gaming

Sony makes the “difficult decision” to raise PlayStation 5 prices in the US

gaming, microsoft, Nintendo, PlayStation 5, Sony, Tech / Shannon Garcia / August 20, 2025

Sony will join Microsoft and Nintendo in raising US prices across its entire game console lineup, the company announced today. Pricing for all current versions of the PlayStation 5 console will increase by $50 starting tomorrow.

The price of the PS5 Digital Edition will increase from $450 to $500; the standard PS5 will increase from $500 to $550; and the PS5 Pro will increase from $700 to $750. If you’ve been on the fence about buying any of these, retailers like Target and Best Buy are still using the old prices as of this writing—for other console price hikes, retailers have sometimes bumped the prices up before the date announced by the manufacturer.

“Similar to many global businesses, we continue to navigate a challenging economic environment,” wrote Sony Global Marketing VP Isabelle Tomatis. “As a result, we’ve made the difficult decision to increase the recommended retail price for PlayStation 5 consoles in the U.S. starting on August 21.”

Sony says it’s not increasing prices for games or accessories and that this round of price increases only affects consoles sold in the US.

Sony was the last of the big three console makers to raise prices this year. Microsoft raised the prices for the Xbox Series S and X consoles in March. And Nintendo has gone through two rounds of price increases—one for Switch and Switch 2 accessories in April and another for more accessories and Switch 1 consoles earlier this month.

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Microsoft and Asus’ answers to SteamOS and the Steam Deck launch on October 16

ASUS, asus rog ally, gaming, microsoft, steamos, Tech, Windows 11, xbox, xbox rog ally / Kelly Newman / August 20, 2025

Asus and Microsoft will be launching their ROG Xbox Ally series of handheld gaming PCs starting October 16, according to an Asus announcement that went out today.

An Xbox-branded extension of Asus’ existing ROG Ally handheld line, the basic ROG Xbox Ally and more powerful ROG Xbox Ally X, both run a version of Windows 11 Home that’s been redesigned with a controller-first Xbox-style user interface. The idea is to preserve the wide game compatibility of Windows—and the wide compatibility with multiple storefronts, including Microsoft’s own, Valve’s Steam, the Epic Games Store, and more—while turning off all of the extra Windows desktop stuff and saving system resources. (This also means that, despite the Xbox branding, these handhelds play Windows PC games and not the Xbox versions.)

Microsoft and Asus initially announced the handhelds in June. Microsoft still isn’t sharing pricing information for either console, so it’s hard to say how their specs and features will stack up against the Steam Deck (starting at $399 for the LCD version, $549 for OLED), Nintendo’s Switch 2 ($450), or past Asus handhelds like the ROG Ally X ($800).

Both consoles share a 7-inch, 1080p IPS display with a 120 Hz refresh rate, Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.4 support, but their internals are quite a bit different. The lower-end Xbox Ally uses an AMD Ryzen Z2 A chip with a 4-core Zen 2-based CPU, an eight-core RDNA2-based GPU, 512GB of storage, and 16GB of LPDDR5X-6400—specs nearly identical to Valve’s 3-year-old Steam Deck. The Xbox Ally X includes a more interesting Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme with an 8-core Zen 5 CPU, a 16-core RDNA3.5 GPU, 1TB of storage, 24GB of LPDDR5X-8000, and a built-in neural processing unit (NPU).

The beefier hardware comes with a bigger battery—80 WHr in the Ally X, compared to 60 WHr in the regular Ally—and that also makes the Ally X around a tenth of a pound (or 45 grams) heavier than the Ally.

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A question for the ages: Is The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall a good game?

bethesda, C:ArsGames, crpg, Daggerfall, gaming, gog, open world, RPG, The Elder Scrolls, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall / Shannon Garcia / August 18, 2025

Revisiting the 1996 RPG exposes both genius and madness.

A render of a book in a library in Daggerfall

Daggerfall certainly has ’90s DOS RPG charm in spades. Credit: Bethesda

Ostensibly, C:ArsGames is to some extent about actually driving a few game purchases, but in reality it’s mostly an excuse for me and my colleagues to wax nostalgic about the games that were formative for us. Case in point: This entry in our ongoing series with GOG is about a game that’s completely free. I think Ars can withstand this tiny revenue shortfall for the sake of peak nostalgia!

There are a couple of reasons I chose The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall this time around: its co-creator, Julian LeFay, recently passed away, so it seemed timely. Also, it was one of the defining games of my youth—one I have continued to revisit now and then.

But it’s also interesting because of where its developer, Bethesda—a studio people both love and hate—is at today. Going back to Daggerfall, we find a game that shows off so much of what we’ve lost from the bygone era of ’90s PC gaming, but also one that makes it abundantly clear why the industry left those sensibilities behind.

I’ll spoil the conclusion though: I still love this game. It’s profoundly not for everybody, but it’s definitely for me.

The kids don’t get it

OK, so we’ve established that I love Daggerfall. Knowing Ars Technica’s readership, some of you probably do too. So who, exactly, doesn’t like it?

Just search YouTube and you’ll find a bunch of videos with titles like:

Ouch. That’s rough. Granted, one of those isn’t actually negative if you sit through the video, but it still acknowledges that it’s not easily accessible for everyone.

Look, I get it. Daggerfall hails from an era when “game design” primarily meant “experiment with programming techniques to come up with cool, unproven stuff no one’s seen before” rather than “meticulously craft a conveyor belt of nonstop fun via proven formulae.”

Those experiments are all exciting and interesting, and it’s refreshing to go back to an RPG from this era that was willing to try some wild ideas and deep systems, as opposed to most (not all!) RPGs today, which seem to have the same basic format with talent trees and so on.

I love that Daggerfall includes odd mechanics that you don’t often see in RPGs, like climbing. I like its vast world and accurate representation of most wilderness as meaningless liminal space. I think its opaque and sometimes maddening faction reputation systems are fascinating. Its character progression system is detailed and interesting.

I know this is already what the game is best known for, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that the scope of the game’s map is *staggering*. Credit: Samuel Axon

For me, the most frustrating aspect to Daggerfall is not its jazzy mechanics. It’s the mechanics that aren’t explained at all.

For example, in the playthrough I started to refresh my memory for this article, I spent a couple of hours doing quests in Wayrest, one of the most prominent cities in the game. Everything seemed to be fine as I rode my horse around town helping people out, training my skills, and buying new gear. But then a guard ran up to me and arrested me for assault. Who did I assault? I had no idea, but I pled guilty in order to get a softer sentence, even though I was pretty sure I wasn’t actually guilty.

I wrote that off as a fluke, but then it happened again: assault. And a third time, again assault. I couldn’t fathom why I kept getting arrested.

To DuckDuckGo I went for a quick Internet search to see if anyone else was having this problem. It was pretty common, and the cause was something I never would have imagined: I had been riding my horse around the town, galloping for speed to complete quests faster. It turns out that galloping too close to wandering NPCs in the street registers as assault, with penalties of up to a month in prison and hefty fines.

