With Gamescom and the 25th anniversary translucent green Xbox Series X on the horizon (for those with the cash to nab one), perhaps it's time to start looking around for similarly see-through accessories. So, of course Razer has announced new Xbox 25th Anniversary Edition versions of its BlackWidow V4 75% Mechanical Gaming Keyboard, Basilisk V3 Pro 35K wireless gaming mouse, and Hammerhead V3 X Hyperspeed low-latency AirPods-like wireless earbuds.

These are the same devices we've come to know in the past. IGN called the BlackWidow V4 75 Razer's "most thoughtful" keyboard back in 2023; it's a less featureful version of the BlackWidow V4 75 Pro that sits on IGN's best gaming keyboards list.

Like the existing V4 75s, the Xbox 25th Anniversary Edition features RGB lighting and hot-swappable keys, only now it's got a see-through green shell and keys, as well as a Razer and Xbox 25 logo-emblazoned wrist rest. Also, at $210, it costs $20 more than plain black or white models, and $10 more than other versions, like the existing translucent, but slightly darker-colored Phantom Green.

Then there's the $180 Basilisk V3 Pro 35K mouse and the $120 Hammerhead V3 X Hyperspeed earbuds. The Basilisk V3 Pro 35K can work wired, but also works over Bluetooth and ships with a Razer HyperSpeed Wireless Dongle, and should be good for up to 210 hours of battery live via Bluetooth.

The Hammerhead V3 X Hyperspeed features 11mm drivers and a shape that's very reminiscent of the 3rd-gen AirPods Pro, only, you know, kind of a pukey, see-through green. Like their translucent keyboard cousin, they each come at a $20 premium compared to their black or white variants.

So, what say you? Do you like green mice and keebs?

Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they call him) who has covered technology, gaming, and entertainment steadily since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom's Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently, The Verge. Inside of him there are two wolves: one that thinks it wouldn't be so bad to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who also thinks this, but more strongly.

If you're a fan of strange and unholy fast food concoctions, then you'll definitely want to see what the crazed scienticians at KFC and Nabisco have concocted. Fresh off the reveal of their fried chicken-flavored Oreo cookies in China, the two companies have reversed that fusion to create the Oreo Original Recipe Chicken Burger.

This bizarre collab was revealed by KFC China on Weibo (via Dexerto). It looks every bit as strange as it sounds. The sandwich starts off ordinarily enough, with a fried chicken patty and lettuce, but it's topped with brown mashed potatoes dusted in cookie crumbles and placed between two Oreo cookie-flavored buns.

Like any good fast food mash-up, we can't decide if we're grossed out by this creation or deeply intrigued. Either way, American foodies shouldn't count on being able to try the Oreo Original Recipe Chicken Burger anytime soon. The sandwich is currently limited to the Chinese market only, with no indication of when or if it might come to the US.

Will you devour an Oreo Chicken Sandwich if given the opportunity? Cast your vote in our poll below:

This is just the latest odd creation from the folks at Nabisco. Past Oreo cookie variants have included Post Malone Oreos, which featured swirled salted caramel and shortbread flavored cream squeezed between one golden and one chocolate Oreo wafer cookie, and Mario Oreos. And in perhaps the most unholy combination of them all, there's the Ritz Oreo.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.

The separation between PC and console gaming is hazier than ever thanks to soaring prices, scarce hardware, and PC ports of formerly exclusive games. Go into the average PC gamer’s home and you’re likely to find at least one console, and that’s exactly the crowd that Sony hopes to appease with its new PlayStation 27” gaming monitor. Designed to match the look of your PS5 or PS5 Pro perfectly, it packages a QHD resolution with high refresh rate gameplay, auto-HDR, and a foldaway charging dock for your DualSense controllers for $349.99. If you’re a PlayStation fan, it’ll make a great addition to a desk-based gaming setup. If you don’t care about its PS5 look, however, this really isn’t the monitor you’re looking for.

Design and Features

It only takes a second to see who the monitor is aimed at. Between the black stand and white back of the monitor itself, it’s a perfect match for the PS5. The branding is minimal: a simple PS logo that peeks out above the stand when viewed from the rear.

The monitor comes perilously close to looking boring from the front. It’s the usual profile we’ve seen on flat panel gaming displays for years, with vanishingly thin bezels that lend the display a feeling of spaciousness. There are no visible controls. Toggling settings in the OSD is done with a joystick in the back. In short: black rectangle.

That is, until you start using the display’s biggest console-specific feature: its DualSense charging hook. Centered behind the display is a flip-down charging dock to store and charge your DualSense and DualSense Edge controllers when not in use. It sounds small — it is small — but it’s exactly the kind of quality-of-life feature that PS5 players will appreciate. No more loose controllers or wires to clutter up your desk, just your neatly glowing DualSense under your now very PlayStation-looking monitor.

As the first real PlayStation-branded monitor (Sony Inzone also offers PC gaming monitors but is a separate line from PlayStation), I expected Sony to go big: OLED, high refresh rate, high peak brightness, and an even higher price. Instead, it went the opposite direction by offering something entirely more accessible to the average person.

Coming in at $350, it offers some pretty decent specs no matter which platform you choose. Within its slim frame, it features an IPS panel with a sharp 2560x1440 resolution. It’s built for everything from turn-based RPGs to twitch shooters, sporting a quick 240Hz refresh rate on PC and 120Hz on console (the PlayStation 5’s peak output). It also comes with Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) support so your gameplay stays fluid. It’s technically AMD FreeSync, but worked well with Nvidia G-Sync too.

While it’s not OLED, its Fast IPS panel is a good example of why you should still be paying attention to this tech. The colors are vibrant and the viewing angles are wide. It features a 1ms gray-to-gray response time which won’t get you the exceptional motion clarity of OLED but is effective at keeping ghosting away. Sony also did a good job calibrating the display from the factory. Out of the box, I measured color accuracy to be just under the industry standard of Delta E < 2, so you could even use it for image or video editing.

Around the back, the monitor’s I/O is neatly tucked away. It comes with two HDMI 2.1 ports and a DisplayPort 1.4, and a couple of USB Type-A ports and one Type-C to support peripherals and accessories. The charging hook folds away just below this, so if you tend to keep your monitor low, you may need to raise it when the hook is in use.

The stand is disappointing for the price. It’s a flat metal slab and a vertical metal tube and that’s about it. You’re able to make the usual tilt and height adjustments and rotate it but you can’t pivot into a portrait orientation. It does support standard VESA 100x100 mounts, so finding a replacement isn’t difficult if it bothers you.

The monitor has a few other PlayStation-specific tricks up its sleeve, like Auto HDR Tone Mapping which automatically adjusts the console’s HDR settings to match on setup. Also, it has a built-in speaker so you can hear your games even if you don’t feel like plugging in a headset. That shouldn’t be novel, but it’s not a given anymore. Without the connection to PlayStation, it’s not a display that would have more than a headphone jack in most cases.

But you should still use a headset. While it’s admirable that Sony included a speaker here, it feels like a “break glass in case of emergency” kind of addition instead of something I would actually recommend you use. The sound is thin and tinny, and I found it harsh to listen to for very long. It will work in a pinch, but even a cheap gaming headset will perform leagues better.

Though the PlayStation 27" gaming monitor doesn't feel cheap necessarily, there is a sense that Sony pared things back to make it as affordable as it is. The cheap stand is one example, but it shows through in other ways too.

The OSD, for example, is basic and feels too generic for a monitor like this. It's functional, but it doesn't carry the same premium touch as the hardware around it. There are a couple of neat things you can do, like displaying your frame rate in the corner or automatically changing color profiles to match the genre of the game you're playing, but beyond that, it's standard fare: brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpness, inputs and outputs, volume, and so on. It gets the job done, but it won't wow anyone navigating through the menus. Unlike the Inzone monitors, there’s also no software to allow you to make adjustments with a mouse and keyboard.

Another is the same IPS panel I was praising earlier. While those pros are definitely there, there are some cons to be aware of too. There’s nothing special about this monitor’s contrast. It’s edge-lit, no full array local dimming, so blacks can be inconsistent across the display. No matter where you’re looking, black looks closer to dark gray and it earns its decidedly average 1000:1 contrast ratio.

Its average rated brightness, 350 nits, is decidedly middle of the road. It’s not bright enough to match the highlights and shadows of most TVs these days, but does find a balance between console and PC play. When you’re playing on your PS5, the auto HDR tone mapping allows the display to better represent highlights and shadows, offering more detail within the picture. On PC, there’s no automatic tone mapping but I did find that it was bright enough to use in a well lit room.

Performance

I was able to spend about a week with this monitor ahead of this review, and I hit it hard during that time. I set up the PS5 in one input and an RTX 5090 gaming laptop in another to see how it would handle switching between both platforms. Perhaps expectedly from a company well known for its displays, it performed well for both and a fair share of productivity in between.

While it might seem like a missed opportunity to go with QHD (1440p) resolution and not 4K, I think going QHD was the smart move. 1440p sits in a sweet spot where it looks crisp and detailed on 32” monitors or below but isn’t so demanding that you need the most expensive hardware to make the most of it. There aren’t many PCs capable of running many games at 240Hz without dramatically lowering settings — a major trade-off if you’ve already shelled out for a decent gaming PC and a new monitor. At QHD, that suddenly becomes much more attainable.

