDDR7, 4 GB more than the currently available 8 GB models, with both Lenovo Yoga and ASUS laptops appearing to be planning new models with the new GPU configuration. While there still hasn't been any confirmation from NVIDIA itself, another handful of Lenovo laptop listings have shown up, lending credence to the earlier claims—this time in official, public Lenovo specifications documentation.

According to Lenovo's spec sheet for the Legion Pro 5 16ADR10, the new laptop will pair an AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX with 32 GB of DDR5-5200, a 1 TB PCIe 4 ×4 SSD, and NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 5070 12 GB. The GPU itself looks largely unchanged from the version in Lenovo's other Legion laptops, with the exception of a much lower boost clock in the Legion Pro 5. Despite having the same 115 W TGP as the LOQ models with the 5070 12 GB, Lenovo has rated the boost clocks of the RTX 5070 12 GB in the Legion Pro at 1425 MHz, compared to 2347 MHz in the LOQ models, which are identical to the original RTX 5070 8 GB. There have been murmurs of an April release for these laptops, but those are unconfirmed so far.

Recent right to repair laws passed in the EU demand that, starting in February 2027, electronic devices have batteries that are user-replaceable with commonly available tools and without risk to the end user—that is to say, they shouldn't require proprietary tools or tools that aren't available to consumers. Nintendo, for its part, already preparing an update to the Nintendo Switch 2 to comply with this law, according to a report by Nikkei (via Covergeek), although the exact details of the more repairable battery model is unknown at the time of writing. According to the report, the more repairable Switch 2 will only launch in Europe, but Nintendo would expand the hardware to different regions as required by law.

In iFixit's teardown of the Nintendo Switch 2 and its battery replacement guide for the Switch 2 Joy Cons, the organization noted that the battery for both the Switch 2 and its Joy Cons were adhered in place, and a spudger was required to remove the batteries from the devices. While this isn't necessarily a specialized tool, it could be argued that needing to either dissolve an adhesive or pry a battery loose could add additional risk to the end user. To this end, it seems likely that both the Switch 2 and its Joy Cons could see a revision with weaker adhesive or no adhesive at all, which would make battery replacements easier and safer. It could also mean that Nintendo will need to replace the tri-point screws that hold the Switch 2 together.

Crimson Desert just launched on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox consoles after years of waiting and months of anticipation building up to the launch. Unfortunately, the game's launch seems to have been more divisive than Pearl Abyss anticipated. The first sign of what was to come was the first wave of pre-release critic reviews, which varied from the likes Forbes giving it a 5/5 score and calling it the "best in its class" to outlets like Insider Gaming and PCGamesN scoring it 7/10 and 6/10, respectively. Currently, the game's Steam Store reviews are "Mixed," with only 59.99% of the game's 4,049 reviews positive. Review scores aside, Crimson Desert still managed to attract a day-one peak concurrent player count of 239,045 players, which would later show signs of settling around the 100,000-player mark.

Common threads among many of the less positive reviews are the underwhelming narrative and the wealth of systems that aren't quite fleshed-out enough, although most do praise the game for its breathtaking environmental design and the variety of mechanics it implements and niches the game attempts to fill. Much of the community on sites like r/CrimsonDesert, have expressed indifference at these mixed reviews, stating that the game wasn't going to be for everyone and that some people will not get along with it, once more demonstrating the divide between gamers and critics. Part of what makes Crimson Desert's reception disheartening is the amount of build-up that surrounded the game—which has led to a rather steep 28.96% drop in Pearl Abyss's stock price following the launch.

It was recently revealed that Krafton was forced to reinstate Ted Gill, the formerly ousted CEO of Unknown Worlds, after a court ruling found that he was terminated without cause and improperly seized operational control of Unknown Worlds. Around the same time as that news broke, Steve Paputsis, Krafton's replacement for Ted Gill at Unknown Worlds, announced that Subnautica 2 was ready for a May Early Access launch in an internal memo that was subsequently leaked to IGN. Now, as reported by The Game File, Gill's lawyers have claimed that Papoutsis did not have the authority to send out that memo, since he was no longer in charge of Unknown Worlds at the time.

The legal team also speculated that the memo had been intentionally leaked to the press, since Unknown Worlds has yet to make an official public statement about the launch of Subnautica 2, effectively killing a lot of the game's momentum by damping the fanfare and marketing efforts that would usually go into such a big launch. In 2025, following the ousting of the original founders and executives at Unknown Worlds, It was alleged that Krafton was pushing to delay the launch of Subnautica in order to avoid paying the studio staff a $250 million bonus for launching the game on-time. Ultimately, Krafton ended up delaying Subnautica 2 to 2026, claiming that it needed "a little extra time" to respond to community feedback before the game launched.

Intel's Battlemage BGM-G31 GPUs have shown up in leaks and rumors before, although an exact launch date was previously unknown. Now, though, according to VideoCardz, Intel will launch the Arc B70 Pro and B65 Pro as early as March 25. The outlet claims that the information comes directly from Intel press packets, and that it confirms the base specifications for both the Arc B65 Pro and B70 Pro. The new workstation GPUs will apparently be available in both Intel-branded versions as well as third-party designs.

The leak also purports to confirm the previously leaked specifications of the B70 Pro and B65 Pro, which means the B70 Pro will have 32 Xe2 cores and 32 GB of ECC GDDR6 and a 256-bit memory bus with a 160-290 W TGP range. Intel's TBP for the reference design will be 230 W. The B65 Pro, on the other hand, will supposedly launch with the same VRAM configuration, but it will feature only 20 Xe2 cores, making it effectively a B60 Pro with more VRAM. The B65 Pro will also supposedly have a 200 W peak TGP.

Around the same time as Ubisoft's latest round of layoffs see over 100 employees lose their jobs, Crystal Dynamics, the game studio behind Square Enix's recent Tomb Raider reboot trilogy, has announced that it will be laying off 20 employees across its development and operations teams. This is the fourth round of layoffs at the studio in the last year, and in a recent LinkedIn post announcing the layoffs, the studio explains that "we continuously take a hard look at our team structures to ensure they align with our long term studio goals," and calls the layoffs "necessary."

Some of the comments in the LinkedIn post are from affected employees, including an environment artist and a senior animator with 15 years of experience. Crystal Dynamics confirmed in the post that its "current projects" are heading into the next phases of development, and it reiterated that "Crystal Dynamics remains fully committed to the future development of our already announced Tomb Raider titles," suggesting that there have been no game cancellations as yet. Tomb Raider: Catalyst is slated for a 2027 cross-platform launch, but even Crystal Dynamics admits that layoffs like these "can cause concern amongst our community."

Red Storm Entertainment, the long-standing game studio that previously worked on titles in the Tom Clancy, Ghost Recon, and Rainbow Six franchises, has been officially transitioned to a support-only studio by Ubisoft. Red Storm had been working on The Division Heartland until that was cancelled in 2024, even after having been through a number of playtests. According to sources who spoke to GameIndustry.biz, Ubisoft will lay off as many as 105 workers at Red Storm, while the remaining staff will be dedicated to supporting Ubisoft's other studios in IT, customer relations, and development work on the Snowdrop engine.

The layoffs come after Ubisoft announced its recent cost-cutting measures and studio restructure, which would see the gaming giant reorganized into five "creative houses," all individually responsible and accountable for the games and properties under their management. The ensuing changes and announced cost-cutting measures, which aimed to save €200 million over two years, have already resulted in a number of layoffs at other studios and a massive strike across Ubisoft's international locations.