There was no feedback about this when it was happening. I didn’t even know I was doing it. I don’t specifically remember having this problem back in the ’90s, but it seems likely I did, and I must have just shrugged it off, because back then I would have had no way of figuring out what was going on.

I get why this sort of thing is a big barrier to new players, but I also think some of the YouTubers I watched applied a double standard. One complained that the game doesn’t explain itself, but then in the same video extolled the virtues of Minecraft—a game that explains itself even less.

Save early and save often. That was ingrained in me by ’90s gaming. Watching some of the YouTubers take this game on, it stressed me out how little they saved. Credit: Samuel Axon

It may be that we’re more patient with learning games when we’re kids. I played Daggerfall as a kid (well, a young teenager) so I’m relatively chill about its opaqueness and idiosyncrasies. That YouTuber played Minecraft as a kid, so that’s the one he’s willing to gloss over.

If you’re willing to spend a lot of time on wikis (just like with Minecraft) then Daggerfall as a lot to offer to those who are patient. I often feel the most engaging games in the long run are ones that have a steeper learning curve up front.

The unspoken spiritual successor

Of course, it’s not just the learning curve or opaque mechanics that are an issue for many players. A lot of people don’t like Daggerfall‘s procedurally generated world and quests—especially players who are used to Skyrim‘s more hand-crafted environments and quest lines.

Yes, Skyrim has “Radiant Quests,” which resemble Daggerfall‘s. But with the exception of a relatively small number of main story missions, Daggerfall only has what Skyrim calls Radiant quests.

A loose modern analogue to that is Elite Dangerous, which has no meaningful story content at all. Some people might be more comfortable calling that a simulation than a game.

But there’s another modern space title that has some strong resemblances to Daggerfall: Bethesda’s own Starfield. As with Daggerfall, Starfield has a small cohort of obsessive fans amidst a much larger crowd that thinks it’s just terrible.

When people bought Starfield, they were expecting Skyrim in space. I believe that one of the reasons a lot of people were disappointed was that they actually got Daggerfall in space, and that’s a very different experience.

Like Daggerfall and Elite Dangerous, Starfield not only accepts but even centers the notion that most of the environments are filled with, well, not a whole lot. It accurately reflects what space or wilderness actually are and makes much of the game a slow-paced mood piece rather than a constant dopamine dispenser.

*Starfield* has some structural and design similarities to *Daggerfall*. Credit: Bethesda

Most of Starfield‘s dungeons are randomized. It’s more about taking in the vibes and playing with the systems than it is about following an authored narrative—though Starfield does have an authored narrative. (It’s just not the game’s strongest suit, so it explains why people who are looking for that aren’t big fans.)

Granted, there’s little crossover between the original Daggerfall team and the folks who made Starfield. Daggerfall was pre-Todd Howard-as-creative-director and pre-Emil Pagliarulo, the two main creative leaders at Bethesda Game Studios since the Morrowind days.

But that’s why it’s all the more surprising that Starfield is, at best, a hybrid of the sensibilities of Daggerfall and Skyrim. Given those YouTubers trying and failing to play Daggerfall in 2025, it’s no wonder that Starfield didn’t land for a lot of people.

(I quite like it, personally, but I also like Daggerfall, so I’m either a masochist, old and archaic, or just plain wrong, depending on who you ask.)

A pure expression of one of gaming’s oldest dreams

There has long been a recurring dream in PC gaming of one super game that would allow you to fully live out a particular fantasy life of your choosing. Whether it was intended by developers, promised in marketing, or just in hopeful players’ heads, there’s an appeal to the idea of living an alternate existence in a sophisticated simulated world that’s so immersive in its escapism that you reliably forget your real life for hours on end. The idea is “I want to be a space trader,” or “I want to be a wandering fantasy adventurer,” and the game gives you a toolkit that’s both wide and deep to experience that entirely on your own terms.

A lot of times, the titles that went for this on some level seemed more like simulations than games or stories. They were less consistently fun than other games, but they were often profoundly ambitious.

Since they were all about helping a player live out something in their imaginations, they were also prone to viscerally negative reactions at launch from people who had personal expectations that didn’t map to the reality of what a game can actually do or chooses to focus on. (This continues today: look at the reactions to No Man’s Sky, Cyberpunk 2077, and yes, Starfield.)

Daggerfall is one of those games. It is not for everybody. But for that niche group of players who are up for something jazzy and simulation-y that takes risks to let them live an alternate fantasy life that’s as much in their head canon as on the screen, it’s one of the best games of all time.

I strongly believe it’s important to judge a game (or any other art or media) more on whether it achieves what it’s going for than whether it meets whatever external expectations you might bring to it. If you agree, then that puts Daggerfall in a better position than if you have a more prescriptive attitude about game design.

The fidelity expectations of modern AAA titles and accompanying scope and cost make the kind of experimental, life-sim focus of a game like Daggerfall all but impossible to pursue now, but I miss it. Personally, I’ll usually take a deeply flawed work of sheer ambition over a retread of proven ideas I’ve already experienced before, no matter how skillfully crafted and consistently fun the latter is.

Yeah, I enjoy a good formula game now and then; my point was exactly that when I wrote about Assassin’s Creed Shadows a few months ago. But as much as I have enjoyed Shadows, it won’t stick with me for 30 years. Daggerfall has, and revisiting it this week, I can see that’s not purely because of nostalgia. It represents a maximalist philosophy of game design I feel is sorely underrepresented in today’s market.

A screenshot of a town from Daggerfall Unity — The Unity version of *Daggerfall* installs on top of a normal DOS installation, and it makes the game much, much more playable in 2025, with additions like long view distances. Credit: Samuel Axon

If that’s your inclination, too, it’s worth giving Daggerfall a shot. Just make sure to use the far more accessible Daggerfall Unity remaster on top of the GOG classic version you download, and be ready to look at the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages wiki a lot. Make sure you have a couple hundred hours to kill, too.

Oh, that’s all, eh? Hey, you could always make it a project in your retirement.

Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.

Samuel Axon is the editorial lead for tech and gaming coverage at Ars Technica. He covers AI, software development, gaming, entertainment, and mixed reality. He has been writing about gaming and technology for nearly two decades at Engadget, PC World, Mashable, Vice, Polygon, Wired, and others. He previously ran a marketing and PR agency in the gaming industry, led editorial for the TV network CBS, and worked on social media marketing strategy for Samsung Mobile at the creative agency SPCSHP. He also is an independent software and game developer for iOS, Windows, and other platforms, and he is a graduate of DePaul University, where he studied interactive media and software development.

A question for the ages: Is The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall a good game? Read More »

Ars Technica System Guide: Five sample PC builds, from $500 to $5,000

AMD, Ars System Guide, Features, gaming, intel, NVIDIA, Tech / DJ Henderson / August 18, 2025

Despite everything, it’s still possible to build decent PCs for decent prices.