Playing on the PlayStation 5, I was impressed at how well the auto tone mapping feature worked. It's not HDR, but it’s better than SDR, and that alone is an improvement over the average gaming monitor at this price. My console had no trouble detecting the monitor and its capabilities, so enabling VRR and 120Hz only required a quick trip to the settings menu.

On PC, I felt the lack of quality HDR much more but gaming on it was still visually rich and a lot of fun. IPS colors are vivid and are perfectly capable of making games look great in SDR. VRR also worked well on both my Nvidia and AMD gaming laptops.

The charging hook also worked perfectly. It’s a simple system that allows you to quickly dock a controller without giving it much thought. Like other controller docks, it needs to work and get out of the way. This does that. Missed opportunity to give the hook a bit of accent lighting like the PS5 itself though, Sony.

Taken as a whole, the monitor delivers on its promises and does no more and no less. If you strip away all the PlayStation branding, what you’re left with is a decent monitor with a mediocre stand and cool charging hook. Plenty of monitors have USB ports and 1440p resolution. Plenty of monitors offer better brightness and better HDR with full array local dimming. Many of them cost under $350.

What the PlayStation monitor offers is a quiet guarantee that everything is going to work with a minimum of setup and fuss, especially with your PS5. It’s already going to blend in with part of your setup, and if you have your PS5 visible, you can count on them being a good looking pair.

The charging hook, as seemingly small and replaceable as it is, is probably the single most important feature for making it actually feel like a PlayStation monitor. Let’s be real here. You probably won’t be looking at the PS branded back of your monitor very often. Once you set it up with your PC, the auto tone mapping becomes something you don’t even think about shortly after. But the controller, pulsing with its little status light, is a constant reminder that you’re using a PlayStation accessory. And it’s useful to boot.

While everything seems to be going up in price lately due to an ongoing RAMageddon that doesn't seem to be letting up any time soon, Asus' handhelds have somehow avoided the price increases that are hitting everything in the category. The company's special anniversary version of the Xbox Ally X is a bit more expensive than the regular version, but it's not by much.

At gamescom, Asus revealed a bit more information about the upcoming gold-themed version of the Xbox Ally X to celebrate ROG's 20th anniversary, called, what else, the Xbox Ally X20. This is essentially the same system as the original Xbox Ally X, just with an OLED display, TMR joysticks, and a fancy new D-pad. Okay, well at least the innards remain the same, with the AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme and 24GB of memory.

Back when Asus announced the X20, I was worried this was going to be a sneaky way to refresh the handheld with a couple new features to raise the price to the same degree as something like the Lenovo Legion Go 2 or the Steam Deck — especially since, back then, it was announced as only part of a bundle with the Asus ROG Xreal R1 glasses I reviewed a few weeks ago.

Luckily, Asus will be releasing the Xbox Ally X20 as a standalone handheld for $1,299, or as a bundle with the glasses for $2,499. That is more expensive than the existing Xbox Ally X, which you can get for about $999 right now. But, that extra $300 might be worth it just for the sake of having an OLED display.

The new handheld looks like it'll take some cues from the Xbox Elite controllers as well. The Xbox Ally X20 will have a transforming D-pad. Basically, you can rotate it to choose between either a concave D-pad or one with four prounounced cardinal directions. Basically, like you're able to do on the Xbox Elite controllers by swapping out the magnetic D-pad.

Of course, the handheld is going to look much fancier than the original. I haven't seen it in person yet, but from Asus' photos, it looks like it has a translucent chassis, with gold accents that really do make it look unique.

The elephant in the room, though, is the bundle. It costs twice as much, and includes the glasses and a few accessories. Everything does look nice, but you're essentially paying an extra $1,200 for a pair of XR glasses that you can buy seperately for $849 – and those were already overpriced. It's going to carry some weight for ROG faithfuls, but the standalone handheld is where it's at. The Xbox Ally X is one of the best Windows handhelds out there, and tacking on an OLED display really might be worth the extra $300, especially with every other handheld with similar specs being closer to $2,000 right now.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

I’m a privileged gamer. As a hardware reviewer, over the years I’ve been sent top-tier CPUs and graphics cards, letting me bounce from one flagship to the next. That’s made me lazy at game settings. I often just set the game at whatever the maximum “Ultra” setting is and get on with playing. But by doing so, I’ve just been playing into the marketing hype – and leaving a lot of performance on the table, it turns out.

Most games don’t actually need to be played at Ultra settings to look good. They don’t even need it to look great. The latest upscaling technologies are fantastically good at emulating higher resolutions, and often the difference between Ultra and High settings isn’t something I even really notice if pushed to look.

As an experiment, I turned down the settings in a bunch of great-looking games to see how much difference it really makes. Not only did I find it hard to spot any obvious visual difference in most of the games I tested, but performance went up dramatically and the smoother framerates were well worth the minimal sacrifice.

The system

I’ve been able to ignore graphics settings for so long due to a mix of low-demand game selection and high-end hardware. As I said, my current system is powerful, but I also mostly play older sim games and lighter indies.

With an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D and PowerColor Red Devil RX 7900 XTX, I have one of the fastest gaming CPUs on the market and the fastest graphics card AMD has ever made. It’s not quite an RTX 5080 or RTX 5090, so it’s not really designed with Ultra Path Tracing in mind, but it’s not a million miles away either. It’s more than capable of running almost any game at Ultra settings, at 4K, and sometimes even with ray tracing enabled.

That’s especially true once you throw in FSR upscaling and a little frame generation to smooth things out.

My plan for this test is to run a bunch of games at their very highest settings that are functionally playable – at least 30 FPS – with upscaling at Quality or native, without frame generation, and grab a few example screenshots of it in action. Then do so again at maxed out settings but with Balanced upscaling, and then a final test with everything turned down just one notch. So High, if Ultra is the top option, Medium if High is the best, etc.

Now for the games

Cyberpunk 2077

Let’s jump in with what is arguably still one of the best looking games ever made, Cyberpunk 2077. If there’s one game that is guaranteed to bring my 7900XTX to its knees, it’s this one.

And yeah, Raytracing Overdrive Settings, 4K resolution, Path Tracing enabled, FSR set to Quality mode, it was a clunky slideshow mess. 20 FPS at best. But of course it looks incredible:

But you know what also looks incredible? Cyberpunk 2077 at those same settings with Balanced Upscaling. I just took these screenshots, and besides a few background details looking a little more lifelike and of-the-environment in the Quality screenshot, it’s very difficult to tell any difference.

Meanwhile, the performance difference meant it was actually playable.

Although Cyberpunk with ray tracing does look stunning, and its path tracing even more so in the right settings, I’d even argue switching it down to a mere Ultra settings without ray tracing looks almost as good.

It’s definitely more stylized than the real-time lighting effects of ray tracing, but CD Projekt Red did a fantastic job making Night City look real and alive, even with baked in lighting. I’d very happily play the whole game like this.

Alane Wake 2

Alan Wake 2 is far from the glitz and ray-traced glamour of Night City, but it’s just as good looking in its own, dark, dirty way. It also eviscerated my system’s performance with everything absolutely turned up the nines. We’re talking 1-3 FPS. Unplayable. But gorgeous:

But it can very easily be both. Switching over to FSR Balanced, where it’s basically cutting the 4K resolution in half, the performance jumped up to perfectly playable for this type of more sedate game play. I genuinely can’t tell the difference, even when running around. It’s really impressive how far upscaling has come over the years.

I’d be tempted to leave it there, but there is additional performance to be had and not much in the way of a visual downgrade from trimming the fat even more. Switching everything to one notch down (High or Medium, depending on what the setting peaks at) and no ray tracing, gets you an almost-as-good-looking Alan Wake 2 experience.

Performance jumped enormously here, and this is where you want to play if you value smoother animation over pristine visuals. Especially since I still had to look close to spot the real differences. During actual game play, though? With a darker game like this where concealment and shadow is the game’s vibe, I don’t think many would notice.

Hogwarts Legacy

How about a getting-older but a goodie? Hogwarts Legacy isn’t photo-realistic, but it is incredibly immersive. Making sure the game looks good is a huge part of the experience. Fortunately, you can get away with steering clear of ray tracing with this one. If you enable it, the experience is beautiful:

But I’d argue it’s just as beautiful with Balanced upscaling – notching an extra 15% fps for my trouble, and nudging over a more-comfortable 40 FPS.

Switching to more modest settings and dropping the RT entirely looks amazing too. This game doesn’t make enough use of the fancy-lighting technique to be worth it, I’d argue. Despite its prevalence in the graphics menu, this game looks phenomenal on more modest settings. Don’t fear dropping them down a notch or two.

Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth

Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth is not as pretty as the other games, but it’s one that uses an outsized quantity of VRAM. Fortunately, the 24GB on the 7900XTX had no trouble with it even pushed to the limit. But then, why would you bother?

Dropping to Balanced and cutting the rendering resolution by 40% didn’t appear to make much of a difference to how the game looked. There isn’t any more obvious aliasing on background elements, even the thinner pipes. Texture details remain.

Dropping everything to Medium/High setting depending does make more of an impact, but even then it’s something I had to actively look for, and when in motion it’s even less apparent.