Arctic has announced the updated version of its fanless Senza PC with updated internals, connectivity, and a more flexible design. The Senza AI 370 uses a familiar fanless design, with the heatsink integrated into the case of what would otherwise effectively be a mini PC, but now features the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 APU and its corresponding AMD Radeon 890M iGPU. That somewhat powerful iGPU in a silent form factor is the biggest differentiator compared to other desktops, but the Senza AI 370 is also designed to fit under a desk, virtually eliminating the need for the PC to be small in the first place. According to the Arctic online store, the Senza AI 370 retails for €1,199.99, and there are no optional barebones kits available.

Arctic markets the Senza as a silent gaming and productivity machine and claims that it can operate at temperatures as low as 50° in gaming workloads—although there were no specifics on the ambient temperature or the exact games and settings tested, so take that with a pinch of salt. To its credit, the Senza AI 370 does have 32 GB of DDR5X-8000 memory and a 1 TB PCIe Gen 4 ×4 M.2 SSD. The I/O situation is also interesting, with Arctic opting for a break-away front I/O panel module that features 1 3.5 mm audio combo jack, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port, and a USB4 Type-C port—this module is connected to the PC via a cable, so that the ports can be mounted near the front of the desk. The actual PC itself also features the following ports: 2× USB 2.0, 2× USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 1× USB4 Type-C, 1× HDMI 2.1, 1× DisplayPort 2.1, 1× 2.5 GbE, 1× DC in, and separate 3.5 mm audio jacks for mic in and audio out. Because the PC is designed to be mounted under a desk, what would traditionally be the rear I/O is also front-facing, which should make it easier to reach.

According to Insider Gaming, Sony will soon be rebranding the PlayStation Network branding, including "PSN," by September 2026. This news comes by way of an email sent to developers in preparation for the branding shift—likely as a way to ensure that future game marketing messaging reflects the change. The email explains that the shift away from PSN and PlayStation Network "properly capture the breadth of our evolving digital service," but that the change is merely a branding exercise, so it seems unlikely that the actual functionality of the service will change. At the time of writing, it's unclear what will replace PSN and PlayStation Network, but it seems reasonable to assume some more generic branding will take its place. The full email follows.

In the lead-up to the official launch, Gnome 50 has been previewed in beta via distributions like the Fedora 44 beta, but the updated version of the desktop environment, dubbed Tokyo, has officially launched in stable form, bringing with it a slew of long-expected changes—although some features did not make the cut for Gnome 50 and will be pushed back to Gnome 51. The biggest additions to Gnome 50 are the official launch of variable refresh rate and fractional scaling, both of which are enabled as long as the hardware supports it. Beyond implementing VRR and fractional scaling, Gnome 50 also features a low-latency cursor mode that allows the cursor to refresh independently from the window behind it when VRR is active. It also features workarounds for the NVIDIA driver for stuttering and frame timing issues, which should result in "noticeably smoother window animations and general desktop fluidity for users with NVIDIA GPUs."

The desktop UI also now features a power profile indicator, which is a nice quality-of-life feature for laptop users; the settings app also now has a toggle for reduced motion for accessibility, as well as parental control with daily screen time limits, app restrictions, and schedules for child accounts. With Gnome 50, the developers have implemented bug fixes to the color management and display calibration options, making it more viable for creatives doing color-sensitive work, and the sound settings screen also more clearly denotes input and output audio devices and volumes. The remote desktop functionality in Gnome now features GPU acceleration, which is nice for high-performance applications or Unfortunately, while a great many changes were made in Gnome 50, mostly enabling better performance, enhancing security, or polishing the UI, session restore functionality did not make the cut for Gnome 50. Gnome 50 also removed the Mutter backend code for X11 support entirely, which has been a somewhat controversial choice, given that some workflows and features are still unable to be replicated on Wayland.

Jeff Kaplan's new game studio, Kintsugiyama, recently announced The Legend of California as its first title—a Western-inspired open-world, online FPS exploration game with shades of the survival-craft genre. Kaplan, who previously served as lead designer on Overwatch, said that The Legend of California was slated for a 2026 launch, but it now seems as though Kaplan was serious, with the game studio announcing a public alpha playtest in a new video on YouTube. The playtest will start on March 26 and end on March 30, while participants can sign up on the Steam store page and will be selected randomly via Steam sometime around March 25. The playtest will be online-only, and players will be able to play solo or in a squad of up to four players.

In the playtest announcement video, Kaplan admits that it will be a limited playtest, so not everyone who registers will get a slot to play. Kaplan calls it the "next important moment for the development of this game," suggesting Kintsugiyama will use the data and feedback gathered from the playtest for further improvement and development of the game. A FAQ on the game's Steam page claims that there will be another playtest "in summer," and that the game will launch in Early Access before getting a full release. The FAQ also addresses the game's minimum hardware requirements, which were seemingly added to the Steam page along with the playtest announcement. According to the FAQ, the minimum hardware specifications—an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super 8 GB or AMD Radeon RX 6600 8 GB, 16 GB of RAM, and an Intel Core i7-10700K or AMD Ryzen 7 3700X—will target 30 FPS, while the recommended spec—an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 or AMD Radeon RX 6800, 32 GB RAM, and an Intel Core i7-12700K or AMD Ryzen 7 5700X—will target 60 FPS.

Much has been said about NVIDIA's recent DLSS 5 announcement, with many criticisms of the tech stemming from how the neural rendering potentially alters the artistic vision and tone of the game. While NVIDIA insists that developers remain in full control, and that the game studios were involved in creating the promotional in-game imagery used to show off the neural rendering features, a new report from Insider Gaming suggests this might not have been the case.

According to game developers from both Capcom and Ubisoft who spoke to Insider Gaming, while the individual studios may have been involved in marketing DLSS 5, the teams who worked on them were just as surprised by the results as the rest of the gaming community. A Ubisoft developer is quoted as saying "We found out at the same time as the public," while developers at Capcom expressed similar sentiments, stating that it was surprising to see Capcom, who has generally been protective of its IPs when it comes to AI involvement, getting involved in the marketing for DLSS 5. Further, the Capcom developers expressed concern at how DLSS 5 might change how Capcom approaches generative AI and its role in game development.

We recently visited 8BitDo at CES 2026, where we saw the Retro Wireless Receivers that enable wireless controller compatibility with retro game consoles. Now, 8BitDo has officially released both the Retro Wireless Receiver for the N64 and a modern wireless controller designed to work with a 2.4 GHz version of the same receiver. The Retro Wireless Receiver for N64 is available on Amazon and the 8BitDo eShop for $24.99, operates via BLE, and is compatible with a whole host of 8BitDo and first-party console controllers, including the Switch 64 Online, Switch Pro, and Wii U Pro controllers, seemingly any 8BitDo controller that supports BLE—like the Ultimate series and SN30 Pro series—Xbox One, Series, Elite Series controllers, and PlayStation's DualShock 4, DualSense, and DualSense Edge Controllers. The receiver also supports vibration and a built-in memory, with customization available via 8BitDo's Ultimate Software. 8BitDo also sells a mod kit to make the original N64 controller wireless, which is also compatible with the Retro Wireless Receiver.

The 8BitDo 64 2.4 GHz controller, on the other hand, is mostly just a rehash of the existing 8BitDo 64 Bluetooth controller repackaged to work with 2.4 GHz and paired with a Retro Wireless Receiver for N64 compatibility. The 64 controller uses modern controller design and ergonomics with a button layout adapted for the N64—specifically, it features large AB buttons where the right thumb stick would normally be on a game controller and a D-Pad where the usual ABXY face buttons would be. These design changes are to make the controller compatible with the Nintendo N64 console, but the internals are quite modern, featuring a Hall-effect joystick and support for Windows, via a wired connection, and the Analogue3D FPGA project's reimagining of the original N64, replete with vibration support on the latter. The 8BitDo 64 2.4 GHz controller is available on Amazon and 8BitDo's eShop for $39.99.

Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Take-Two Interactive, has a somewhat complicated relationship with artificial intelligence, having previously expressed an interest in AI NPCs for more natural conversations while also having confirmed that GTA VI will feature no generative AI. Now, in a recent interview with The Game Business, Zelnick has once again commented on the capabilities and applications of generative AI. Addressing a question about Google's recent Project Genie showcases, Zelnick has dismissed the idea that generative AI could be used as a one-stop-shop for game development, saying that the gaming industry has always used technology to create great entertainment," adding that "an advance in technology that allows us to do our work better and quicker is great for us."

Zelnick dismisses the idea that AI projects like Genie are a threat to the gaming industry and to game developers, commenting that "it's quite obvious that creation tools are a benefit to our industry," and that the notion that "AI tools can somehow create big hits kind of doesn't stand to reason." He reasons that generative AI may help developers create game assets, but that creating a hit game requires human engagement and creativity. Zelnick rounds out the AI discussion by emphasizing that Take-Two's goal is to create engaging, entertaining games, and that this requires creativity, adding that "technology can assist with that mission, but technology on its own will not replace the fulfillment of that mission." The executive goes on to explain that "the notion that somehow new tools would allow an individual to push a button and generate a hit and bring it to many millions of consumers around the world, it's a laughable notion." It's worth noting that there have been recent layoffs, like those at EA, that have been attributed to or followed by an increase in AI adoption, indicating that, while AI may not be capable of replacing artists and developers from a technical standpoint, it does not necessarily mean there is no threat.

RPCS3, the multi-platform, open-source PlayStation 3 emulator that recently announced support for 70% of the PlayStation 3 game library, has just added a UX workflow to automatically add emulated games to your Steam library. This effectively works the same way as adding a third-party game to your Steam library from Steam, but it eliminates the extra step of opening Steam and manually adding the game launcher to your Steam library. Games added this way will automatically add the game's PS3 art included with the game files in the emulator, to boot.

It's a small UI change, in the grand scheme of things, but it should help simplify game emulation and make it easier for gamers to play their emulated games via RPCS3. Being able to add third-party games to a game library is a nigh-essential feature that even Microsoft recently added to the Xbox App for Windows. RPCS3 adopting support for seamless Steam library integration could effectively let Linux and SteamOS players go from cold boot to playing a game all from a controller using Steam Big Picture mode—no keyboard or mouse necessary.

Crimson Desert has had no shortage of hype leading up to its March 19 launch date, but research firm, Alinea Insights, has put a number on that hype. Based on Steam data and sales approximations, Alinea estimates that the new open-world action-adventure game has already surpassed $20 million in Steam revenue alone. This is based on an estimated 400,000 pre-orders ahead of launch. Currently, Crimson Desert sits at the top of Steam's Top Sellers charts, which ranks games by revenue earned, having beaten out long-standing chart-topper, Counter-Strike—at least in the US—and the more recent indie hit, Slay the Spire 2, which recently dropped from first to fourth place.

Likewise, according to SteamDB, at the time of writing, Crimson Desert is the fourth most-wishlisted game on Steam, boasting over 170,000 followers on Steam. The excitement leading up to the launch of Crimson Desert has been building for a good long while now, but the game, and its development team, earned a significant boost in its reputation online after a very forgiving set of minimum hardware requirements was announced for Crimson Desert in a time that games seem to be getting more demanding with every passing launch. Alinea attributes much of Crimson Desert's success to the studio's community building efforts and authentic, transparent approach to community engagement, much like the recent gameplay demo showed off on the PlayStation Japan YouTube channel.

There has been a lot of discussion about Marathon's gameplay, pacing, and potential shortcomings in the weeks since the game launched. One feature that has seemingly been requested all over since the game launched is a duos queue for squads of two players, and it looks as though Bungie is indulging in the fans' requests with an imminent experimental duos queue. According to an X post by Marathon's game director, Bungie will start testing for a duos queue on Wednesday, 18 March, at 10 AM PT. Given that Bungie is even testing a duos queue suggests that there is enough player feedback for the game studio to consider adding the feature to the game at large. There are still questions about how two-player teams will fare in a game that has notoriously high time-to-kill in non-PvP encounters, but that's perhaps one of the gameplay aspects that will need tuning and experimentation to nail down.

This is an experimental test that will be limited to the Perimeter zone, and there are a few minor details to note if you're planning to hop into the new game mode. For starters, and likely the most notable issue players might run into, the duos queue will not have any matchmaking, meaning duos will only be available to players already in a squad with two players. The director is also clear that "some things will be jank," suggesting this will be far from a polished experience for players, but he hopes that any data gathered during the testing can be used to expand the duos queue in the future. Players interested in joining the duos queue can select "Perimeter - Duos" from the zone selection screen, but this will not be the final UX flow, leaving Bungie with a lot of headroom to grow the Marathon duos gameplay experience going forward.

The PS5 release of Starfield has long been rumored for 2026, but it was unclear when exactly the game would launch for Sony's gaming platform, but Bethesda has now confirmed that Starfield will launch on the PS5 in April 2026. Specifically, the launch is slated for an April 7 release. Starfield's PlayStation 5 release will coincide with the launch of a free game content update and a new story DLC, all of which was detailed in a recent developer deep-dive on the Bethesda Softworks YouTube channel.

Bethesda says that the Free Lanes update was heavily guided by player feedback, and that it will be the biggest update since the game's launch. Free Lanes will add a new vehicle and spacesuit, as well as new weapons to find and POIs for players to explore and interact with. It also adds a cruise mode to speed up interplanetary travel and allow players to interact with their crew and ship on longer trips. There are also a new material to enhance weapons and ships, and an expansion to the progression system to give players more to do in space and on the planets they encounter. Enemies have also received an update to make enemy encounters more challenging and varied.

Following the recent early performance benchmarks of the Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus, Intel's Arrow Lake-S Core Ultra 3 205T has broken ground on PassMark, and it's giving the Core Ultra 5 255 and Core Ultra 5 255T a run for their money, at least in single-core benchmarks. Multithreaded benchmarks paint something of a grimmer picture for the Core Ultra 3 205T, though—likely due to the reduced core and thread count of the 205T, which features just eight cores and eight threads, likely four P-cores and four E-cores.

The Core Ultra 3 205T scored a respectable 4,561 points in the single-core benchmark, beating out the Core Ultra 5 255 and 255T by 3.2% and 6.6%, respectively. When it comes to multithreaded tasks, however, the Core Ultra 3 205T falls behind. In PassMark's benchmarks, the 205T was nearly 15% behind the Core Ultra 5 225. Still, the Intel Core Ultra 3 205T comes in ahead of the AMD Ryzen AI 5 435 by a significant margin in both single- and multi-core tests, and the Core Ultra 3 205T seems to have been tested at a peak TDP of 35 W, all of which may make it worth considering for lower-end office builds.

Crimson Desert's official March 19 launch is just around the corner, and in the lead-up to the launch, PlayStation Japan and Pearl Abyss have shown off the upcoming action-adventure game running on base PS5 hardware with respectable image quality and performance. The presenters of the Play! Play! Play! broadcast play through the first few minutes of the game's prologue and show off a few tutorial scenes, and, although it's difficult to gauge image quality directly, there is some information to be gleaned from the broadcast. Overall, performance and image quality seem to align with the promises made by the minimum hardware requirements published earlier this month—even if there are some upscaling artifacts visible in finer textures, like character hair.