You can buy a great 4K gaming PC for less than it costs to buy a GeForce RTX 5090. Let us show you some examples. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Sometimes I go longer than I intend without writing an updated version of our PC building guide. And while I could just claim to be too busy to spend hours on Newegg or Amazon or other sites digging through dozens of near-identical parts, the lack of updates usually correlates with “times when building a desktop PC is actually a pain in the ass.”

Through most of 2025, fluctuating and inflated graphics card pricing and limited availability have once again conspired to make a normally fun hobby an annoying slog—and honestly kind of a bad way to spend your money, relative to just buying a Steam Deck or something and ignoring your desktop for a while.

But three things have brought me back for another round. First, GPU pricing and availability have improved a little since early 2025. Second, as unreasonable as pricing is for PC parts, pre-built PCs with worse specs and other design compromises are unreasonably priced, too, and people should have some sense of what their options are. And third, I just have the itch—it’s been a while since I built (or helped someone else build) a PC, and I need to get it out of my system.

So here we are! Five different suggestions for builds for a few different budgets and needs, from basic browsing to 4K gaming. And yes, there is a ridiculous “God Box,” despite the fact that the baseline ridiculousness of PC building is higher than it was a few years ago.

Notes on component selection

Part of the fun of building a PC is making it look the way you want. We’ve selected cases that will physically fit the motherboards and other parts we’re recommending and which we think will be good stylistic fits for each system. But there are many cases out there, and our picks aren’t the only options available.

It’s also worth trying to build something that’s a little future-proof—one of the advantages of the PC as a platform is the ability to swap out individual components without needing to throw out the entire system. It’s worth spending a little extra money on something you know will be supported for a while. Right this minute, that gives an advantage to AMD’s socket AM5 ecosystem over slightly cheaper but fading or dead-end platforms like AMD’s socket AM4 and Intel’s LGA 1700 or (according to rumors) LGA 1851.

As for power supplies, we’re looking for 80 Plus certified power supplies from established brands with positive user reviews on retail sites (or positive professional reviews, though these can be somewhat hard to come by for any given PSU these days). If you have a preferred brand, by all means, go with what works for you. The same goes for RAM—we’ll recommend capacities and speeds, and we’ll link to kits from brands that have worked well for us in the past, but that doesn’t mean they’re better than the many other RAM kits with equivalent specs.

For SSDs, we mostly stick to drives from known brands like Samsung, Crucial, Western Digital, and SK hynix. Our builds also include built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, so you don’t need to worry about running Ethernet wires and can easily connect to Bluetooth gamepads, keyboards, mice, headsets, and other accessories.

We also haven’t priced in peripherals like webcams, monitors, keyboards, or mice, as we’re assuming most people will reuse what they already have or buy those components separately. If you’re feeling adventurous, you could even make your own DIY keyboard! If you need more guidance, Kimber Streams’ Wirecutter keyboard guides are exhaustive and educational, and Wirecutter has some monitor-buying advice, too.

Finally, we won’t be including the cost of a Windows license in our cost estimates. You can pay many different prices for Windows—$139 for an official retail license from Microsoft, $120 for an “OEM” license for system builders, or anywhere between $15 and $40 for a product key from shady gray market product key resale sites. Windows 10 keys will also work to activate Windows 11, though Microsoft stopped letting old Windows 7 and Windows 8 keys activate new Windows 10 and 11 installs a couple of years ago. You could even install Linux, given recent advancements in game compatibility layers! But if you plan to go that route, know that AMD’s graphics cards tend to be better-supported than Nvidia’s.

The budget all-rounder

What it’s good for: Browsing, schoolwork or regular work, amateur photo or video editing, and very light casual gaming. A low-cost, low-complexity introduction to PC building.

What it sucks at: You’ll need to use low settings at best for modern games, and it’s hard to keep costs down without making big sacrifices.

Cost as of this writing: $479 to $504, depending on your case

The entry point for a basic desktop PC from Dell, HP, and Lenovo is somewhere between $400 and $500 as of this writing. You can beat that pricing with a self-built one if you cut your build to the bone, and you can find tons of cheap used and refurbished stuff and serviceable mini PCs for well under that price, too. But if you’re chasing the thrill of the build, we can definitely match the big OEMs’ pricing while doing better on specs and future-proofing.

The AMD Ryzen 5 8500G should give you all the processing power you need for everyday computing and less-demanding games, despite most of its CPU cores using the lower-performing Zen 4c variant of AMD’s last-gen CPU architecture. The Radeon 740M GPU should do a decent job with many games at lower settings; it’s not a gaming GPU, but it will handle kid-friendly games like Roblox or Minecraft or undemanding battle royale or MOBA games like Fortnite and DOTA 2.

The Gigabyte B650M Gaming Plus WiFi board includes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and extra RAM and storage slots for future expandability. Most companies that make AM5 motherboards are pretty good about releasing new BIOS updates that patch vulnerabilities and add support for new CPUs, so you shouldn’t have a problem popping in a new processor a few years down the road if this one is no longer meeting your needs.

An AMD Ryzen 7 8700G. The 8500G is a lower-end relative of this chip, with good-enough CPU and GPU performance for light work. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

This system is spec’d for general usage and exceptionally light gaming, and 16GB of RAM and a 500 GB SSD should be plenty for that kind of thing. You can get the 1TB version of the same SSD for just $20 more, though—not a bad deal if you think light gaming is in the cards. The 600 W power supply is overkill, but it’s just $5 more than the 500 W version of the same PSU, and 600 W is enough headroom to add a GeForce RTX 4060 or 5060-series card or a Radeon RX 9600 XT to the build later on without having to worry.

The biggest challenge when looking for a decent, cheap PC case is finding one without a big, tacky acrylic window. Our standby choice for the last couple of years has been the Thermaltake Versa H17, an understated and reasonably well-reviewed option that doesn’t waste internal space on legacy features like external 3.5 and 5.25-inch drive bays or internal cages for spinning hard drives. But stock seems to be low as of this writing, suggesting it could be unavailable soon.

We looked for some alternatives that wouldn’t be a step down in quality or utility and which wouldn’t drive the system’s total price above $500. YouTubers and users generally seem to like the $70 Phanteks XT Pro, which is a lot bigger than this motherboard needs but is praised for its airflow and flexibility (it has a tempered glass side window in its cheapest configuration, and a solid “silent” variant will run you $88). The Fractal Design Focus 2 is available with both glass and solid side panels for $75.

The budget gaming PC

What it’s good for: Solid all-round performance, plus good 1080p (and sometimes 1440p) gaming performance.

What it sucks at: Future proofing, top-tier CPU performance.

Cost as of this writing: $793 to $828, depending on components

Budget gaming PCs are tough right now, but my broad advice would be the same as it’s always been: Go with the bare minimum everywhere you can so you have more money to spend on the GPU. I went into this totally unsure if I could recommend a PC I’d be happy with for the $700 to $800 we normally hit, and getting close to that number meant making some hard decisions.