It’s not nothing, but I don’t think it’s worth it

If your hardware supports it, playing games at their prettiest is lovely. It’s simple, it’s easy, and it looks great. Especially in static screenshots, or in the ideal circumstances. But so do games with heavier-handed upscaling, and even lowering the settings a little doesn’t strip them of their charm, or immersion. That also gives you extra performance and a smoother game, which I think is way more impactful than getting a few extra pixels, or slightly nicer lighting.

The point I’m trying to make with these comparisons isn’t that there’s no benefit to turning all the settings up to their maximum, but that the performance loss really isn’t worth it. Ultimately, it feels like those settings are a way to get better looking screenshots for the marketing campaign, and to give gamers something to aspire to. A dragon that we’ll forever be chasing, until the next game comes along.

Ultimately, if all you can game on is something lower than the maximum – which is almost all of us – then you really aren’t missing out on much.

Don’t look on in envy at the people spending $5,000 on a graphics card in 2026. They’re getting a very-slightly-better looking gaming experience for the money. As prices continue to be ridiculous, I think lower settings are perfectly fine.

Genki, maker of some of our favorite accessories for the Switch 2 and Switch, has launched a Kickstarter for what might be the most over-engineered controller I’ve ever seen – and for $279, it better be. The Genki Manta packs in the kind of cutting edge features found on the best controllers out there, like TMR sticks, adjustable triggers, and advanced haptics, as well as even more advanced tech like a full-blown operating system, complete with digital display, built into the controller itself.

Now, I’m all for hardware and peripherals that incorporate new tech and push their categories forward, but I’m not quite sure why anyone would need a controller this advanced. It’s undeniably well-designed – I appreciate the screen centered below the thumbsticks, instead of above like on the Turtle Beach Stealth Ultra, and how the tension of the thumbsticks can be dialed in (literally) on the fly by twisting the stick itself. But at some point you have to ask if we’re approaching the point of overkill.

Genki is taking a bit of a kitchen sink approach with the Mantra. “We refused to cut corners,” the Kickstarter reads. “It is, frankly, a spec monster.”

Compatible with PC via USB-C wired or 2.4 GHz wireless (via USB dongle) as well as Switch 1 and 2, mobile, and other devices via Bluetooth, the Manta has a standard Xbox-style layout with offset sticks and all your standard inputs. It has a 2,400 mAh user-replaceable battery, but there’s no mention on the Kickstarter page of an estimated usage time between charges. Blessedly, it can remotely wake a paired Switch 2.

The face buttons are “Analog Pulse Buttons” that track through their entire travel when pressed, not just when they bottom out, allowing users to adjust their actuation point anywhere between a quick rapid-reset for burst inputs and a deeper one that calls for a deliberate press. Similarly, the triggers have three distinct modes: Digital, which offers a short travel and crisp click, Rapid, which is fully analog but with a short, smooth travel, and Analog, which offers a full, smooth travel and proportional control.

Other features include “maglev haptics” (better than traditional rumble, apparently), a nine-axis gyroscope/accelerometer/compass for motion controls, six extra inputs (two buttons tucked up top next to the right and left bumpers, two integrated back buttons, and two removable back paddles), and a D-pad that can swap between a traditional cardinal layout and an eight-point satellite dish design.

And that’s not even mentioning the operating system built into the controller. MantaOS uses the controller’s built-in color display to handle all the configuration settings that would normally be handled by driver software or a companion app – stuff like swapping profiles, setting up macros, adjusting inputs, and customizing RGB lighting – right there on the controller.

But it does more than that too – and this is the part where, in the writing of this story, my thinking started to shift from “this is unnecessarily over-engineered” to “wait, that’s actually awesome.” There’s a small button next to the right thumbstick that pulls up an “On-the-Fly KBM” when pressed, turning the screen into a QWERTY or Compass Quick Type keyboard; or hold the button to turn the whole controller into a gyro-controlled mouse input. This is immensely useful for navigating the Windows desktop and bypassing login screens or game launchers. It’s the same sort of thing that makes the Steam Deck and Steam Machine more user-friendly than a handheld or PC running windows, except the solution is handled controller-side instead of by SteamOS.

MantaOS has some other neat tricks, like a macro action timeline that goes beyond recording a series of inputs and delays to fully tracking analog stick paths, trigger pressure, and more, meaning you can record a full gameplay sequence to repeat, such as a difficult boss runback (I’m looking at you, Bilewater). The screen also has a variety of customizable dashboards to display stuff like your active profile, polling rate, battery, and connection status.

There’s even a programmable layer, running on a dual-core Raspberry Pi RP2350, that can load external apps onto the controller’s 16 MB of internal storage. The Kickstarter shows a clip of a side-scrolling space shooter playing on the built-in screen, and mentions the possibility of developing a “Genki Forge” for users to develop and share homebrewed apps for MantaOS. I have no doubt that someone will get Doom running on it in no time.

The Genki Manta Kickstarter is live now, and as of this writing has around 1,800 backers and more than $400,000 pledged – four times its $100,000 goal. The controller will eventually be priced at $279, but a Super Early Bird pledge tier drops the price down to $189, which puts it in conversation with other high-end controllers like the DualSense Edge. That’s still nearly double the excellent Steam Controller, which has its own set of unique tricks, but at $100 also lacks a great deal of the advanced tech found here.

Genki hopes to start shipping the Manta to backers this coming January, but conservatively estimates the delivery window to January through April 2027. We’ll be testing the Mantra as soon as we can go hands-on, so be sure to look out for our review as we get closer to that launch date.

Bo Moore is IGN's Senior Manager of Tech. You can find him online @usebomswisely.

It seems like Valve may be gearing up to launch the Steam Frame, the third and final piece of hardware it showed us last year, alongside the Steam Machine and Steam Controller. Earlier today, a number of unboxing, setup and other how-to videos for Valve's upcoming next-generation VR headset leaked online via an update to the ARM Steam Client. Valve quickly pulled them down, but not before they were grabbed and re-uploaded by users.

Instead of pitching a fit – I'm sure the company was not psyched to have these videos leak before originally intended – Valve put the videos back up, and while it hasn't officially pushed them out yet, they're easily found in the Steam backend and can be found via the links collected here.

STEAM FRAME UPDATE:

The ARM Steam Client had an update this morning that contained these videos. It was quickly pulled after that, but of course people managed to grab them. These are videos that detail the unboxing, sign-in, and setup of the Steam Frame. pic.twitter.com/AAFk5D69eJ

— Steam Hardware Updates (@HardwareSteam) August 19, 2026

The videos detail how to set up and sign in to the device, which will require a Steam account to use. As a reminder, Steam Frame can be used as a standalone VR headset, or wirelessly connected to a PC running Steam. Other videos that leaked include things like how to install the head strap and light blockers, as well as one detailing the wireless adapter and a number of ergonomic accessories.

In his hands-on with the device last year, my colleague Michael Higham noted how Steam Frame gets you the same interface and quality-of-life features as the Steam Deck and Steam Machine, and noted how much he enjoyed using the device as a virtual theater to play non-VR games.

"This kind of experience isn't new," he said, "but the seamless integration through SteamOS also makes it very easy to use, and the super fast wireless tech means you can play PC games with the full strength of your system at low latency."

With these setup videos leaking, it seems likely that Valve is planning to launch the Steam Frame soon, which lines up with the plan to have it in customers' hands before the end of Summer 2026. That said, we still don't know how much the Steam Frame will cost, but if the price of the Steam Machine (and hardware prices in general) is any indication, it will likely end up being more expensive than Valve originally hoped.

For more on Steam Frame, check out our Q&A with Valve about why it's going back to VR, how the tech has evolved since the groundbreaking Index VR headset, and how it got wireless streaming to work so well.

Bo Moore is IGN's Senior Manager of Tech. You can find him online @usebomswisely.

Editor's Note: This article is sponsored by IFA 2026. It has been updated with key points on August 18.

IFA 2026 is coming back soon and is set to take the world by storm. The event will highlight how “the future is now” in the realms of AI, smart homes, digital health, robotics, and much more. At IFA 2024, IGN was excited to see Acer announce the Nitro Blaze 7, its own contender to Steam Deck OLED and the Asus ROG Ally X. And in 2025, we saw a ton of home tech reveals from the likes of Eufy and Anker, with Eufy's new MarsWalker robot vacs and UV printers, and Anker's new Soundcore Nebula X1 Pro not-so-portable high-end projector. (It comes on wheels and boasts 3,500 ANSI lumens versus its portable Nebula Capsule that hits a max of 300 lumens, with Dolby surround sound to boot.)

That said, there is a lot of excitement in store for IFA this year, and this guide will share exactly what you can expect from the event so far.

What Is IFA About?

IFA is the world’s biggest home and consumer tech event. Happening in Berlin, it hosts some of the world's leading innovative tech brands like Samsung, Acer, Anker, Eufy, Hisense and more, all gathering in one place to show off tons of cool, new, and interesting consumer gadgets and products. There's everything from gaming tech to home tech, and something exciting at every corner, no matter what you're into.

What to Expect at IFA 2026

“Artificial intelligence is no longer just a promise,” says Leif Lindner, CEO of IFA Management. “Smart homes are no longer a vision. Digital health is becoming part of everyday life… The future is not waiting somewhere five or 10 years away. It is already in our homes, in our pockets, in our cars, in our health routines.”