The most notable aspect of the gameplay footage is that there are no obvious framerate issues, texture pop-ins, or stuttering visible. Even at longer draw distances, image quality seems to be well controlled, and motion remains smooth, even during high-action scenes where the load would generally increase. The demonstration has been heartening for PS5 players, since there were suspicions that the PS5 gameplay footage was being kept under wraps ahead of the game's launch due to lackluster performance. The broadcast also serves to give players a taste of the challenging combat, puzzle-platformer mechanics, exploration, and atmospheric world they can expect from the game's launch.

Jeff Kaplan, formerly a Blizzard executive, recently announced both a new studio and a new game, The Legend of California, which is slated to launch in 2026. Since the game's launch, the reception has been somewhat mixed, but that seemingly hasn't dampened the spirits of the studio or its executive. In a recent 10-hour livestream of The Legend of California, Kaplan addressed some of the negative comments he'd seen online, mainly taking aim at players who were criticizing the game, but who he seems to think weren't the target market in the first place.

The specific demographic that spurred Kaplan's comments were Overwatch players who have had what he describes as a "nerd rage-out," and expressing their frustration at Kaplan's chosen genre, visuals, or game design for The Legend of California. In response to these players, Kaplan said "if a game comes out, and you don't want to play it, and you've never played it, shit the f**k up---no one cares. We don't need to hear that you aren't into it." He goes on to question the reasoning behind players voicing their opinions on a video game they're never going to play, asking "Who cares about my opinion if I'm not going to play it, and if I've never played it? Why does my opinion matter on that?"

As PC gamers and enthusiasts, we all know by now that there is a supply shortage of various silicon components in the personal computing market, with the blame largely falling on AI demand and NVIDIA's and AMD's pivots to AI data center supply. In a recent report by Money UDN MSI's General Manager, Huang Jinqing, predicts a 15-30% price increase for its gaming products across the board as a result of the current market conditions. Jinqing goes on to say that there is an NVIDIA GPU supply shortage on the order of 20%.

As a result of the current supply shortages, Jinqing suggests that the overall PC market will shrink by as much as 10-20%. Recent retailer reports paint a slightly grimmer picture, though, with Mindfactory's sales figures pointing to a more significant decline in GPU sales volume. In light of the recent shortages, especially of DDR5 memory, hardware makers have turned to older platforms, with ASUS announcing increased production for DDR4 motherboards. Now, it seems as though MSI will follow ASUS down that path, with Jinqing confirming that it has signed long-term contracts for memory and shifted production to increase DDR4 motherboard output.

Resident Evil Requiem only just launched to massive fanfare, having surpassed 5 million units in a matter of days, however, just over a week after passing the 5-million sales mark, Capcom has announced that Requiem has surpassed 6 million units sold in the 16 days since the game launched. According to the gaming giant's announcement, this officially makes it the fastest-selling Resident Evil game in the franchise's history.

[Editor's note: Our in-depth Resident Evil Handheld Performance review is now live]

In the post celebrating the achievement, Capcom also announced a celebration event for the franchise's March 22 30th anniversary, and revealed that it is developing additional content for Resident Evil Requiem, although it declined to elaborate what the additional content would be, beyond simply stating that "Going forward, Capcom plans to implement several measures, such as ongoing support and additional game content, so players can continue to enjoy the title longer." It seems likely that this "additional game content" will go beyond the already announced story expansion that Capcom recently revealed in a post on X.

It's undeniable that Palworld has had a successful Early Access period, even spawning a spinoff late last year in Palfarm and collaborating with some of the biggest games in the indie industry. Now, as the developer, Pocketpair is lining up to launch sometime in 2026, John Buckley, head of publishing and communications lead at Pocketpair, has made a few comments hyping up the launch during a GDC interview with GamesRadar+. Buckley says that, while survival crafting is a niche genre with a large player base on Steam, Pocketpair hopes that Palworld will be a game with something for everyone to enjoy. "There's so many incredible, incredible survival crafting games, but I think every survival crafting gamer has their like ideal version of what survival crafting should be, and we hope Palworld 1.0 will be that kind of something for everyone, lose yourself in this world, survival crafting game."

He goes on to suggest that the 1.0 launch will add polish to all of the game's mechanics and flesh out the mechanics that are still incomplete in addition to expanding the base content of the game for more advanced players "Now, a huge chunk of quote unquote end game content will be added. So if you really want to continue from where you left off, sure you're not missing out on the full experience, but you are missing out on some things. We've tried our best to expand everything. Not just the end game, but also improve the early game, add more to the early game, flesh out the middle game, kind of something for everyone, really."

AMD's hardware has generally enjoyed better support on Linux than its Intel and NVIDIA competition, although adoption and feature-parity to Windows can sometimes be a little slow. This has been the case with the AMD's APUs, which only just received power and usage monitoring via a pull request for Linux 7.1. The new AMDXDNA driver will expose power monitoring metrics for AMD Ryzen AI NPUs via DRM_IOCTL_AMDXDNA_GET_INFO, alongside new metrics to expose real-time NPU busy metrics to applications.

Both of these new metrics will presumably be used by those running and developing local LLMs and can be used to gauge hardware utilization and improve scheduling for AI tasks. These changes are expected to land in Linux 7.1, slated to release after 7.0, which is currently in development and is expected to launch sometime between April and May. Linux 7.0 itself is expected to introduce some significant performance improvements when it comes to cache and memory handling.

German retailer Mindfactory indicates that AMD's Radeon RX 9070 XT is its top-selling GPU for weeks 9-11 of 2026 (meaning March 1-15), although it also indicated that there is a dramatic decrease in GPU sales during the same time period. According to the retailer data (shared by TechEpiphanyYT on X), AMD made up 55.6% of the outlet's sales for that time period, with the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT in the lead as top seller with 25.6% market share and the RX 9060 XT following that up with 20.3%. The next five spots, though, are all NVIDIA GPUs—namely the RTX 5080 at 11.8%, the RTX 5070 Ti at 9%, the RTX 5060 and 5070 at 7% each, and the RTX 5090 at 5.3%.

The next-most-popular AMD GPU at Mindfactory was the Radeon RX 7600 in the eighth spot, with the RX 7900 XTX, 7900 XT, and 7700 XT following in 10th, 11th, and 12th place. Curious as it may seem to see AMD in the lead where NVIDIA usually dominates in most other markets, it follows trends set by previous Mindfactory reports. More concerning, GPU sales have also reportedly fallen to roughly a third of their usual numbers, likely as a result of stock shortages and skyrocketing hardware prices across the board. While recent reports indicate that GPU prices might be correcting slightly, at least on the AMD side, other component supply issues and the resulting high prices may be dissuading people from platform upgrades or fresh PC builds altogether.

Keychron's recent move to the HE 8K line of analog keyboards has seen it launch a number of new high-performance gaming keyboards with the new Ultra-Fast Lime switches and wired-only connectivity. Now, the keyboard maker has announced the C0 HE 8K as the latest installment in that line-up of gaming keyboards. The C0 HE 8K is a left-handed gaming-oriented wired Hall effect gaming keyboard with a built-in wrist rest and an aggressive angular design. The Keychron C0 HE 8K is launching at $59.99 on Keychron's online store and on Amazon. The Keychron C0 HE 8K is an affordable take on a one-handed gaming keyboard, so there is no gasket mount or wireless connectivity to be had, although it does have many of the same features of Keychron's higher-end keyboards.

The C0 HE 8K has 35 keys in total, making it technically a 35% keyboard, although it's only the left half of the keyboard, replete with the num row and F row. The keyboard's chassis itself is made of ABS plastic, while the keyboard features an aluminium plate and a tray-mount design. The keycaps are double-shot shine-through ABS in the OEM profile, which should feel familiar with many gamers coming from a standard gaming keyboard. Like all of Keychron's other HE keyboards, the C0 HE 8K offers customization of everything from the switch actuation distance to SOCD, DKS, Rapid Trigger, and Mod Tap through Keychron Launcher. The C0 HE 8K's Ultra-Fast Magnetic Lime switches feature a very lightweight 25 g actuation force, 3.35 mm of travel, and an all-POM construction. One of the stranger aspects of the C0 HE 8K is its "ergonomic angled space bar," that Keychron says is designed to align with the natural curvature of human fingers. The C0 HE 8K also features a built-in silicone palm rest for improved comfort. While the C0 HE 8K is largely marketed at gamers, Keychron also pitches it as a control surface for creative workflows.