I talked myself into a socket AM5 build for our non-gaming budget PC because of its future proof-ness and its decent integrated GPU, but I went with an Intel-based build for this one because we didn’t need the integrated GPU for it and because AMD still mostly uses old socket AM4 chips to cover the $150-and-below part of the market.

Given the choice between aging AMD CPUs and aging Intel CPUs, I have to give Intel the edge, thanks to the Core i5-13400F’s four E-cores. And if a 13th-gen Core chip lacks cutting-edge performance, it’s plenty fast for a midrange GPU. The $109 Core i5-12400F would also be OK and save a little more money, but we think the extra cores and small clock speed boost are worth the $20-ish premium.

For a budget build, we think your best strategy is to save money everywhere you can so you can squeeze a 16GB AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT into the budget. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Going with a DDR4 motherboard and RAM saves us a tiny bit, and we’ve also stayed at 16GB of RAM instead of stepping up (some games, sometimes can benefit from 32GB, especially if you want to keep a bunch of other stuff running in the background, but it still usually won’t be a huge bottleneck). We upgraded to a 1TB SSD; huge AAA games will eat that up relatively quickly, but there is another M.2 slot you can use to put in another drive later. The power supply and case selections are the same as in our budget pick.

All of that cost-cutting was done in service of stretching the budget to include the 16GB version of AMD’s Radeon RX 9060 XT graphics card.

You could go with the 8GB version of the 9060 XT or Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5060 and get solid 1080p gaming performance for almost $100 less. But we’re at a point where having 8GB of RAM in your graphics card can be a bottleneck, and that’s a problem that will only get worse over time. The 9060 XT has a consistent edge over the RTX 5060 in our testing, even in games with ray-tracing effects enabled, and at 1440p, the extra memory can easily be the difference between a game that runs and a game that doesn’t.

A more future-proofed budget gaming PC

What it’s good for: Good all-round performance with plenty of memory and storage, plus room for future upgrades.

What it sucks at: Getting you higher frame rates than our budget-budget build.

Cost as of this writing: $1,070 to $1,110, depending on components

As I found myself making cut after cut to maximize the fps-per-dollar we could get from our budget gaming PC, I decided I wanted to spec out a system with the same GPU but with other components that would make it better for non-gaming use and easier to upgrade in the future, with more generous allotments of memory and storage.

This build shifts back to many of the AMD AM5 components we used in our basic budget build, but with an 8-core Ryzen 7 7700X CPU at its heart. Its Zen 4 architecture isn’t the latest and greatest, but Zen 5 is a modest upgrade, and you’ll still get better single- and multi-core processor performance than you do with the Core i5 in our other build. It’s not worth spending more than $50 to step up to a Ryzen 7 9700X, and it’s overkill to spend $330 on a 12-core Ryzen 9 7900X or $380 on a Ryzen 7 7800X3D.

This chip doesn’t come with its own fan, so we’ve included an inexpensive air cooler we like that will give you plenty of thermal headroom.

A 32GB kit of RAM and 2TB of storage will give you ample room for games and enough RAM that you won’t have to worry about the small handful of outliers that benefit from more than 16GB of system RAM, while a marginally beefier power supply gives you a bit more headroom for future upgrades while still keeping costs relatively low.

This build won’t benefit your frame rates much since we’re sticking with the same 16GB RX 9060 XT. But the rest of it is specced generously enough that you could add a GeForce RTX 5070 (currently around $550) or a non-XT Radeon RX 9070 card (around $600) without needing to change any of the other components.

A comfortable 4K gaming rig

What it’s good for: Just about anything! But it’s built to play games at higher resolutions than our budget builds.

What it sucks at: Getting you top-of-the-line bragging rights.

Cost as of this writing: $1,829 to $1,934, depending on components.

Our budget builds cover 1080p-to-1440p gaming, and with an RTX 5070 or an RX 9070, they could realistically stretch to 4K in some games. But for more comfortable 4K gaming or super-high-frame-rate 1440p performance, you’ll thank yourself for spending a bit more.

You’ll note that the quality of the component selections here has been bumped up a bit all around. X670 or X870-series boards don’t just get you better I/O; they’ll also get you full PCI Express 5.0 support in the GPU slot and components better-suited to handling faster and more power-hungry components. We’ve swapped to a modular ATX 3.x-compliant power supply to simplify cable management and get a 12V-2×6 power connector. And we picked out a slightly higher-end SSD, too. But we’ve tried not to spend unnecessary money on things that won’t meaningfully improve performance—no 1,000+ watt power supplies, PCIe 5.0 SSDs, or 64GB RAM kits here.

A Ryzen 7 7800X3D might arguably be overkill for this build—especially at 4K, where the GPU will still be the main bottleneck—but it will be useful for getting higher frame rates at lower resolutions and just generally making sure performance stays consistent and smooth. Ryzen 7900X, 7950X, or 9900X chips are all good alternatives if you want more multi-core CPU performance—if you plan to stream as you play, for instance. A 9700X or even a 7700X would probably hold up fine if you won’t be doing that kind of thing and want to save a little.

You could cool any of these with a closed-loop AIO cooler, but a solid air cooler like the Thermalright model will keep it running cool for less money, and with a less-complicated install process.

A GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is the best 4K performance you can get for less than $1,000, but that doesn’t make it cheap. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Based on current pricing and availability, I think the RTX 5070 Ti makes the most sense for a non-absurd 4K-capable build. Its prices are still elevated slightly above its advertised $749 MSRP, but it’s giving you RTX 4080/4080 Super-level performance for between $200 and $400 less than those cards launched for. Nvidia’s next step up, the RTX 5080, will run you at least $1,200 or $1,300—and usually more. AMD’s best option, the RX 9070 XT, is a respectable contender, and it’s probably the better choice if you plan on using Linux instead of Windows. But for a Windows-based gaming box, Nvidia still has an edge in games with ray-tracing effects enabled, plus DLSS upscaling and frame generation.

Is it silly that the GPU costs as much as our entire budget gaming PC? Of course! But it is what it is.

Even more than the budget-focused builds, the case here is a matter of personal preference, and $100 or $150 is enough to buy you any one of several dozen competent cases that will fit our chosen components. We’ve highlighted a few from case makers with good reputations to give you a place to start. Some of these also come in multiple colors, with different side panel options and both RGB and non-RGB options to suit your tastes.

If you like something a little more statement-y, the Fractal Design North ($155) and Lian Li Lancool 217 ($120) both include the wood accents that some case makers have been pushing lately. The Fractal Design case comes with both mesh and tempered glass side panel options, depending on how into RGB you are, while the Lancool case includes a whopping five case fans for keeping your system cool.

The “God Box”

What it’s good for: Anything and everything.

What it sucks at: Being affordable.

Cost as of this writing: $4,891 to $5,146

We’re avoiding Xeon and Threadripper territory here—frankly, I’ve never even tried to do a build centered on those chips and wouldn’t trust myself to make recommendations—but this system is as fast as consumer-grade hardware gets.

An Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 guarantees the fastest GPU performance you can buy and continues the trend of “paying as much for a GPU as you could for an entire fully functional PC.” And while we have specced this build with a single GPU, the motherboard we’ve chosen has a second full-speed PCIe 5.0 x16 slot that you could use for a dual-GPU build.

A Ryzen 9950X3D chip gets you top-tier gaming performance and tons of CPU cores. We’re cooling this powerful chip with a 360 mm Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro cooler, which has generally earned good reviews from Gamers Nexus and other outlets for its value, cooling performance, and quiet performance. A white option is also available if you’re going for a light-mode color scheme instead of our predominantly dark-mode build.

Other components have been pumped up similarly gratuitously. A 1,000 W power supply is the minimum for an RTX 5090, but to give us some headroom, why not use a 1,200 W model with lights on it? Is PCIe 5.0 storage strictly necessary for anything? No! But let’s grab a 4 TB PCIe 5.0 SSD anyway. And populating all four of our RAM slots with a 32GB stick of DDR5 avoids any unsightly blank spots inside our case.

We’ve selected a couple of largish case options to house our big builds, though as usual, there are tons of other options to fit all design sensibilities and tastes. Just make sure, if you’re selecting a big Extended ATX motherboard like the X870E Taichi, that your case will fit a board that’s slightly wider than a regular ATX or micro ATX board (the Taichi is 267 mm wide, which should be fine in either of our case selections).

Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue.

Ars Technica System Guide: Five sample PC builds, from $500 to $5,000 Read More »

Tiny, removable “mini SSD” could eventually be a big deal for gaming handhelds

gaming, nintendo switch 2, SSD, steam deck, Tech / Mike M. / August 16, 2025

The Mini SSD card isn’t and may never be a formally ratified standard, but it does aim to solve a real problem for portable gaming systems—the need for fast storage that can load games at speeds approaching those of an internal SSD, without requiring users to take their own systems apart to perform upgrades.

Why are games getting so dang big, anyway?

A 2023 analysis from TechSpot suggested that game size had increased at an average rate of roughly 6.3GB per year between 2012 and 2023—games that come in over 100GB aren’t the norm, but they aren’t hard to find. Some of that increase comes from improved graphics and the higher-resolution textures needed to make games look good on 4K monitors and TVs. But TechSpot also noted that the storage requirements for narrative-heavy, cinematic-heavy games like The Last of Us Part 1 were being driven just as much by audio files and support for multiple languages.

“In total, nearly 17 GB of storage is needed for [The Last of Us] data unrelated to graphics,” wrote author Nick Evanson. “That’s larger than any entire game from our 2010 sample! This pattern was consistent across nearly all the ‘Godzilla-sized’ games we examined—those featuring numerous cinematics, extensive speech, and considerable localization were typically much larger than the rest of the sample in a given year.”

For another prominent recent example, consider the install sizes for the Mac version of Cyberpunk 2077. The version of the game on Steam, the Epic Games Store, and GOG runs about 92GB. However, the version available for download from Apple’s App Store is a whopping 159GB, solely because it includes all of the game’s voiceovers in all of the languages it supports. (This is because of App Store rules that require apps to have all possible files included when they’re submitted for review.)

It’s clear that there’s a need for fast storage upgrades that don’t require you to disassemble your console or PC completely. Whether it’s this new “mini SSD,” a faster iteration of microSD Express, or some other as-yet-unknown storage format remains to be seen.

Tiny, removable “mini SSD” could eventually be a big deal for gaming handhelds Read More »

Drag x Drive is a uniquely fun and frustrating showcase for Switch 2 mouse mode

gaming / Beth Washington / August 13, 2025

In my decades as a video game player and reviewer, I’ve used the humble PC mouse in hundreds of games for everything from first-person aiming and third-person character movement to basic menu navigation and unit selection. In all that time, I can’t recall a game that required the use of two mice at once.

That was true until I spent some time with Nintendo’s utterly unique Drag x Drive. The game asks you to take a Switch 2 Joy-Con in each hand, turn them both so the narrow edge lies on a flat-ish surface, and then slide them around to power a game of full-contact wheelchair basketball.

It’s a fresh control scheme that comes with its share of issues, mostly stemming from the lack of convenient mouse surfaces in most living rooms. With a little bit of practice, a good playing surface, and some online friends to play with, though, I found myself enjoying the high-impact, full-contact, precision positional gameplay enabled by holding a mouse in each hand for the first time ever.

Still kind of buff from using the mouse

When you picture using two mice at once, you might imagine each wrist making a series of small, controlled movements, one controlling lateral movement and the other controlling directional angle. Drag x Drive‘s dual-mouse controls bear no resemblance to this vision. Instead, you end up vigorously swiping each mouse forward or backward in constant sweeps; side-to-side movement is neither required nor useful.

That repetitive front-and-back swiping is mirrored by your avatar’s hand on the top side of either wheel on the wheelchair, creating a sort of tank-like control scheme where you turn by moving one wheel forward and one wheel backward. Small swipes of the mice can be used for precision angling, but more often, you’ll be sweeping the mouse in long lines to build speed. To shoot, you simply lift up a Joy-Con and mime a basketball shot a la Wii Sports Resort (your accuracy seems to have more to do with distance and your angle to the basket than real-world form, thankfully).

Drag x Drive is a uniquely fun and frustrating showcase for Switch 2 mouse mode Read More »

Google and Valve will kill “Steam for Chromebooks” experiment in January 2026

chromebooks, ChromeOS, gaming, steam, Tech / 9u50fv / August 8, 2025

Bad news if you’re one of the handful of people using Steam to play games on a Chromebook: Google and Valve are preparing to end support for the still-in-beta ChromeOS version of Steam on January 1, 2026, according to 9to5Google. Steam can still be installed on Chromebooks, but it now comes with a notice announcing the end of support.

“The Steam for Chromebook Beta program will conclude on January 1st, 2026,” reads the notification. “After this date, games installed as part of the Beta will no longer be available to play on your device. We appreciate your participation in and contribution to learnings from the beta program, which will inform the future of Chromebook gaming.”

Steam originally launched on Chromebooks in early 2022 as an alpha that ran on just a handful of newer and higher-specced devices with Intel chips inside. A beta version arrived later that year, with reduced system requirements and support for AMD CPUs and GPUs. Between then and now, neither Google nor Valve had said much about it.

The Steam beta was one component of a “gaming Chromebook” push that Google made in 2022 and 2023. It saw the release of laptops with better hardware and high-refresh-rate screens and optimized versions of GeForce Now and Xbox Cloud Gaming. Google had reportedly been working to add Steam support to ChromeOS since at least 2020.

Google and Valve will kill “Steam for Chromebooks” experiment in January 2026 Read More »

Review: Framework Desktop is a mash-up of a regular desktop PC and the Mac Studio

AMD, framework, framework desktop, gaming, NVIDIA, ryzen ai, Tech / DJ Henderson / August 7, 2025

Size matters most for Framework’s first stab at a desktop workstation/gaming PC.