AI and digital health is the theme of this year’s IFA, and the show promises to show more of how AI has “stopped being its own category and started becoming the connective tissue underneath everything else.” And yes, this also includes beauty, preventative health tools, connected fitness, wellness tech, and beauty devices, which signal consumers are looking for tech that “supports a more personalized, healthier daily routine.”

Why IFA is so exciting for consumers

Speaking of personalization, last year's event brought in new robots that were very popular amongst attendees, including the KATA Friend AI pet shown below. There are new, impressive robots that people have never seen before at every show, and in nearly every category you can think of. Some are cute like this advanced digital pet, and others are more practical for every day routines and activities, including a stair-climbing robot vacuum or the Acemate Tennis Robot, the world's first AI-powered robot capable of true, real-time play.

Those in attendance or following along will be able to see these shifts and changes from the lens of a global CEO, a retailer, a startup founder, a content creator, a journalist, and a consumer, and it’s one of the few places that allows for these interactions to happen under one roof.

Furthermore, IFA will be more than just a showfloor, as it plans to utilize Sommergarter, the show’s open-air venue, to host BUNT’s electronic set on September 3, Luciano’s rap/hip-hop mix on September 4, Ikkimel & Friends bringing trap, techno, and Berlin club energy on September 5, and live podcast recordings from Mord auf Ex and Wine Wednesday on September 6.

The ICC Berlin, a protected 1979 landmark that has been closed for over a decade, will also reopen for IFA 2026, providing even more ways for attendees to engage and make the most of the opportunities the event offers.

Who Can Attend?

You! But seriously, tech enthusiasts and general shoppers are welcome to attend. The event will have everybody from global owners to creators to startups to retailers in attendance. For more information, check out IFA 2026’s website, as well as the ticket information for BUNT, Luciano, and Ikkimel & Friends.

IGN will be in attendance at IFA 2026 next week and we look forward to seeing what new gadgets will go viral this year.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Google has rolled out its latest line of Pixel phones with the Pixel 11 family. The Pixel 11 Pro sits at the middle, offering the same smaller footprint of the Pixel 11 while getting the extra features and cameras of the Pro models. Unsurprising for 2026, it comes with a price hike over last year’s model, bringing the starting price to $1,099 while coming with less memory, though it does have a higher base storage. Let’s dig into what the new Android flagship has going for it.

Pixel 11 Pro – Design and Features

The Pixel 11 Pro is a fairly standard year-on-year refresh of the Pixel 10 Pro, which was itself a pretty tame refresh of the Pixel 9 Pro. Like those models, the Pixel 11 Pro is pleasantly compact and comfortable to hold. Its physical differences from the Pixel 10 Pro are measured on the tenth-of-a-millimeter scale, and at just three grams heavier, you’d be hard-pressed to feel any difference in the hand. Its camera bar is also still a considerable protrusion (adding 4.1mm to the 8.2mm thick phone), but at least it keeps the phone from wobbling when set on a table.

There are some fresh colors. The model sent to me for testing is the Canyon colorway, a bold salmon-like orange-pink with a gorgeous copper-colored aluminum frame. There’s also a pleasant-looking Olive green colorway. The faint, minty Fog color and matte black Obsidian look quite bland, though.

The Pixel 11 Pro sticks with largely the same materials for durability, with Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on both sides and an aluminum frame. It should be pretty sturdy, but I wouldn’t consider it even remotely hard to damage, having damaged plenty of phones quite easily over the years. There’s a new coating on the display to boost scratch resistance, and seeing scratches on the back from my short time testing but none of the front makes me think it might be helping. The Pixel 11 Pro still trods out the same IP68 protection against dust and water ingress, which should be plenty sufficient for most, though still lags behind the IP69 that the now-belly-up OnePlus had been offering on its even cheaper flagship.

Of the phone’s marquee features, the “new” HiLight feature is perhaps the lamest of all. It doubles as a camera flash and replaces the temperature sensor (even though that sensor happily sat alongside the flash in prior models). HiLight is also simply a case of Google digging up the dead and trodding them out in worse fashion. My first Android phone was a Sharp Aquos SH-01D in 2012, and it had a notification indicator light that I could set up to display different colors depending on the app giving me a notification. In 2012, the customization was already more granular than what Google is offering on its premium handset in 2026.

HiLight only lets you see a light while you’re talking to Gemini or when favorited contacts call you through the default phone app – tough luck if you use WhatsApp, Signal, or anything else as your default communication method, or if want HiLight to glow for texts from favorited contacts, too. With only five colors (if you count white as a color) to choose from to help identify specific contacts, you’ll run into a wall as soon as you have a lot of favorited contacts, and the purpose of HiLight could quickly be undermined.

The Nothing Phone has a similar feature with its customizable dot matrix animations that I find far more compelling. Never mind that with OLED displays, a similar feature could be made to run in Do Not Disturb mode such that small calling cards for favorite contacts or important apps could appear unobtrusively to have the same effect without needing a special piece of added hardware that will probably just get dumped two generations down the line anyway.

The display on the Pixel 11 Pro is hardly anything new, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s still a gorgeous 6.3-inch OLED capable of variable refresh rates from 1 to 120Hz and a new peak brightness up to 3,600 nits. That’s a minor improvement on last year’s model and not likely to make a meaningful difference, especially as you won’t be seeing those over-3000-nit brightness levels in day-to-day use unless you love to have the screen facing the sun.

The speakers aren’t a great match for the display. While the bottom speaker puts out a good deal of volume, the earpiece speaker is so much weaker that the stereo sound hardly feels like stereo. There’s enough volume to listen to a podcast or video while poking around a small room, but that’s about the extent of it.

The phone still offers a fingerprint sensor baked into the display as well as facial recognition. I’ve found both quick and reliable for unlocking the phone.

The Pixel 11 Pro also continues to operate using eSIM exclusively. It’s a minor bugbear, as I find eSIM a convenient option, but it becomes limiting to only have eSIM.

The phone’s connectivity is solid with the typical 5G alongside Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0, keeping up with the times. It also supports satellite connections when you’re remote and don’t have a terrestrial signal. The USB-C port handles charging, 10Gbps data, and can link out to displays to run a desktop mode. Oddly, the phone doesn’t automatically bring up a trackpad to navigate the desktop environment, leaving me to find a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard to get up and running.

Pixel 11 Pro – Software

The Pixel 11 Pro comes running Android 17 and will get 7 years of software and security updates. This has been Google’s promise for a few generations now, and it’s paired with assurances that the phones will get better over time thanks to special feature updates. I’ve known too many people who’ve had the power buttons fall off their Pixel phones within a couple years of ownership to think much of this promise anymore, never mind that the performance of the Pixel phones tends to lag behind flagship rivals and will be sorely wanting as time passes and the demands of modern software increase.

One of the new features of the Pixel 11 line is Google Keyboard's Rambler feature, a beefed-up version of speech-to-text that is designed to let you just kind of talk at it, tidying up the speech and letting you make revisions on the fly. One downside is that it doesn't show live output, so you have to wait until it's done processing to see what it's done, which can make checking it more of a chore. In testing it proved fairly reliable even as I stumbled over some of my speech. Unfortunately, this feature uses online processing for full functionality, which becomes a double shame when considering that Google could likely have made it an Android-wide feature instead of a Pixel 11 series exclusive.

Another feature Google has implemented is its Camera Looks feature. These let you snap photos with several different preset looks that handle photo processing differently, and you can make fine-tuned adjustments to each of the looks. Having an option like this certainly seems like a fine addition, though at a certain point simply shooting RAW and having the option to make whatever adjustments you want afterward might be the most sensible thing. And for casual photographers, this feature will probably feel like nothing more than simple filters.

The final big feature is Magic Capture, which basically lets you record a video carelessly and then will automatically scan through it and pull out photos (the idea being that you can then pay more attention to the real world and less to the phone). It appeared to do what it promised and served as a good way of grabbing a selfie with the rear sensor, too.

Pixel 11 Pro – Gaming and Performance

Google isn’t out here making a name for itself where raw performance is concerned. Its Tensor chips are not in that game, and the Tensor G6 is no exception. For raw speed and gaming performance, it’s much better to turn to something like the OnePlus 15 or RedMagic 11 Pro. The Pixel 11 Pro has plenty of muscle for day-to-day operation and doesn’t feel slow in general use. Gaming is another matter.

The Pixel 11 Pro got pretty toasty compiling shaders for Neverness to Everness over the course of about 10 minutes. From there, running the game at Balanced settings, it managed generally smooth visuals but had frequent hitches, especially in combat when using special moves or switching characters. With the game's Cinematic settings, hitches were even more frequent while simply wandering the game world. From a cold start, the game still hitched a bit while playing, and after 10 minutes, the phone had gotten a bit hot to hold and was hitching even more in gameplay.

Frankly, I was surprised it ran the game at Cinematic settings at all. The phone is still using a PowerVR GPU, which in last year’s model was a huge step backward for the phone’s performance. This go-around, it’s still certainly not a great gaming phone, but it’s passable.

Google finally bumped up the base storage of the phone to 256GB, though where all of the Pixel 10 Pro models had 16GB of memory, the Pixel 11 Pro starts out with just 12GB. It’s a shortcoming you probably won’t feel in practice, but it may start to hurt down the line.