Microsoft Gaming Copilot has been out in the open and available as a beta for PC, mobile, and the ROG Xbox Ally since October 2025, but at a recent GDC conference, Sonali Yadav, Xbox Gaming AI partner group project manager, commented that Gaming Copilot would be landing on current-gen Xbox Series X|S consoles before the end of 2026. Gaming Copilot purports to help its users "get to the fun, faster," with gaming recommendations based on what you play, "get help without leaving your game," by providing players with advice based on their current place in the game, and "brainstorm strategies and get tips or insights with personalized coaching." The service operates similarly to Microsoft's original Copilot service in that it takes screenshots of your gameplay and analyzes them to provide the aforementioned recommendations.

I'm excited to announce that later this year, we will bring Gaming Copilot to the current-generation consoles, and we will continue to bring it to more services that players are playing.

Epomaker recently showed off its typewriter-style Glyph mechanical keyboard at CES 2026, although there was no word on when the keyboard would launch, the exact specifications, or what the price would be. Now, the keyboard maker has officially released the Glyph keyboard in all its retro glory, alongside three other keyboards: the $119 Luma100, which we covered previously, the RT100 Pro, and the Epomaker x Aula F75 Ultra.

The Epomaker Glyph is a 75% mechanical keyboard with 83 keys, a programmable knob, a 2.79-inch full-color TFT screen, and a built-in tablet stand. The highlight of the Glyph is mostly its retro design, which is emphasized by the round, uniform-height keycaps that look a little like bottle caps. The keyboard itself is made of ABS plastic, while the keycaps are dye-sublimated PBT, and the plate is made of aluminium. The Glyph comes with either Epomaker Wisteria V2 switches, which are linear switches with a 45 gf operating force, POM+PTFE stems, PC top housings, and PA66 bottom housings. It also features 2.4 GHz and Bluetooth connectivity and an 8,000 mAh battery. The Glyph is available on Epomaker's website for $139.

Glorious Model O was once held in high regard in the realm of gaming peripherals, but that design has since been surpassed by more modern designs with lighter shells and more responsive, accurate sensors. Apparently there is still a market for the original Glorious Model O gaming mouse, at least according to Glorious, who recently announced the Glorious Model O Classic. The Model O Classic is a rehash of the 2019 Glorious Model O design, replete with the RGB strips, original sensor hardware, and even the original honeycomb design that's largely fallen out of use except for in the most lightweight gaming mouse designs.

The Glorious Model O classic features the same BAMF sensor, based on the Pixart PAW 3370, as the original—although it's now simply called the "19K Optical Gaming Sensor," which means it has a maximum wireless polling rate of 1 kHz, tops out at 19,000 DPI, 400 IPS, and 40 G acceleration. Despite the honeycomb shell, the Model O Classic still weighs in at 69 g, whereas many solid-shell gaming mice released in the last year or two come in at 40-50 g, with some, like the Corsair Sabre V2 Pro even dipping into the mid-30s. Glorious also still uses the Glorious Core software to customize the Model O Classic, meaning customization requires installing software that is only available on Windows. The Model O Classic wireless gaming mouse is available on the Glorious online store at $89.99.

Hot on the heels of Valve's critical public response to the New York State attorney general's lawsuit against the gaming giant over its in-game monetization and loot boxes, the Pan European Game Information (PEGI) ratings body has updated its rating system to address similar concerns over in-game monetization and "interactive risk categories." As of June 2026, new games registered in Europe and rated by PEGI will be subject to additional scrutiny surrounding "purchases of in-game content, paid random items, communication features, and features that incentivize players to continue playing," according to the announcement. In essence, this will examine daily rewards, loot boxes, in-game cosmetics and premium currency purchases, and in-game chat moderation and content control. Chair of the PEGI Council, Beate Våje, says that "with the updated set of age rating criteria, PEGI aims to make parents aware that certain features in games should be carefully assessed, and that parental tools can be a very helpful assistant when doing that."

Under the new criteria, games that feature in-game purchases, specifically those with quantity- or time-limited sale mechanics, will be rated 12+, while games that use NFTs and other blockchain tech will be rated PEGI 18. Games with "random items" will be PEGI 16 by default, although they will be PEGI 18 in some cases. Games with what the ratings body calls "play-by-appointment" mechanics—things like daily quests or login rewards—will be rated PEGI 7, while games that punish players for not playing daily will receive a PEGI 12 rating. Lastly, PEGI is enforcing age restrictions on "safe online gameplay," which will result in games with entirely unrestricted communication receiving a PEGI 18 rating. Conceivably, games with proximity voice chat that cannot be disabled will also fall into this last box, although PEGI specifies that there needs to be a way to block or report users, so it's possible that being able to mute proximity chat may not be enough to escape a PEGI 18 rating on the grounds of online safety.

Pearl Abyss's Crimson Desert is just over a week away from its March 20 launch, and in a recent Steam News post, the studio behind the game has provided additional information about the release, while the Steam Store page now reflects that the game will launch with Denuvo DRM. The news update confirms that players jumping into the world of Pywel will be able to preload the game 24-48 hours ahead of the official launch, starting on March 17 or 18, depending on which part of the world they're in—the game goes live on March 19 at 10 PM UTC, so the exact launch date differs by region. Pearl Abyss also confirmed that Crimson Desert will not support cross-platform save, and there appears to be no plan to add it in at a later date. While Crimson Desert will be playable completely offline, Pearl Abyss warns that the game will need an internet connection on day one in order to install a day-one patch.

It's unclear how the addition of Denuvo DRM will affect gameplay, especially since Pearl Abyss set a pretty low barrier to entry with the minimum hardware requirements that it published earlier this week. Denuvo, and other DRM services, have, in the past, been known to cause performance degradation, even on higher-end hardware, but if the game was tested for the minimum requirements with the DRM in place, players can likely expect little to no performance hit. While Denuvo doesn't necessarily lock Linux users out of Crimson Desert, its use is generally frowned upon by the Linux gaming community. Pearl Abyss has not mentioned Steam Deck or Linux compatibility in any of its communications surrounding Crimson Desert.

Jeff Kaplan, of former Blizzard fame, having worked on Overwatch and World of Warcraft, has officially announced the first game in development at his newly formed Kintsugiyama studio. The Legend of California is a Western shooter with online co-op and PvP gameplay. The Legend of California is set in an alternate timeline version of California in which the state is discovered as an uninhabited island off the coast of the mainland USA. It will feature a hand-crafted world featuring real-world landmarks, like Yosemite and Death Valley, but interspersed with dynamic points of interest that will move around depending on the generated world seed.

In a recent appearance on the Lex Fridman podcast, Kaplan explains that he wants the game to feel like a world that you can live in, with gameplay mechanics often limited to survival games, like mining, exploration, crafting, and hunting. He says that the goal of the game is not to be historically accurate, but that the development team wanted to remain authentic to the aesthetic and feel of the historical gold rush time period. In terms of gameplay, Kaplan commented that the map will feature four difficulty levels, with different regions and POIs each getting a difficulty level assigned each time the world is generated anew. The Legend of California will launch in Steam Early Access in 2026, and it's so far unclear if there will be a console version.