The Framework Desktop. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Framework’s main claim to fame is its commitment to modular, upgradeable, repairable laptops. The jury’s still out on early 2024’s Framework Laptop 16 and mid-2025’s Framework Laptop 12, neither of which has seen a hardware refresh, but so far, the company has released half a dozen iterations of its flagship Framework Laptop 13 in less than five years. If you bought one of the originals right when it first launched, you could go to Framework’s site, buy an all-new motherboard and RAM, and get a substantial upgrade in performance and other capabilities without having to change anything else about your laptop.

Framework’s laptops haven’t been adopted as industry-wide standards, but in many ways, they seem built to reflect the flexibility and modularity that has drawn me to desktop PCs for more than two decades.

That’s what makes the Framework Desktop so weird. Not only is Framework navigating into a product category where its main innovation and claim to fame is totally unnecessary. But it’s actually doing that with a desktop that’s less upgradeable and modular than any given self-built desktop PC.

The Framework Desktop has a lot of interesting design touches, and it’s automatically a better buy than the weird AMD Ryzen AI Max-based mini desktops you can buy from a couple of no-name manufacturers. But aside from being more considerate of PC industry standards, the Framework Desktop asks the same question that any gaming-focused mini PC does: Do you care about having a small machine so much that you would pay more money for less performance, and for a system you can’t upgrade much after you buy it?

Design and assembly

Opening the Framework Desktop’s box. The PC and all its accessories are neatly packed away in all-recyclable carboard and paper. Andrew Cunningham

My DIY Edition Framework Desktop arrived in a cardboard box that was already as small or a bit smaller than my usual desktop PC, a mini ITX build with a dedicated GPU inside a 14.67-liter SSUPD Meshlicious case. It’s not a huge system, especially for something that can fit a GeForce RTX 5090 in it. But three of the 4.5-liter Framework Desktops could fit inside my build’s case with a little space leftover.

The PC itself is buried a couple of layers deep in this box under some side panels and whatever fan you choose (Framework offers RGB and non-RGB options from Cooler Master and Noctua, but any 120 mm fan will fit on the heatsink). Even for the DIY Edition, the bulk of it is already assembled: the motherboard is in the case, a large black heatsink is already perched atop the SoC, and both the power supply and front I/O ports are already hooked up.

The aspiring DIYer mainly needs to install the SSD and the fan to get going. Putting in these components gives you a decent crash course in how the system goes together and comes apart. The primary M.2 SSD slot is under a small metal heat spreader next to the main heatsink—loosen one screw to remove it, and install your SSD of choice. The system’s other side panel can be removed to expose a second M.2 SSD slot and the Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module, letting you install or replace either.

Lift the small handles on the two top screws and loosen them by hand to remove them, and the case’s top panel slides off. This provides easier access to both the CPU fan header and RGB header, so you can connect the fan after you install it and its plastic shroud on top of the heatsink. That’s pretty much it for assembly, aside from sliding the various panels back in place to close the thing up and reinstalling the top screws (or, if you bought or printed one, adding a handle to the top of the case).

The Framework Desktop includes a beefier version of Framework’s usual screwdriver with a longer bit. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Framework includes a beefier version of its typical screwdriver with the Desktop, including a bit that can be pulled out and reversed to be switched between Phillips and Torx heads. The iFixit-style install instructions are clearly written and include plenty of high-resolution sample images so you can always tell how things are supposedto look.

The front of the system requires some assembly, too, but all of this stuff can be removed and replaced easily without opening up the rest of the system. The front panel, where the system’s customizable tiles can be snapped on and popped off, attaches with magnets and can easily be pried away from the desktop with your fingernails. At the bottom are slots for two of Framework’s USB-C Expansion Cards, the same ones that all the Framework Laptops use.

By default, those ports are limited to 5 Gbps USB transfer speeds in the BIOS, something the system says reduces wireless interference; those with all-wired networking and accessories can presumably enable the full 10 Gbps speeds without downsides. The front ports should support all of the Expansion Cards except for display outputs, which they aren’t wired for. (I also had issues getting the Desktop to boot from a USB port on the front of the system while installing Windows, but your mileage may vary; using one of the rear USB ports solved the issue for me.)

Standards, sometimes

Putting in the M.2 SSD. There’s another SSD slot on the back of the motherboard. Andrew Cunningham

What puts the Framework Desktop above mini PCs from Amazon or the various gaming NUCs that Intel and Asus have released over the years is a commitment to standards.

For reasons we’ll explore later, there was no way to build the system around this specific AMD chip without using soldered-on memory. But the motherboard is a regular mini ITX-sized motherboard. Other ITX boards will fit into Framework’s case, and the Framework Laptop’s motherboard will fit into other systems (as long as they can also fit the fan and heatsink).

The 400 W power supply conforms to the FlexATX standard. The CPU fan is just a regular 120 mm fan, and the mounting holes for system fans on the front can take any 92 mm fan. The two case fan headers on the motherboard are the same ones you’d find on any motherboard you bought for yourself. The front panel ports can’t be used for display outputs, but anything else ought to work.

Few elements of the Framework Desktop are truly proprietary, and if Framework went out of business tomorrow, you’d still have a lot of flexibility for buying and installing replacement parts. The problem is that the soldered-down, non-replaceable, non-upgradeable parts are the CPU, GPU, and RAM. There’s at least a little flexibility with the graphics card if you move the board into a different case—there’s a single PCIe x4 slot on the board that you could put an external GPU into, though many PCIe x16 graphics cards will be bandwidth starved. But left in its original case, it’s an easy-to-work-on, standards-compliant system that will also never be any better or get any faster than it is the day you buy it.

Hope you like plastic

Snapping some tiles into the Framework Desktop’s plastic front panel. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The interior of the Framework Desktop is built of sturdy metal, thoughtfully molded to give easy access to each of the ports and components on the motherboard. My main beef with the system is the outside.

The front and side panels of the Framework Desktop are all made out of plastic. The clear side panel, if you spring for it, is made of a thick acrylic instead of tempered glass (presumably because Framework has drilled holes in the side of it to improve airflow).

This isn’t the end of the world, but the kinds of premium ITX PC cases that the Desktop is competing with are predominantly made of nicer-looking and nicer-feeling metal rather than plastic. It just feels surprisingly cheap, which was an unpleasant surprise—even the plastic Framework Laptop 12 felt sturdy and high-quality, something I can’t really say of the Desktop’s exterior panels.

I do like the design on the front panel—a grid of 21 small square plastic tiles that users can rearrange however they want. Framework sells tiles with straight and diagonal lines on them, plus individual tiles with different logos or designs printed or embossed on them. If you install a fan in the front of the system, you’ll want to stick to the lined tiles in the top 9 x 9 section of the grid, which will allow air to pass through. The tiles with images on them are solid—putting a couple of them in front of a fan likely won’t hurt your airflow too much, but you won’t want to use too many.

Framework has also published basic templates for both the tiles and the top panel so that those with 3D printers can make their own.