The Pixel 11 Pro wields an unimpressive 4850mAh battery, which is a hair smaller than the prior phone’s 4870mAh. It’s still good for all-day use, but two full days may be a stretch depending on how heavy a user you are. The phone tops up at 30W over a wired connection, but can also use Wireless Qi2 charging at 25W, which is a solid step up over the 15W of the Pixel 10 Pro.

Unfortunately, during the initial testing period, my usual suite of benchmarks was unavailable for the phone, so I’ll have to circle back with results. That said, based on the gaming performance and history of Tensor chips, it's a safe bet that results will fall well behind phones running the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.

Pixel 11 Pro – Cameras

The Pixel 11 Pro made a few tweaks to the Pixel 10 Pro’s camera system, opting for slightly larger sensors in a few cases but sticking to the same resolutions and apertures all around. The biggest change was in the telephoto sensor, which got a much bigger sensor that’s a boon for shooting in darker conditions and contending with its already narrow aperture. Here’s what the Pixel 11 Pro packs:

• 50MP Wide, 1/1.3" sensor, f/1.68, Laser AF, OIS, EIS
• 48MP ultrawide, 1/2.51" sensor, f/1.7, 123-degree FOV
• 48MP telephoto, 1/1.95" sensor, f/2.8, 5x optical, OIS, EIS
• 42MP Selfie, f/2.2, 103-degree FOV

Unsurprisingly, the camera system is an all around potent mix. Up close, the main sensor is happy to capture a ton of detail with natural colors and a satisfying background blur. The tele sensor can step in for close ups as well and makes for some crisp details on subjects that might not usually make it easy to get so close.

For larger subjects, the main and ultra-wide work well together. Colors are consistent between the two, making different shots of the same subject appear like a cohesive set. The wide aperture of the ultra-wide also helps avoid running into too much noise when shooting in darker environments.

The telephoto sensor proves a fairly powerful tool, but not nearly as capable as the marketing claims. Out to 10x, the zoom still looks great and gets in pretty close on far off subjects. After that, it starts to show softness and heavy digital correction, so 30x starts to look flat and beyond that becomes simply artificial. This is made perfectly apparent by zooming into far off signage. Looking at a parking sign far enough to require the max zoom level showed me reimagined visuals and an alien script. The phone saves both the original snap and the enhanced versions at this distance, and though the originals can be quite blurry, they can still have better detail than what the enhancement invents. One car license plate in my shot clearly had a “9” showing in the original photo, but the enhanced version obliterated it.

Selfies look decent, but I found them a little bit softer than I would have expected from a 42MP sensor. The focus seemed soft, and the fine detail of my facial hair was simply blurred together rather than standing out.

Mark Knapp is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything electronics and gaming hardware. He has over 10 years of experience in the tech industry with bylines at PCMag, Reviewed, CNET, and more. Find Mark on Twitter @Techn0Mark or BlueSky at @Techn0Mark.

Google has announced this year’s crop of Pixel phones, the Pixel 11 line, and they’re more powerful, more expensive, and of course, your old Pixel 10 or earlier cases may not fit them. Even if they do, the buttons might not line up or your old case might be a little worse for the wear these days. So, it’s time to hunt for a new outer shell for your phone.

Right after a phone launches is usually the hardest time to get a case that you can count on – most third-party case makers haven’t gotten their hands on the phones, and even if they kept an eye on leaks, there’s the chance that what they make won’t really fit right.

It’s different with Google, which seems to be a little looser with its phones’ designs. The company has partnered with some of the most well-known third-party manufacturers and is already selling their cases on the Google Store. As such, all of my preferred cases come straight from there, this time.

The Best Pixel 11 Phone Cases Right Now

Best Google Pixel 11 Case

Google Pixelsnap Case

Most Fashionable Pixel 11 Case

Dbrand Pixelsnap Grip Case

Most Rugged Pixel 11 Case

OtterBox Commuter Series Case

Best Leather Pixel 11 Case

Bellroy Leather Case

Best Clear Pixel 11 Case

Dbrand Ghost Case

Best Case for Pixel 11 Pro Fold

Google Pixelsnap Case for Pixel 11 Pro Fold

Drakong, a sub-brand of Hyperkin, today announced the PixelByte controller range, a new line of collectible controllers themed after Attack on Titan. These cute, keychain-sized controllers look a bit like a pixelated NES controller paired with one of several characters from Attack on Titan, and will be available via a somewhat unconventional manner: a blind box.

Despite their size, layout, and distribution method, the PixelByte controllers are fully functional, compatible with PC, Switch 1 and 2, iOS, Android, and other Bluetooth devices. They offer approximately 12 hours of wireless gameplay, and are rechargeable via USB-C.

Each PixelByte blind box contains one of seven possible variants, pairing a unique colorway with a chibi charm of Attack on Titan characters like Eren, Mikasa, Levi, and Hange. There's also one rare chase variant that's found at a lower rate than the rest.

I can't say that a blind box is the most idea way to buy a controller, so I doubt the PixelByte line will make our list of the best controllers for PC or Switch, but I could see the appeal from the collectible side of things. I'm personally not one for blind boxes, but my Pokémon card collection will attest that I'm very familiar with the concept of cracking open physical loot boxes at the prospect of scoring something rare and shiny.

The PixelByte controllers are available for pre-order now for $24.99 per box.

Bo Moore is IGN's Senior Manager of Tech. You can find him online @usebomswisely.

YouTube has revealed a new view count update that will see videos accumulate views the instant someone hits play.

The Google social media platform announced it would rework how it tracks data for individual uploads with posts across social media today. Starting August 24, 2026, views will be counted the very moment someone clicks on a video, or, as YouTube puts it, "from the very first frame."

This new view count strategy will be implemented across all formats across the globe. It falls in line with how the platform's short-form content branch, Shorts, works, which was taken into effect last year.

Starting 8/24, views will count the moment a video begins to play (w/ no minimum watch time) across all formats (VOD, Shorts, & Live). We’re standardizing views to reflect creators’ true exposure across YouTube, making it easier to show their value to brand partners.

This update…

— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) August 17, 2026

"Historically, we’ve used multiple view counting systems across different formats," YouTube explained. "However, we’ve heard that creators want to eliminate this metric confusion and accurately understand their true exposure, which is why we’re making this update!"

As noted by The Verge, Instagram and TikTok also tally views in a similar way. YouTube has toyed around with how it measures engagement in the past, but usually leaves a lot of guesswork for creators looking to keep track of who's watching their video and how long they're watching them. The change almost certainly exists to help amplify counts site-wide, but those who use the platform most may not notice much of a change under the hood.

Google's full message said original analytics and performance metrics will continue to exist within what it calls its Engaged views banner. From YouTubers with tens of millions of subscribers to the still-budding channels, YouTube says "this change will not impact creators’ earnings or how they become eligible for the YouTube Partner Program." That means creators will still earn based on "Engaged" content, and many have already taken to X/Twitter to voice their concerns about how the change could completely devalue views.

A partir do dia 24/08, as views do youtube vão contar ASSIM que o espectador der play num vídeo.

Isso significa que basicamente todos os vídeos que passarem na FY de um usuário de celular vão contar, por causa do auto play

Não consigo ver como isso vai ser bom pros criadores + https://t.co/J5HlJGbcUH

— WendyJr | Streamer e YT (@WendyJr_) August 17, 2026

I get why they’re doing it though. I had a brand decline working with me because “you only get 100,000 views, this other guy is half your price and gets 70,000 views”

The “other guy” was getting those views on X, where “views” count API responds with your post ID.

— Theo - t3.gg (@theo) August 17, 2026

Not sure I like this. How it was before is views didn’t count unless someone reached the first 5-15 seconds of a video. That helped combat clickbait getting rewarded.

It also inflates videos cause of auto play. Idk maybe it will end up not mattering at all. https://t.co/wRQYb9mPeq

— Mightykeef (@MightyKeef) August 17, 2026

"From 8/24 onwards, you’ll start to see the new view metric applied wherever views are shown on YouTube (which means creators will likely see their total view counts increase faster moving forward)," YouTube's message continued. "We hope that having metric parity across all formats gives creators a clearer picture of their overall exposure and makes it easier to confidently express their true scale and value to brand partners and sponsors!"

For more, you can read about a recent change to how the company handles AI-generated content. You can also learn about the price hikes that recently hit its YouTube Premium model.

Photo credit should read CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

Thanks to AI data center demand, reasonably-priced GPUs are still hard to come by. Maybe not, though, if you find the right seller and don't ask too many questions. Like maybe the two men accused of harvesting Nvidia RTX 5080s from in-room gaming PCs of esports hotel rooms in China, replacing them with less-powerful RTX 3060s, then reselling the stolen ones for around half their market value, according to VideoCardz.

The two might've gotten away with the alleged caper, but on July 18, they lost power to their room and requested to be moved to a different unit. Later, an electrician investigating the issue found pry marks on the room's gaming PC case. Staff soon discovered the GPUs had been replaced in both rooms.

Local police arrested the two in the Guangbutun computer district on July 20 with two unsold, apparently stolen GPUs still in their possession, wrote Tom's Hardware in its own story about the heist. The outlet says police reported the suspects had admitted to carrying out the same crime four other times, and adds that "the total loss reported from their GPU-swapping spree was 80,000 Yuan, or almost $12,000."