Redragon has just announced two new affordable wireless gaming mice: The Taipan Pro M810, a right-handed conventional ergonomic gaming mouse, and the Impact Elite M913, an MMO mouse with 12 programmable side buttons. The Taipan Pro M810 is a fairly conventional gaming mouse shape, falling squarely within the same category as the likes of the Razer Basilisk or Logitech G502 shapes, with its left-side thumb shelf, fairly high front, and mid-hump design. The Taipan Pro has eight buttons in total, including middle click, thanks to the two shortcut keys on the left side, two buttons on the top behind the scroll wheel, and a button to the left of the left click.

Redragon markets the Taipan Pro as an FPS mouse, but it doesn't specify the mouse's weight, and it uses the PixArt PAW3311 sensor, which tops out at 12,000 DPI and 35 G acceleration, while the polling rate maxes out at 1 kHz. It uses Huano mechanical switches with a 20-million click MTBF rating, although there is no specific mention of a switch model or actuation force. The Taipan Pro features both 2.4 GHz and Bluetooth wireless connectivity, and Redragon claims it can manage up to 188 hours on a single charge with the RGB accent lighting off and 29 hours with the accent lighting on. Both the RGB lighting and the button mapping are customizable in Redragon's software suite for Windows. By far the most attractive part of the Redragon Taipan Pro 810M is its price, at $39.99 for the white version and $42.99 for the black version from the Redragon web store.

Logitech G305 fans who are looking for something a little lighter with more modern specifications might not have to wait much longer, if the VXE V3 turns out to be anything like the brand's other gaming mice, at least. The VXE V3 gaming mouse recently showed up in a number of leaks on social media sites, like Reddit and X, revealing an egg-like design and purple colorway nearly identical to Logitech's G305 and G203 gaming mice.

Exact specifications have not been made public yet, but ATK Gear has teased the V3 in a post on X, noting that the mouse is "coming soon," although no specific launch date has been announced either. ATK did confirm that it will be a quad-mode gaming mouse, though, which means it will feature the usual wired, Bluetooth, and 2.4 GHz connectivity, with the addition of NearLink, which was also recently featured in the VXE Dragonfly R1. If the R1's internals are anything to go by, the V3 will likely use the HiSilicon Nearlink MCU and something like the PixArt PAW 3950 or 3395 sensor. Given the Logitech G305 is already an affordable mouse, often retailing for as little as $26.99, it makes sense that the VXE V3 will also be a budget mouse, like the Dragonfly R1, which retails at just $18.99.

The New York state attorney general, Letitia James, recently announced that she was taking Valve to court over what she called "quintessential gambling" via loot boxes in games like Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, and Dota, stating that these loot boxes target children and adolescents, and that they put children at risk of becoming addicted to gambling when they reach adulthood. On March 11, Valve published a response to this lawsuit in a dedicated Steam Support page, stating that it does not believe the mystery boxes violate any New York state laws, defending its loot box economy by likening it to real-world blind boxes, and criticizing the attorney general for taking Valve to court while turning a blind eye to the aforementioned real-world examples.

Valve says that it had previously met with the attorney general and explained that these mystery box systems are widely used "not just in video games but in the tangible world as well," likening loot boxes to real-world products like baseball cards, Magic: The Gathering cards, Pokémon cards, and even Labubus. Valve adds that "players don't have to open mystery boxes to play Valve games," and it insists that most gamers never do. According to the gaming giant, it has been cooperating with the NY attorney general's investigation and has shut down a number of accounts found to be using loot box cosmetics on gambling sites, citing that it has closed over a million accounts for this reason. Building on its example of baseball cards, Valve criticizes the NY attorney general taking issue with the fact that the in-game items are tradable and transferrable, suggesting that if trading physical goods, like baseball cards, isn't prohibited, neither should trading in-game cosmetics be.

Asha Sharma, the new CEO of Xbox, recently announced that the next-gen Xbox gaming console is called the Xbox Helix—at least for the time being—and hinted that more information would be revealed about the upcoming Xbox at GDC 2026. Now, GDC is here, and Xbox has delivered on that hint, with Xbox VP of Next Generation, Jason Ronald, divulging more information about Project Helix in a panel. The most notable piece of information that emerged about the console is that alpha versions of Helix dev kits would start shipping to customers as early as the end of 2027. This more or less confirms the recently rumored 2027-2028 launch window of the next-gen Xbox.

Ronald also reiterated that the next-gen Xbox is "designed to play your Xbox console and PC games," although it's still somewhat unclear if Helix will be a full-fledged console-PC hybrid à la Valve's Steam Machine—although rumors suggest that this will be the case. The executive also confirmed that it is working with AMD on a slew of new machine learning-powered tech, including FSR Diamond, which AMD also announced at GDC, and that the new AMD SoC would be designed around upcoming DirectX versions for improved ray tracing, performance, and efficiency. He also confirmed that the Helix will continue the backwards compatibility trend that Xbox has become known for, promising that Xbox will continue to play games made for the last four generations of consoles. Presumably, this means that the Helix will be able to play games from the Xbox Series, Xbox One, and Xbox 360 generations as well as games designed for the Xbox Helix.

Framework has taken a remarkably transparent approach to recent RAM price increases that affect the pricing of both its laptops and its standalone RAM sales, sticking to monthly price updates throughout the ongoing RAM shortage and maintaining a blog post with monthly updates on the industry situation. Framework's March memory pricing update will see prices on DDR5 SODIMMs increase to as much as $13-18 per GB, with lower capacity sticks seemingly trending towards the higher end of that price bracket. The price increases in question have also affected the Framework Desktop and some pre-built SKUs of the Framework Laptop 16.

Framework also confirmed that it has "started to deplete" its stockpile of low-cost SSDs that were sitting in inventory, and the company predicts that prices for the Laptop 12, 13, and 16 will continue to trend upwards in the coming months as a result of both the storage and RAM price increases. For the time being, the OEM still has supply of 2, 4, and 8 TB SN850X SSDs that are priced below market averages. The impacts of the DRAM crisis on silicon fabrication have also begun to become apparent, since the Intel Core i5-1334U in the Framework 12 is in limited supply.

One of the most important categories for a game to be Steam Deck Verified is that the game's UI must scale well on the device's small screen. When it was earlier confirmed that Valve would be loosening the requirements for the Steam Machine Verified program, we speculated that the display scaling and resolution might be one of the areas Valve would relax its requirements. Now, at GDC 2026, Valve has confirmed that this is the case, providing additional guidelines for the Steam Machine and Steam Frame Verification process. According to the document, the Verified program will be split into Steam Deck, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame Standalone—the latter being labelled "Standalone" because the Steam Frame can also operate connected to a PC or Steam Deck.

According to Valve's presentation, all Steam Deck Verified games will be Verified for the Steam Machine, but not all Steam Machine Verified games will necessarily be Verified for the Steam Deck—this is largely a result of the Machine's claimed performance. At a minimum, games must be able to run at 1080p, 30 FPS, with the same controller support and input expectations as the Steam Deck—meaning full support for controller-only input. Games with controller compatibility issues—for instance, requiring a mouse and/or keyboard to play or interact with the UI—will be rated Steam Machine Playable. Any games that are unsupported on Deck because of SteamOS will get the same rating on the Steam Machine, and any games that are unplayable on Deck because of performance issues will be re-evaluated for the Steam Machine in new testing.

The full release of Fedora Linux 44 is drawing near, and, as such, the Fedora Project has officially made Fedora 44 Beta available for download for those who want to test the upcoming version of the workstation Linux distribution. Fedora 44 has a long changelog, but some of the biggest changes are simply newer versions of the included defaults, like the move to Gnome 50 and KDE Plasma 6.6 as well as an update to Linux 6.19. Like many distributions that use KDE, the Fedora 44 KDE Desktop edition officially makes the move from SDDM to Plasma Login Manager as the default. In general, Fedora 44 also improves things like the installer, which no longer automatically and unnecessarily creates network profiles for devices not involved in the initial configuration. This makes it easier to configure these devices later when necessary.