PC testbed notes

We’ve compared the performance of the Framework Desktop to a bunch of other PCs to give you a sense of how it stacks up to full-size desktops. We’ve also compared it to the Ryzen 7 8700G in a Gigabyte B650I Aorus Ultra mini ITX motherboard with 32GB of DDR5-6400 to show the best performance you can expect from a similarly sized socketed desktop system.

Where possible, we’ve also included some numbers from the M4 Pro Mac mini and the M4 Max Mac Studio, two compact desktops in the same general price range as the Framework Desktop.

For our game benchmarks, the dedicated GPU results were gathered using our GPU testbed, which you can read about in our latest dedicated GPU review. The integrated GPUs were obviously tested with the CPUs they’re attached to.

	AMD AM5	Intel LGA 1851	Intel LGA 1700
CPUs	Ryzen 7000 and 9000 series	Core Ultra 200 series	12th, 13th, and 14th-generation Core
Motherboard	ASRock X870E Taichi or MSI MPG X870E Carbon Wifi (provided by AMD)	MSI MEG Z890 Unify-X (provided by Intel)	Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master X (provided by Intel)
RAM config	32GB G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo (provided by AMD), running at DDR5-6000	32GB G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo (provided by AMD), running at DDR5-6000	32GB G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo (provided by AMD), running at DDR5-6000

Performance and power

Our Framework-provided review unit was the highest-end option; it has a 16-core Ryzen AI Max+395 processor, 40 graphics cores, and 128GB of RAM. At $1,999 before adding an SSD, a fan, an OS, front tiles, or Expansion Cards, this is the best, priciest configuration Framework offers. The $1,599 configuration uses the same chip with the same performance, but with 64GB of RAM instead.

All 16 of those CPU cores are based on the Zen 5 architecture, with none of the smaller-but-slower Zen 5c cores. But its total TDP is also limited to 120 W in total, which will hold it back a bit compared to socketed 16-core desktop CPUs like the Ryzen 9 9950X, which has a 170 W default TDP for the CPU alone.

In our testing, it seems clear that the CPU throttles when being tasked with intensive multi-core work like our Handbrake test, with temperatures that spike to around 100 degrees Celsius and hang out at around or just under that number for the duration of our test runs. The CPU package uses right around 100 W on average (this will vary based on the tests you’re running and how long you’re running them), compared to the 160 W and 194 W that the 12- and 16-core Ryzen 9 9900X and 9950X can consume at their default power levels.

Those are socketed desktop chips in huge cases being cooled by large AIO watercooling loops, so it’s hardly a fair comparison. The Framework Desktop’s CPU is also quite efficient, using even less power to accomplish our video encoding test than the 9950X in its 105 W Eco Mode. But this is the consequence of prioritizing a small size—a 16-core processor that, under heavy loads, performs more like a 12-core or even an 8-core desktop processor.

The upside is that the Framework Desktop is quieter than most desktops either under load or when idling. By default, the main CPU fan will turn off entirely when the system is under light load, and I often noticed it parking itself when I was just browsing or moving files around.

Based on our gaming tests, the Framework Desktop should be a competent 1080p-to-1440p midrange gaming system. We observed similar performance from the Radeon 8060S integrated GPU when we tested it in the Asus ROG Flow Z13 tablet. For an integrated GPU, it’s head and shoulders over anything you can get in a socketed desktop system, and it easily ran three or four times faster than the Radeon 780M in the 8700G. The soldered RAM is annoying, but the extra speed it enables helps address the memory bandwidth problem that starves most integrated GPUs.

Compared to other desktop GPUs, though, the 8060S is merely fine. It’s usually a little slower than the last-generation Radeon RX 7600 XT, a card that cost $329 when it launched in early 2024—and with a performance hit that’s slightly more pronounced in games with ray-tracing effects on.

The 8060S stacks up OK to older midrange GPUs like the GeForce RTX 3060 and 4060, but it’s soundly beaten by the RTX 5060 or the 16GB version of the Radeon RX 9060 XT, cards currently available for $300-to-$400. (One problem for the 8060S—it’s based on the RDNA3.5 architecture, so it’s missing ray-tracing performance improvements introduced in RDNA4 and the RX 9000 series).

All of that said, the GPU may be more interesting than it looks on paper for people whose workloads need gobs and gobs of graphics memory but who don’t necessarily need that memory to be attached to the blazing-fastest GPU that exists. For people running certain AI or machine learning workloads, the 8060S’s unified memory setup means you can get a GPU with 64GB or 128GB of VRAM for less than the price of a single RTX 5090 (Framework says the GPU can use up to 112GB of RAM on the 128GB Desktop). Framework is advertising that use case pretty extensively, and it offers a guide to setting up large language models to run locally on the system.

That memory would likely be even more useful if it were attached to an Nvidia GPU instead of an AMD model—Nvidia’s hold on the workstation graphics market is at least as tight as its hold on the gaming GPU market, and many apps and tools support Nvidia GPUs and CUDA first/best/only. But it’s still one possible benefit the Framework Desktop might offer, relative to a desktop with a dedicated GPU.

You can’t say it isn’t unique

The Framework Desktop is a bit like a PC tower blended with Apple’s Mac Studio. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

In one way, Framework has done the same thing with the Desktop that it has done with all its laptops: found a niche and built a product to fill it. And with its standard-size components and standard connectors, the Framework Desktop is a clear cut above every Intel gaming NUC or Asus ROG thingamajig that’s ever existed.

I’m always impressed by the creativity, thoughtfulness, and attention to detail that Framework brings to its builds. For the Desktop, this is partially offset by how much I don’t care for most of its cheap plastic-and-acrylic exterior. But it’s still thoughtfully designed on the inside, with as much respect for standards, modularity, and repairability as you can get, once you get past that whole thing where that the major functional components are all irrevocably soldered together.

The Framework Desktop is also quiet, cute, and reasonably powerful. You’re paying some extra money and giving up both CPU and GPU speed to get something small. But you won’t run into games or apps that simply refuse to run for performance-related reasons.

It does feel like a weird product for Framework to build, though. It’s not that I can’t imagine the kind of person a Framework Desktop might be good for—it’s that I think Framework has built its business targeting a PC enthusiast demographic that will mainly be turned off by the desktop’s lack of upgradeability.

The Framework desktop is an interesting option for people who want or need a compact and easy-to-build workstation or gaming PC, or a Windows-or-Linux version of Apple’s Mac Studio. It will fit comfortably under a TV or in a cramped office. It’s too bad that it isn’t easier to upgrade. But for people who would prefer the benefits of a socketed CPU or a swappable graphics card, I’m sure the people at Framework would be the first ones to point you in the direction of a good-old desktop PC.

The good

Solid all-round performance and good power efficiency.
The Radeon 8060S is exceptionally good for an integrated GPU, delivering much better performance than you can get in something like the Ryzen 7 8700G.
Large pool of RAM available to the GPU could be good for machine learning and AI workloads.
Thoughtfully designed interior that’s easy to put together.
Uses standard-shaped motherboard, fan headers, power supply, and connectors, unlike lots of pre-built mini PCs.
Front tiles are fun.