According to Tom's, other victimized hotels didn't catch on because the PCs "ran just fine, and there were no complaints from later customers, so there was no reason to inspect them up close."

Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they call him) who has covered technology, gaming, and entertainment steadily since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom's Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently, The Verge. Inside of him there are two wolves: one that thinks it wouldn't be so bad to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who also thinks this, but more strongly.

Streetwear brand Supreme has unveiled its Fall/Winter 2026 collection, and it features a collab with Analogue Pocket, the fantastic retro handheld that lets you play your Game Boy cartridges on FPGA-based hardware.

Also in the collection is a Supreme-branded Dyson Vacuum, Kodak Super-8 Camera, and a galvanized steel mailbox, all bright red, of course.

The Analogue Pocket collab actually comes in two variants: one the standard Supreme red, as well as a second that's plated in 24K gold. As for the underlying Analogue Pocket itself, it's the same high-end retro handheld we loved in our review, which my colleague Seth noted "solves the limitations of classic handhelds with a familiar but distinct style you don't find with emulation-based solutions."

The Pocket uses an FPGA solution, short for "field-programmable gate arrays," which means it replicates the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance's original electronic hardware "at the transistor level." In other words, games are played on actual hardware, rather than being emulated, so every game – from Kirby Tilt n' Tumble's original motion controls to Perfect Dark's AAA-powered rumble pak – runs exactly as it was originally intended.

"Simply put," Seth said, "it's the best possible way to enjoy your handheld gaming collection."

The standard edition Analogue Pocket retails for $239.99, though it comes in limited quantities and typically sells out quickly whenever units become available. There's no word yet how much the new Supreme-branded variant will cost, but it will undoubtedly be even more limited edition. The 24K gold version, even more so. Is it practical? No. Do I care at all about Supreme? Not a bit. Do I still want it? Absolutely.

For other, likely less expensive ways to play your games on the go, be sure to check our guide to the best handheld gaming PCs.

Bo Moore is IGN's Senior Manager of Tech. You can find him online @usebomswisely.

Valve may have revolutionized mobile PC gaming with the Steam Deck, but more and more handheld gaming PCs keep coming to market, giving it some stiff competition. There are even handhelds out there like the Legion Go S that use Valve's handheld operating system but with more powerful hardware. Microsoft isn't sitting on its hands, either. The company teamed up with Asus to launch the excellent ROG Xbox Ally X, which debuts a new Xbox Full Screen Experience that should be making its way to other handhelds within the next few months. (Hopefully, Microsoft also takes that time to iron out some of the kinks with the new UX.)

TL;DR – These Are the Best Handheld Gaming PCs:

Rather than dealing with the bulk of a gaming laptop, handheld gaming PCs keep far more compact dimensions, making it easier to play from just about anywhere. Even though these devices are obviously significantly smaller than a gaming PC, it doesn’t mean they’re underpowered. Many handheld gaming PCs are packing the performance prowess to cruise through AAA games like Cyberpunk 2077. If you get sick of playing on a smaller screen, a great Steam Deck dock works seamlessly with most handheld gaming PCs so you can hook up to your gaming TV.

While we’re in the midst of a handheld gaming PC revolution, we've gotten our hands on a good chunk of these highly-capable devices. Below are the current four we deem worthy of consideration right now.

1. Asus ROG Xbox Ally X

The Best Handheld Gaming PC

2. Lenovo Legion Go S (Z1 Extreme, SteamOS)

The Best SteamOS Handheld Gaming PC

When the Lenovo Legion Go S first came out in February 2025, it was a hot mess. The configuration Lenovo initially released was bogged down by the weak Z2 Go processor, which didn't pair well with Windows. And because it was both running Windows 11 and had 32GB of memory, this weaker handheld was just as expensive – if not moreso – than the original Legion Go that preceded it. But Lenovo has righted the ship by launching the Go S with the Z1 Extreme and SteamOS built-in.

This system is still expensive. You're looking at $829 to get this model, but that's only a bit more than the Asus ROG Ally X, which ended up being slower, if only by a bit, in my tests. When I reviewed this new Lenovo Legion Go S, the SteamOS-powered handheld beat out the Ally X in synthetic benchmarks by as much as 9%. That's not bad, considering that handheld had the performance crown before this system came out.

The elephant in the room is the Steam Deck. Even three years after its release, it's still an incredible and popular handheld, and it's not hard to see why. It's easy to use and it's literally half the price of the Go S. But not only do you get a higher resolution display with this Legion Go S, you also get as much as double the performance. I was able to get a solid 60fps playing Baldur's Gate 3, and that's something I straight up couldn't do on the Steam Deck. Whether or not that's worth the higher price tag depends entirely on what you're looking for.

A great handheld gaming system is about more than just raw performance. It also needs to be comfortable to use, and despite the sytem being one of the largest I've used – and I've used a lot of them – it's extremely comfortable. The Lenovo Legion Go S has rounded edges that give you something to hold on to, and the textured finish makes it harder to slip out of your hands.

The Go S also has one of the most beautiful LCD displays I've seen in a while and proves that OLED isn't the only way to get a great picture in 2026. It's not quite as colorful as the Steam Deck OLED, to be fair, but it still made any game I played on it look awesome.

3. MSI Claw 8 EX AI+

Best Handheld Gaming PC for No-Compromises Performance

4. Asus ROG Xbox Ally

The Best Budget Handheld Gaming PC

5. Lenovo Legion Go 2

Best Gaming Handheld With an OLED Screen

Upcoming Handheld Gaming PCs

We will probably see a Steam Deck 2 at some point, but Valve has repeatedly said that it's waiting for a "more significant" generational lift to launch its sequel. Given that the Steam Deck is now more than 4 years old, we could see a new device launch sometime next year at the earliest, but considering the ongoing RAM crisis, it seems more likely that Valve will wait until the underlying components are more affordable before moving forward with Steam Deck 2. We'll see!

Handheld Gaming PC FAQ

Should I buy a handheld gaming PC or a gaming laptop?

Depending on how you want to game and what games you want to play will determine whether you should grab a gaming laptop or handheld PC. Handhelds score higher points in longevity, battery life, optimization, portability, and thermals. But handhelds are only designed to play games up to a certain specification. Gaming laptops cram in the latest GPU, CPU, and RAM, likely sacrificing battery life, thermals, and price. However, some are absolute beasts ready to take on even the most graphically intensive games. Laptops offer more functionality when it comes to editing and other work.

Check out our guide on the Steam Deck vs. gaming laptops for more information.

How does the Switch 2 compare to the Steam Deck?

On spec, the Switch 2 delivers better performance than the Steam Deck. This is mostly thanks to the newer GPU architechture, and the inclusion of DLSS, which helps upscale games using AI. Check out our in-depth comparison to find out more.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

Over the last five years or so, handheld gaming PCs have become one of my favorite ways to play games. It helps that they’ve been getting better pretty much every year, thanks both to more powerful hardware – shout out to the Intel Arc G3 Extreme – and both Microsoft and Valve improving their respective operating systems.

If I was able to totally ignore costs, I’d straight up just say that the handhelds that have come out in the last year are incredible, almost across the board. The Xbox Ally X brought a controller-friendly UI to Windows for the first time and the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, thanks to its incredible innards, is able to play games at higher than minimum settings with a framerate that doesn’t give me motion sickness.

But I can’t ignore the price, can I? Even though the Xbox Ally X somehow hasn’t gone up in price (yet), the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ will set you back $1,799. And for that price, the calculus gets really hard to justify.

Let’s go back in time a little bit. Before the Steam Deck came out, I dabbled with the Nintendo Switch a little bit, but for some reason, most of Nintendo’s games have never really clicked with me. So most of the time I’d buy games I already owned on Steam, like Shovel Knight and Stardew Valley, just for the privilege of taking them on the go with me.

The Steam Deck changed everything. Yeah, it was a little bulkier, but that made it more comfortable in my hands, and I no longer had to re-buy my favorite games just to play them on a handheld. The only real problem was that if I wanted to play a graphics-intense AAA game, I’d have to scale down the resolution and the settings to the bottom, while still living with 30-40 fps a lot of the time.

It was still worth taking my indie games with me, and it even led to me just playing more indies in general, because I could be more flexible with how and when I was playing them. But as time went on, new handhelds to rival the Steam Deck started hitting the market. The original ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go made 1080p gaming a bit more viable, but they were still based on the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme. And while that chip had more graphics cores than the Steam Deck, it was still built on the RDNA 3 graphics architecture, which was already a year old when the Z1 Extreme first came out.

Then, at CES 2025, Lenovo showed off the Legion Go S, which would end up being the first non-Valve handheld officially powered by SteamOS. At Lenovo’s booth, I crossed paths with Valve engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais, who told me for the first time that Valve was waiting for a “true next-generation” chip for the Steam Deck 2. At the time I thought the Z2 Extreme would have been it, but that certainly didn’t end up being the case.

The first handheld I tested with the Z2 Extreme was the Legion Go 2, and it was actually a little bit disappointing. It was faster than the Z1 Extreme, but AMD decided to release its “next-gen” handheld chip with an RDNA 3.5 GPU, rather than opting for RDNA 4. That did lead to better battery life, but there were several tests where the Legion Go 2 was slower than the ROG Ally X, despite the latter’s older chip.