Fedora 44 also adds support for Budgie 10.10, which is itself migrating from X11 to Wayland, Fedora changes the build infrastructure to make package builds more predictable and reproducible. Wayland support and the built-in emojis are also now better supported thanks to the upgrade to IBus 1.5.34, and various other frameworks and programming languages have been updated to improve security and modernize the OS. Fedora 44 launches officially on April 14, 2026, but beta ISOs for Fedora Workstation (with Gnome) and Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop can be downloaded ahead of the official launch. There are also the usual ISOs for server, cloud, and IoT versions.

Gaming has largely been split into two camps: mouse-and-keyboard gamers and controller gamers, and while devices like the Lenovo Legion Go and the new Joy-Cons on the Nintendo Switch 2 blur those lines, the Phase project, recently shown off by a new startup called Pixelpaw Labs, is attempting to blur those lines even further. The Phase is a split game controller that combines using magnets and pogo pin connectors to become a standard PC mouse. The goal behind the project is to "bridge the gap between a mouse, a mobile gamepad, and a controller," all in one device that can be carried with you when you might do both work and play away from home. Phase has not yet launched, although Pixelpaw Labs aims to launch the project as a Kickstarter, and it is currently offering a $20 refundable pre-launch deposit, which also guarantees a 15% discount when the Phase launches on Kickstarter. Kickstarter launch pricing is slated to start at $159 or $188 with the Phasegrip accessory.

Given that this is Pixelpaw Labs's first product and the fact that there is an inherent risk to Kickstarters, it would be impertinent to not mention that there is non-zero chance that the project never makes it to production. That said, the design and concept are interesting, as are some of the workarounds that the designers behind the project came up with for some unexpected problems. For one, the Phase doesn't have a scroll wheel when the two controller halves are in mouse mode—instead, the whole left click button is a touch-sensitive surface. The mouse connects wirelessly or via USB-C while in mouse mode, and it features a 16,000 DPI sensor—likely something like the PixArt PMW 3389 or PAW 3335, both of which are commonly found in gaming mice, even if they are somewhat outdated.

One of the Epomaker keyboards we spotted at CES 2026 was the charming little Luma40, which is apparently being followed up by its polar opposite, at least in terms of the layout and form factor. The recently announced Epomaker Luma100 is a 96% wireless mechanical keyboard that packs much of the benefits of a full-size mechanical keyboard into a slim, compact form factor. The Luma100 is not yet available on the Epomaker site, but the product page has launched, giving us a good idea of what to expect from the new low-profile mechanical keyboard. The Luma100 measures in at 37.1 × 12.85 cm with a stated 23 mm front height—presumably with keycaps installed. Aside from the low-profile design, all-aluminium chassis, and the 96% layout that preserves the num pad in a more compact footprint, the Luma100 has a number of interesting features that might interest potential buyers.

The most obvious difference between the Luma40 and the Luma100 is the layout, but the Luma100 also has a gasket mount, as opposed to the tray mount of the Luma40. The Luma100 also uses much more conventional keycaps, with ABS DSA low-profile keycaps with shine-through legends to match the Luma100's north-facing RGB backlighting. Additionally, the Luma100 follows a much more conventional row-staggered layout, ditching the Luma40's ortholinear design. The switches in the Luma100 are similar to the Luma84's, though, being that they seem to be based on the Gateron Low-Profile 2.0 switch standard, although it seems as though Epomaker has commissioned a custom switch for the Luma100, since the switches shown off in a recent unboxing video are unlike other Gateron switches, featuring clear PC housings and a light green stem.

Crimson Desert, the upcoming open-world action-adventure game from indie studio, Pearl Abyss, is finally closing in on its March 19 launch date, and as part of the lead-up to the launch, Pearl Abyss has officially published the minimum hardware requirements for both PC and console, including a proper dedicated handheld spec sheet that should give owners of the ASUS ROG Ally and Xbox Ally handheld gaming PCs an idea of what to expect. On the Xbox Series X and the Sony PlayStation 5, players can choose between Performance, Balanced, and Quality graphics settings, all of which with their own framerate targets and render quality settings. Performance targets 1080p resolution with 60 FPS, VRR or VSync enabled and ray tracing set to low.

Balanced bumps up the resolution to 4K upscaled from 1280p with FSR 3 and targets 40 FPS with Vsync, while Quality scales 1440p to 4K with FSR 3 and targets 30 FPS with Vsync enabled. The PS5 Pro steps up all quality settings to 4K, with Performance and Balanced using Upgraded PSSR upscaling to upscale 1080p and 1440p with 60 FPS and 48+ FPS with VRR, respectively. Quality mode on the PS5 Pro goes straight for 4K native at 30 FPS with Vsync and ray tracing on ultra. For the Xbox Series S, there are only two quality settings: Performance, at 720p, 40 FPS with Vsync and RT off, or Quality, at 1080p, 30 FPS with RT off. The Xbox Series X, on the other hand, offers Performance, with 1080p at 60 FPS with VRR or Vsync and RT set to low; Balanced, with 4K upscaled from 1280p with FSR 3, at 40 FPS with RT on low; and Quality, which is 4K upscaled from 1440p with FSR 3, at 30 FPS with RT set to high.

Pragmata is an upcoming fresh original sci-fi action-adventure IP out of Capcom, and if the studio's claims are to be believed, there is a lot of hype for an interesting new game franchise in a world full of remakes and copycats. According to a recent post on X by the Pragmata Japan account, the game's demo has been downloaded over 2 million times, and over 2 million players have added Pragmata to their wish lists.

According to independent data on SteamDB, Pragmata currently ranks 15th in the Steam Wishlist charts, just ahead of the Valve Steam Deck and behind Total War: Warhammer 40,000. Curiously, the Pragmata Sketchbook Demo's SteamDB page only records a peak concurrent player count of 7,932 players, although Pragmata will be a cross-platform launch, so there's likely decent interest on the PlayStation 5, Switch 2, and Xbox Series consoles. Pragmata is slated to launch on all aforementioned platforms and on PC via Steam on April 17, 2026. Pragmata also already has a Platinum ProtonDB rating, meaning it should play well with Linux and the Steam Deck.

During the development of GTA VI, Rockstar was hacked and had its data—much of it related to GTA VI—stolen by the aforementioned hacker, and although the hacker was arrested and is currently serving time for the hacks of both Rockstar and numerous other companies, he claims that the GTA VI source code he obtained during his raid is still being kept by someone external to Rockstar. According to @videotechuk_ on X, the hacker who cracked Rockstar's security in 2022, Arion Kurtaj, has managed to smuggle a smartphone into the UK prison where he is being held and has been using it to communicate with the outside world via WhatsApp. In one message thread, Kurtaj claims that the Grand Theft Auto VI source code was successfully stolen and is still being held by "someone" external to Rockstar.

The hacker is apparently surprised that the source code has not yet been made public—the hacker, aka Lapsus$, stole 90 unreleased GTA VI clips, some of which were released, but he never did publish the game's source code. Rockstar and its parent company Take-Two Interactive have been taking aggressive measures to prevent leaks surrounding GTA VI, with it being speculated that the company's recent return-to-office mandate and a series of contested layoffs were both attempts to catch or prevent leaks of the hotly anticipated installment in the GTA franchise.