The bad

Power limits keep the 16-core CPU from running as fast as the socketed desktop version.
A $300-to-$400 dedicated GPU will still beat the Radeon RX 8060S.
Cheap-looking exterior plastic panels.

The ugly

Soldered RAM in a desktop system.

Review: Framework Desktop is a mash-up of a regular desktop PC and the Mac Studio Read More »

Citing “market conditions,” Nintendo hikes prices of original Switch consoles

gaming, Nintendo Switch, nintendo switch 2, nintendo switch lite, Nintendo Switch OLED, Tech / Shannon Garcia / August 1, 2025

Slowed tech progress, inflation, and global trade wars are doing a number on game console pricing this year, and the bad news keeps coming. Nintendo delayed preorders of the Switch 2 in the US and increased accessory prices, and Microsoft gave its Series S and X consoles across-the-board price hikesin May.

Today, Nintendo is back for more, increasing prices on the original Switch hardware, as well as some Amiibo, the Alarmo clock, and some Switch and Switch 2 accessories. The price increases will formally take effect on August 3.

The company says that there are currently no price increases coming for the Switch 2 console, Nintendo Online memberships, and physical and digital Switch 2 games. But it didn’t take future price increases off the table, noting that “price adjustments may be necessary in the future.”

Nintendo didn’t announce how large the price increases would be, but some retailers were already listing higher prices as of Friday. Target now lists the Switch Lite for $229.99, up from $199.99; the original Switch for $339.99, up from $299.99; and the OLED model of the Switch for a whopping $399.99, up from $349.99 and just $50 less than the price of the much more powerful Switch 2 console.

Citing “market conditions,” Nintendo hikes prices of original Switch consoles Read More »

The King Is Watching condenses kingdom-building strategy to a single screen

gaming / Kelly Newman / August 1, 2025

The kinds of randomized options you’ll have to choose between waves.

Those inter-wave upgrades are also randomized in each run, adding some roguelike unpredictability that means no two play sessions develop quite the same way. You have to be flexible, adapting to the blueprints and units you’re given, while being willing to abandon plans that are no longer feasible.

Between waves, you’ll often get the opportunity to buy emergency resource drops, useful upgrades that last through the whole run, or one-time spells that can strengthen your units or hinder the opposition. Figuring out the best potential upgrade paths requires a lot of trial and error, and you’ll need a little luck in drawing some of the more powerful upgrade options. While experience and skill can make things more manageable, some runs end up a lot more winnable than others.

Playing through successful waves also earns you tokens you can spend between runs on permanent upgrades (including crucial expansions of that 4×4 grid) and new selectable kings with their own unique gaze shapes and special powers. But even as these upgrades make it easier to succeed in successive runs, the game cranks up the “threat level” in turn to raise the enemy strength level (and the stakes) accordingly.

That kind of self-balancing means The King Is Watching always manages to feel engaging without coming off as totally unfair. And individual runs are zippy enough to not wear out their welcome; you can make it through a full run of two or three bosses in about 30 minutes or so, especially if you use the “fast forward” option to speed up the routine resource production between enemy waves.

Best of all, those 30 minutes are so dense with important decisions and split-second management of your kingly gaze that you never have time to feel bored. The King Is Watching perfectly rides the fine line between engrossing and overwhelming, making it perfect for quick, lunch-break-sized brain breaks that combine positional reasoning, reflexes, and strategic planning.

The King Is Watching condenses kingdom-building strategy to a single screen Read More »

Nvidia announces end of GPU driver updates for GeForce 10-series, Windows 10

gaming, GeForce, geforce gtx, geforce gtx 1060, NVIDIA, Tech / Shannon Garcia / July 31, 2025

The Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta GPUs won’t be totally abandoned after 2025; Nvidia says it will release quarterly security updates for these cards through October 2028. These updates won’t optimize performance or fix bugs in any new games, but if you still have an older or hand-me-down PC using one of these cards to play Minecraft or Roblox, you won’t be leaving yourself open to GPU-related security exploits.

Nvidia has dropped hints that the end of support for these older GPUs was coming. The company announced back in January that CUDA support for the Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta architectures was considered “feature complete” and was being frozen. This is the first time since 2021 that Nvidia has dropped support for older GPUs.

As for Windows 10, Microsoft has been pushing users toward Windows 11 for years, including by using full-screen ads encouraging people to buy new Copilot+ PCs, but the older operating system still has a sizable user base. According to the Steam Hardware Survey, Windows 10 is in decline, but it still powers over a third of the PCs in the survey as of June 2025, compared to a little over 60 percent for Windows 11.

Nvidia announces end of GPU driver updates for GeForce 10-series, Windows 10 Read More »

Not (just) seeing red: Virtual Boy emulator adds full color support

Color, Emulation, gaming, Nintendo, RED, retro, virtual boy / DJ Henderson / July 30, 2025

With Red Viper’s built-in color support, though, anyone with a 3DS modded for homebrew software can now easily add a bit of color to the Virtual Boy library. And running the emulator on the 3DS means you don’t even have to give up the Virtual Boy’s stereoscopic graphics to do so; Red Viper works with the filtered LCD screen on the 3DS to emulate the visual depth built into Virtual Boy games.

More than just Wario Land

Red Viper currently doesn’t have any “default” palettes to choose from, meaning it can take some manual fiddling to get multicolor games to look halfway decent (you can save your palettes on a per-game basis). Once you do, though, it’s impressive just how much color adds to games that were never designed to be seen in more than a few shades of red.

The higher contrast between the road and the racers helps make homebrew Virtual Boy Mario Kart much more playable. Kyle Orland / Red Viper

We’ve found that high contrast yellow or green can really help sprites stand out from the jet black backgrounds that dominate most Virtual Boy releases. Accent colors in the blue or purple range, meanwhile, can help set off background elements and make them easier to distinguish from the foreground gameplay. Those color enhancements can be more than just aesthetic, too; in a game like Red Viper, distinct colors make it much easier to distinguish enemies from stationary obstacles in the game’s awkward wire-framed 3D.

After you’re done colorizing all the Virtual Boy ROMs you’ve dumped off of your own legitimately purchased cartridges (cough), it’s worth dipping a toe in the impressive collection of homebrew Virtual Boy games created by homebrew coders over the years. That includes impressive ports of games like Street Fighter II and Mario Kart and original efforts like a cartoony fish-eat-fish simulator or a hamburger based shoot-’em-up .

Whether you’re a Virtual Boy aficionado or new to the world, the newly colorized Red Viper is the perfect excuse to visit this odd cul-de-sac in Nintendo’s hardware history. Now if we could just convince Nintendo to release an official miniaturized set of Virtual Boy VR goggles à la the NES Classic.

Not (just) seeing red: Virtual Boy emulator adds full color support Read More »