At this point, it was clear I needed to brace myself for a long stretch of incremental growth. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – after all, that just meant that people would be able to get their hands on slightly older handhelds without losing much in the way of performance. But at CES 2026, Intel announced Panther Lake, its new mobile CPU lineup with incredible integrated graphics. From the moment I got my hands on the Asus ZenBook Duo, I knew I wanted that chip in a handheld.

Luckily, the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ came out about 6 months later with the Arc G3 Extreme, which is basically a Panther Lake chip with some of the CPU cores disabled. That handheld blew every Z2 Extreme-powered device out of the water, but unfortunately it also came out during the ongoing RAM crisis, when gaming hardware has grown more expensive than ever across the board.

I’m not sure how much the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ would have cost in the before-times, but its predecessor, the MSI Claw 8 AI+, launched for about $899 before seeing its price jump up a few times in 2025. The 8 EX AI+ does wipe the floor with its predecessor, and even has a much better software experience, but I’m not sure it justifies more than double the price.

But at the very least, the Claw 8 EX AI+ can at least claim that it has the absolute best performance in a mainstream handheld gaming PC. That alone might convince people with deep enough pockets to make that investment, at least for now.

In a similar story, in recent months the Lenovo Legion Go 2 exploded in price too. Lenovo’s OLED-strapped handheld now costs $1,999 on Best Buy, even more expensive than the Claw 8 EX AI+ despite its weaker performance. You can find Lenovo’s handheld on Best Buy for $1,334 as an open-box model, but that’s with the weaker non-extreme AMD Ryzen Z2.

It’s not just the fancy top-end handhelds that have been going up in price, either. I just knocked the incredible Steam Deck off my list of the best handhelds for the first time since it came out in 2022, because it just got too expensive. Valve raised the price by up to $300, so you now have to spend $789 at minimum to get your hands on a new, non-used one. That’s just not worth it, at least in a world where the non-X Xbox Ally still costs $599.

Asus’ two Xbox handhelds are the only bright spot for handhelds right now. Whether you have the budget for a $600 handheld or a $1,000 one, the Xbox Allies are the only decent deal right now. But I can’t shake the feeling that Asus is eventually going to raise the prices on those too. Asus has already raised the price in some regions, according to Windows Central, even though the US is exempt so far.

Just like with the Steam Machine, RAM makes up more of the cost of a handheld gaming PC than a more powerful rig, just due to the lower cost of the chips. If the cost of 32GB of RAM goes from $150 to more than $400, that’s going to raise the price on an $800 handheld more than it would a $3,000 tower with an RTX 5080. We’ve already seen the Steam Deck’s demand crumple after Valve raised the price, and while I haven’t seen any data on the Lenovo Legion Go 2, I can only imagine that’s slowed down as well.

Before the prices started going up, something like the Steam Deck was appealing as a secondary device, that’s certainly how I used it. But once you start nearing a thousand bucks, it’s only natural to expect something with a bit more oomph to it. Now, with prices being the way they are, more powerful hardware is also getting more expensive, so the difference between a handheld and a tower hasn’t actually changed all that much. But, it sure seems like it has, and that feels like Kryptonite to handheld PCs in general.

It’s tempting, then, to just hide my head in the sand until the RAM crisis abates. But I’m increasingly skeptical that prices are going to go back down. The big three RAM companies have already reportedly sold through their manufacturing capacity for 2027, so memory prices aren’t going to let up any time soon. So I’m stuck in this weird place where I’m super excited to see what future handhelds are able to do, but terrified at how much they’re going to cost. Because if they get too expensive, we might get to the point where the Lenovos and Asuses of the world no longer deem handhelds viable.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

Satechi has released the ChargeView 240W Desktop Charger, a compact desktop charging brick with six USB-C ports that outputs enough power to keep your favorite power-hungry handheld gaming PC, gaming laptop, smartphone, and more topped up all at once. It even has a screen for those who want to see just how much their gear is drawing.

That 240W is a measure of the device’s total output, not any one USB-C outlet, but Satechi’s new charger can still push out 140W from either of its first two front-facing ports. That’ll charge a 16-inch MacBook Pro at full speed and is more than enough to max out the capacity of any handheld gaming PC you throw at it. The 240W Desktop Charger can also offer up to 100W on its second two ports, and up to 30W on the last two. Altogether, it has more ports and faster charging than most of IGN's current favorite USB-C chargers, both in general and for specific devices like the Steam Deck.

Satechi says its display can show the real-time power draw from each port, and that the charger “auto-detects each device’s requirements and balances output across active ports, keeping everything charged efficiently, quietly, and without overheating.” The product comes with a stand that lets you both rest the Desktop Charger horizontally or vertically, with a slight tilt so it’s easier to see the display. The charger comes in one color, Space Black.

The ChargeView 240W Desktop Charger costs $150 and is available now at Satechi’s website and Amazon.

Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they call him) who has covered technology, gaming, and entertainment steadily since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom's Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently, The Verge. Inside of him there are two wolves: one that thinks it wouldn't be so bad to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who also thinks this, but more strongly.

Made By Google 2026 has ended, and it was a weird one this time around. Google had revealed all the devices super early in the day, and then the event brought Trevor Noah on stage to interview various Google folks to talk about the new devices.

We of course got the whole Pixel 11 lineup, with the Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro and XL, and the Pixel 11 Pro Fold. Those were joined by the Pixel Watch 5, new Pixel Buds and the Pixel Tag. The latter is Google's take on the Apple AirTag, and I'm honestly just surprised that it took this long for Google to launch something like that.

The phones, the watch and the Pixel Buds will be launching on August 20, but you can preorder all of it right now. The Pixel 11 starts at $899 for the basic model, $1,099 for the Pro and $1,899 for the Fold. The Pixel Watch 5 starts at $399 for the 41mm edition, and the Pixel Buds 2 Pro start at $229, though they are on sale right now for $189.

Made By Google 2026 Live Blog

(All times are in EST)

7:15 pm: It seems like the show is coming to an end. Trevor Noah and Rick Osterloh have come back on stage to close things out.

7:11 pm: Alex Cooper has introduced Jake Webski to talk about switching to a Pixel. Google has worked with Apple to make swapping between an iPhone and a Pixel easier. You'll be able to bring over your photos and your group chats. I personally like setting up my phone from scratch every time, but I recognize that I'm a bit weird in that.

7:07 pm: It seems like the big feature here is a Gemini-powered trainer, which can help you plan out quick workouts or answer quick questions. That'll carry over to your watch and to the Pixel 11, which should stop distractions.

7:03 pm: So, we already heard about how the Pixel Watch 5 can help spot health problems, but Noah Pressler and athlete Chari Hawkins have taken the stage to talk about how this smartwatch can help you train. Apparently the heart tracking on the Watch 5 is as accurate as a chest strap.

6:59 pm: Sandeep Waraich and cardiologist Jacqueline Shreibati have taken the stage to talk more about the Pixel Watch 5's health features. This is the first and only watch to track insulin resistance. That could help people spot prediabetes earlier, which is also huge. The watch will also be able to track blood pressure trends.

6:53 pm: Well, this seems actually useful. Google brought Daniel Durant on the screen, and rather than just text to speech, the phone is using the phone's camera to read sign language, then has a text-to-speech read that input back. That's actually huge. I can't actually read ASL, so I don't know how accurate it is, but this seems like a genuinely useful accessiblity feature.

6:49 pm: Jöel Yawili is here to talk about even more Gemini. Trevor Noah asked if Gemini can 'fix' typing, and, of course we have Gemini-powered voice to text now. It does seem to cut out a lot of the filler, which is helpful, but I'd be worried about it cutting out details I don't want it to. That's not to mention that these things always work better on stage than they do in real life, so, like, another thing I'll need to test myself.

6:40 pm: Stephanie Scott has taken the stage to talk about AI. Apparently she's going to show us 'real magic.' They're showing off the same AI feature that we've seen a hundred times, you can use Gemini to scan your text messages and then pull info from other apps so that making plans is slightly easier. This will be possible on the Pixel Watch as well.

6:38 pm: Now they're in Brooklyn Bridge park showing off the AI camera features. The image quality seems impressive, but it's another thing I'd need to test to see if it actually holds up. Right now, it seems like we're just getting promotional clips showing off the Pixel 11's AI features.

6:33 pm: They brought on DJ Peggy Gou to show off how the HiLight works, and well, it's just a blinking LED on the back of the phone. "Sometimes it's the simplest features that are the most powerful." Sure.

6:31 pm: Trevor Noah just introduced Toni Urban, who works on Google sensors. This will probably be about HiLight. You'll be able to assign people one of five colors, so when they're calling you a little light will show up on the camera bar, to let you know that person is calling. There will also be a seperate color or something that'll let you know Gemini is listening. I kind of want to know more about the latter, but they kind of skipped over it.

6:28 pm: The Pixel Buds Pro 2 are here, with a 'huge upgrade' to noise cancelation. They do look a little bulky, but that probably comes down to the blown up image on the screen.

6:24 pm: Quick charging is getting a boost too, Edward Shi claims that 15 minutes on the charger will get you 15 hours of battery life. That's something I'd like to actually test before I'm willing to take it as gospel.