ASUS recently announced the NUC 16 mini PC at CES 2026, with the NUCs confirmed to feature Intel's Panther Lake Core Ultra Series 3 CPUs, LPDDR5X-9600 RAM, and Intel Arc B390 integrated graphics. When the NUC Pro 16 was revealed, pricing and availability were somewhat nebulous, but that information has been partially revealed ahead of launch thanks to @realVictor_M on X.

According to the leaker, who cites what appears to be leaked Chinese press materials, the NUC 16 Pro with the Intel Core Ultra X7, 32 GB of RAM, and 1 TB of NVMe storage will cost RMB 10,999, which converts to roughly $1,600 ($1,591.50 exactly, at the time of writing). Part of this high pricing is likely to be a direct result of the current memory crisis caused by AI center demand, but it should also be noted that international pricing is rarely ever as simple as a currency conversion, so expect prices to be somewhat higher than that $1,600 when the mini PC launches internationally. It's also notable that ASUS originally cited the Intel Core Ultra X9 as the high-end CPU spec for the mini PC, and the pricing cited by the leak is for the X7 version. Currently, the Chinese launch looks to be scheduled for March 11, so an international launch should follow shortly thereafter.

Valve has been working to improve SteamOS since the launch of the Steam Deck, and the latest SteamOS and Steam Client updates out of Valve combine a whole host of bug fixes that were previously fed into the testing streams. Most notably of the lot are the changes to the accessibility and Steam Input options, but Valve also fixed a few issues that have been part of the SteamOS experience for some time, including flickering UI elements, low-resolution thumbnails on the Recent Games screen of the game library, and issues with button mapping and Switch Pro controller LEDs coming on when they're not supposed to. There are also some additional improvements to features like family sharing and high contrast theme options, but the most interesting addition comes by way of the generic SteamOS 3.7.20 release.

SteamOS 3.7.20 officially merges the NTsync driver from a previous beta release into the mainline OS version, which is a change that could see some games get notably higher performance in some instances. NTsync is a Linux kernel driver that's been in a stable state for a little over a year, but in essence, it aims to increase performance by more closely matching Windows NT synchronization when using the Proton compatibility layer. Other versions of Proton and WINE have had NTsync for a while as a performance booster, but now Valve has added official support for it to the kernel, leaving less development work in the hands of the community and Valve itself. NTsync promises performance uplifts in some games, although not all of them, and it won't always necessarily offer better performance than the existing Fsync, but it gives Linux gamers another option to use when they're tinkering with Proton settings to eke out that last drop of performance.

Heart Machine, the studio behind Hyper Light Drifter, its spiritual successor, Solar Ash, and its actual successor, Hyper Light Breaker, recently implemented a round of layoffs following the launch of Hyper Light Breaker, and it appears this round of layoffs—the second in recent memory—has not been taken lightly by the remaining developers at the studio. According to a recent report by Game Developer, employees at Heart Machine have officially joined the CWA (Communication Workers of America) in a voluntary bargaining agreement in the name of job security and workers' rights. The union members are reportedly currently evaluating their priorities and what they plan to bargain for, but the developers at the studio say that the justification for joining the union is to be able to protect the craft and the creative collaboration that enables game designers and video game workers to create "something they'd want to play themselves." According to an announcement by The CWA, a majority of workers at Heart Machine signed the unionization agreement, meaning contracts at the studio will now be drawn up with CWA representation.

Unionization has been something of a trend in recent years in the video game industry, with video game voice actors joining the protracted
SAG-Aftra strike in 2024 and 2025 seeking protections against the exact sorts of layoffs that previously affected Heart Machine developers, in addition to protections against the AI systems currently taking over the gaming industry. 2025 also saw the launch of the United Video Game Workers' Union, which seeks similar protections against practices like layoffs in the name of profit. A recent video game industry survey also indicated that as many as 82% of video game workers support unionization, with younger workers responding even more positively. The news of Heart Machine joining the CWA also follows the announcement that EA is cutting an unspecified number of jobs at its Battlefield 6 studios.

Not too long ago, Colorful released its iGame Lab Vulcan NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series GPUs, which feature a clean white design language. Now, the GPU maker has announced a new Mini-ITX case to go with those GPU designs. The Colorful iGame Lab Vulcan Armor chassis is a 617 × 186.6 × 210 mm, or roughly 24 L in volume. Colorful specifically lists compatibility with its iGame RTX 5070 Ti Vulcan W OC, 5080 Vulcan W OC, 5090 D v2 Vulcan W OC 24 GB, and 5090 D Vulcan W OC 32 GB, since those are the GPUs that feature the shroud design that fits into the dedicated cutout on the side of the chassis, which exposes the GPU intake fans to fresh air.

The chassis offers support for up to 240 mm radiators—and comes with a 240 mm radiator, rated at 240 W TDP, with slim fans pre-installed—and SFX PSUs up to 110 mm long. While the chassis is technically designed for Colorful's own GPU shrouds, it technically fits 3-slot GPUs up to 373.2 mm long—an enterprising modder could likely fairly easily 3D print a bracket to fill make up for any discrepancies between the case cutout and the GPU shroud on third-party designs. The case also sports a magnetic attachment base on the top panel for attaching things like the Colorful Vulcan screen. Front I/O consists of a USB 3.2 Type-C port and dual USB 3.0 ports. International pricing and launch dates have not yet been confirmed at the time of writing.

The latest in a long line of layoffs and budget cuts affecting the gaming industry comes by way of EA, who has just been confirmed to be laying off developers across all four studios that worked on Battlefield 6—those being Criterion, Dice, Motive, and Ripple Effect. This is according to a report by IGN, although it's unclear how many employees will be affected by the layoffs. Battlefield 6 has seemingly been one of the most successful Battlefield game so far, allegedly topping 7 million unit sales in the first three days following the October 2025 launch, making it a big revenue driver for record profits in Q3 2025. As of the time of writing, Battlefield 6 has peaked at 747,440 concurrent players on Steam, with daily concurrent player counts peaking at around 65,000-70,000 players. Part of EA's justification for the layoffs is "feedback and insights from Battlefield Labs," so perhaps part of the reason for the layoffs is players moving from Battlefield 6 to the free-to-play Battlefield RedSec.

When asked for comment by GameIndustry.biz, EA said that "We've made select changes within our Battlefield organization to better align our teams around what matters most to our community. Battlefield remains one of our biggest priorities, and we're continuing to invest in the franchise, guided by player feedback and insights from Battlefield Labs." This round of layoffs comes mere weeks after EA laid off an unknown number of developers at Full Circle, the studio behind Skate. These layoffs are seemingly part of EA's plan to cut costs following a recent acquisition by a consortium of investors in late 2025.

Xiaomi's upcoming Book 14 laptop has leaked online, revealing the expected specifications for the upcoming thin-and-light productivity laptop. According to Digital Chat Station on Weibo, the Xiaomi Book 14 will feature Intel's Panther Lake Core Ultra Series 3 CPUs, specifically the Core Ultra 5 325 and Core Ultra X7 358H, with either 24 GB or 32 GB of memory and 1 TB of storage. This means that the Xiaomi Book 14 will be available in at least one configuration with Intel's impressive new Arc B390 iGPU, which has proven itself in both gaming and creative workloads aside from the usual productivity fare.

Following DCS's post, Aura Pig also posted on Weibo about the upcoming MacBook competitor, stating that the both the build quality and battery life of the Xiaomi Book 14 were impressive. The 14-inch display is also touch-enabled, although the laptop is purportedly squarely in the premium category, suggesting a high price. The current-gen Xiaomi Book 14 tops out at 16 GB of memory and is only available with Intel's 12th-Gen CPUs and up to 512 GB of storage, so the new model will be a significant upgrade in terms of performance and convenience if the leaked specifications are any indication. Weight on the new Book 14 will be slightly lower than the old model, at around 1 kg compared to the 1.37 kg in the current Book 14.