6:22 pm: Edward Shi has taken the stage to talk about the Tensor G6 processor and the Pixel 11 camera. There's a telephoto lens with 120x (optical?) zoom. There's also a new "instant night" mode for the camera that should boost low-light performance. That's always the biggest problem I have with phone cameras, so I'd love to see if the low-light performance actually matches the claims here.

6:20 pm: The Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold is apparently the most resilient Google foldable yet. Google is rating the folding mechanism for 83 million folds, which is probably more than you'll ever actually put it through. Isabelle Olsson also claims that the back cover of the phone is 'nearly impossible' to crack, which, I'll believe it when I see it.

6:15 pm: The Google Pixel Watch 5 is here, and apparently Stephen Curry helped design a special edition band. I'm not sure what's different about it. They spent like 30 seconds on the watch before transitioning it to the Pixel Tab, which is Google's take on the Apple AirTag. Hopefully they go into a little more detail on these devices at some point.

Google Pixel 11

6:14 pm: The Pixel 11 camera bar is thinner than ever, which should help it fit in your pocket better. It should also stop the phone from wobbling when you put it down on a table – something I'm sure we're all super familiar with.

6:11 pm: Finally, it seems like we're going to see the phone. Noah introduced Isabelle Olsson, who will be introducing the Pixel 11 lineup. There are four phones, the Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro, Pixel 11 Pro XL and Pixel 11 Pro Fold. We'll probably see the actual phones eventually. Olsson claims that Google has the coolest phone colors ever, and some of them actually do look pretty nice, but of course all the colorways have fancy names.

6:10 pm: We're 10 minutes into this event, and the entire thing has been yapping about how awesome Gemini is.

6:06 pm: According to Osterloh, over a billion people are using Gemini. I typically forget its even there, but absolutely let me know in the comments if you're actually relying on it for anything. Trevor Noah called it a GLP-1 of technology, which, ugh.

6:04 pm: Trevor Noah is sitting down with Google's Rick Osterloh, talking about what's new for Android. And of course he's talking about how we're in a new era of tech where everything is getting easier to use. I'm not sure if Gemini's features make things any easier to use, but I might just be a curmudgeon who's used to doing things manually. Apparently tapping your phone is a lot of work.

6:02 pm: Trevor Noah kicked things off joking about a (thankfully not real) feature that'll randomly share your internet history with your friends and colleagues. I mean, it's kind of a thing if by "friends and colleagues" he meant Google Gemini, but whatever.

6:00 pm: And, here we go! The show is starting off with more music and a reel of all the guest stars. It almost feels more like a TV show than a tech presentation, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Trevor Noah just took the stage, behind a big red couch.

5:46 pm: The stream has officially transitioned from a still image to a bunch of moving pictures and generic music. Obviously the Pixel 11 Pro is front and center, so expect that to be the star of the show. Although, there have been little flashes of the Pixel Watch 5, and with how big wearables have become, there will probably be quite a bit of time on that one.

5:45 pm: Fifteen minutes to go!

5:30 pm: Really, one of the things I want to see most is Google figuring out a way to avoid throttling on its new chipset. My pet peeve, when it comes to phones, is that in long, sustained workloads, performance just tanks after a few minutes. Just looking back to the Galaxy S26 Ultra earlier this year, performance dropped by as much as 30% in a long 3DMark workload. That's kind of just a side effect of phones getting thinner, but there's so much opportunity, especially in the age of on-device AI.

5:11 pm: Ok, Made by Google starts in a little under an hour. This is an odd little event, because Google already kind of revealed all the hardware it's going to show today, so I can't help but wonder what's actually going to be shown. There are definitely some features, like HiLight that I want to hear more about. After all, a little light on the back of your phone doesn't seem like it's necessarily a headline feature. But, who knows, maybe its a bit more sophisticated than it seems.

1:11 pm: Google has actually announced the entire lineup from today's event. We're not just getting the three phones, but also the Pixel Watch 5, Pixel Buds 2 Pro and 2a, along with a Pixel Tag. The Pixel Tag seems incredibly similar to Apple's AirTag, and will help you keep track of anything they're attached to. Again, Google will reveal more about how all of these products actually work later today, so stay tuned. But, for all of them, I expect a heavy dose of Google Gemini.

12:30 pm: It looks like the rumors about 'HiLight' were real. Basically, on the Pixel 11 Pro, there's a light that lives next to the camera that'll let you know when one of your favorite contacts are calling you or if you are talking to Gemini. I'm sure Google will talk a little more about how it actually works during its presentation later today, but right off the jump it reminds of the tiny extra screen on the LG V10 about a decade ago. It might be a minor feature, but it does seem genuinely helpful, especially if you keep your phone face down on the table in front of you when you're out with friends or something.

11:15 am: The event starts in about seven hours, and it does seem like Google will be packing the thing with a ton of hardware. But it seems like Google has already made the Pixel 11 lineup available for preorder. Right now you can order the Pixel 11 Pro, Pixel 11 Pro Fold and Pixel 11 on Google's website for $1,099, $1,899 and $899 respectively. Depending on how well Google's new Tensor G6 chip performs, the new foldable could give Samsung and Motorola's recent foldables a run for their money.

How to Watch Made By Google 2026

If you want to watch Made By Google yourself, you can do so on the Made For Google YouTube channel. The stream will go live at 6pm EST / 3PM PST. It should be about an hour long, and it's going to be absolutely packed. Google teased the event last week, including appearances from actress Ayami Nakajo and athlete Stephen Curry. Plus, the whole thing will be hosted by Trevor Noah, which should be a step up from the typical stuffy tech executive that usually presents this kind of thing.

What to Expect

Just like with every iteration of this event, Google is going to be revealing its next generation of phones. Obviously, we can expect the Pixel 11, the Pixel 11 Pro and the Pixel 11 Fold, but Google will also be showing off at least one smart watch.

But no matter what hardware Google has to offer, it's likely that Gemini is going to be a constant topic throughout the presentation. Whether you're into AI or not, pretty much every smartphone maker has made AI a central feature. The Pixel 11 will be no different, and I expect at least one or two new AI features to make it to the phone.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

When I first saw the Steam Machine at Valve's office back in October 2025, the company told me that it'd release the files to 3D print new faceplates for the mini gaming PC. And while there have been plenty of 3D-printed faceplates out there, a marble specialist has cut a Steam Machine faceplate from the same marble Michelangelo used.

I spotted these faceplates on Reddit, where user /u/GinoWT showed off three faceplates he made from different stones. The first of these was Statuario from Carrara, which is "the same quarry basin Michelangelo worked from," according to the thread. He made faceplates from Sahara Noir (with a beautiful gold stripe going across it) and Roman Travertine as well.

Each slab is 5–6mm thick and bonded onto a 3D printed faceplate. That's super thin, but according to the post, that's to keep the weight down and prevent cracking. The result looks incredible. The Statuario one especially pops, contrasting really nicely off the black chassis of the mini PC.

If you really want to get your hands on one of these faceplates for your own Steam Machine, you can. It looks like /u/GinoWT is preparing a small batch to sell. They've thrown together a website where you can enter your name and email, and he'll send along the pricing and shipping info whenever the marble plates are ready.

The biggest question I have about these faceplates is whether or not they negatively impact Steam Machine temperatures and performance. I did reach out to /u/GinoWT to ask if he's tested thermal performance, and he told me he's been running the Steam Machine daily with the faceplate attached and hasn't noticed any problems. He also said he'd be running a stress test with the stock faceplate against the marble one to see if there's a difference. If that happens, I'll update this article with that information.

Even though the Steam Machine was quite a bit more expensive than Valve was planning, I love all the cool things I've seen people doing with it. As more units make their way into the wild as reservations are filled, I can only imagine the incredible things people are going to do with it.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

Twitch has rolled out a new "feature" that trains Amazon's generative AI content models on its users' channels. The setting can be disabled, but it's turned on by default.

"Allow your channel content to train generative AI content models at Amazon," reads the setting, which is buried in your user settings and is enabled by default.

To disable the setting, navigate to the Security and Privacy tab of your Twitch user settings and uncheck the "Training for Generative AI" toggle. This will disable Twitch from using your channel content to train Amazon's AI models on that content, but does not opt you out of Amazon using your channel content for other uses, per the Twitch Privacy Notice.

While it's easy enough to disable, having this setting turned on by default is a slap in the face for users who don't want anything to do with generative AI. Notably, the top post on the Feature Requests section of Twitch's User Voice forums is an ask to make all AI features optional and opted out of by default. That post has more than 13,000 votes and 4,000 comments in support, compared to around 250 votes for the next three highest-voted suggestions.

In a stream (on Twitch, of course) discussing the new setting, Twitch Chief Product Officer Mike Minton responded to criticism by saying the quiet part out loud. "If it was opt-in, nobody would opt in," Minton said. "So it's going to be on by default."

This comes as generative AI features (and the slop they churn out) seem to be worming their way into every aspect of our digital lives. Things have gotten so bad that Linkedin recently rolled out a feature to report content that carries the stink of AI slop.

Meanwhile, the datacenter infrastructure buildout to support and run these AI tools is the primary cause of the ongoing RAM crisis that has driven up the price of gaming hardware. AI is a bad deal for gamers that we didn't ask for – if we did, companies wouldn't have to make their sloppy "features" enabled by default.

Bo Moore is IGN's Senior Manager of Tech. You can find him online @usebomswisely.