Living your best digital life means being able to switch seamlessly between work and fun. That’s why a gaming laptop needs to do more than play games. It also needs to be powerful enough to edit videos and reels, attend online classes, and stay on calls with friends. The powerful Lenovo Legion 5i laptop lets you multitask and switch between work and play without sacrificing performance or frame rates.

For the gamer who does more than game

The Lenovo Legion 5i’s Intel Core Ultra processors and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 make it easy to relax, work, and play online. Do your homework without a hitch while a video renders in the background. Lenovo's AI Engine monitors your laptop's performance, meaning you just need to think about your grades and your high scores, not dropped frames.

If you're a gamer and a streamer, you can count on the Lenovo Legion 5i to let you do both on the fly thanks to its RTX 50-Series graphics card. Expect seamless transitions between your tasks, whether you're gaming, chatting, browsing, or studying.

Your laptop, your look

The Lenovo Legion 5i has tons of customization options that let you put your own mark on your machine. Express yourself with sleek aluminium top covers, available in deep Eclipse Black or fresh Glacier White. The Legion TrueStrike keyboard ensures every keystroke reads instantly and correctly. When you're done gaming or finished your homework, sit back and bask in the RGB light show you programmed yourself.

The Lenovo Legion 5i’s features intersect to bring you the single laptop you need for school, gaming, video editing, and life’s other demands. Stop relying on separate machines for work and play. Carry your uncompromised digital life in one powerful gaming laptop.

Take note of the following, my fellow fans of fine tech (and maybe take that note with a generously included S Pen). Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra launches in Australia on 22 October 2026, starting at $2,299. Its headline features include a 14.6-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display, a MediaTek Dimensity 9500 processor, an 11,600mAh battery and the aforementioned S Pen. Samsung is also bundling software offers advertised at more than $539 in combined value, making the tablet worth a closer look for anyone considering a premium device for work, study or creative projects.

The Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra is built around a mighty simple idea: give folks plenty of screen real estate and software flexibility to tackle several jobs, thus removing the need to go full octopus and constantly reach for other devices. Its remarkably thin design helps make this large display solution more portable, while multitasking tools and AI features broaden its appeal beyond streaming and browsing.

Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra: Australian price and specifications

The Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra will be available in Australia from 22 October in Grey, with Wi-Fi and 5G configurations.

Please refer to Samsung.com.au for full product and feature details, terms and conditions.

The starting price covers the entry configuration, with higher storage options available for people who wish to squirrel away larger collections of media, games or creative projects on the tablet. You can even super-size and use the microSD card slot to expand storage, too.

See Samsung Australia's Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra page for local purchasing details.

A 14.6-inch display in a 5.1mm design

The Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra’s defining feature is its 14.6-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display. With a 120Hz refresh rate, 2960 x 1848 resolution and advertised peak brightness of 1,600 nits, the screen is designed for everything from detailed creative work to high-definition entertainment.

Samsung’s Vision Booster technology adjusts the display’s brightness and contrast to suit surrounding lighting conditions. That should be particularly useful when moving between indoor workspaces and brighter environments.

Despite the generous screen dimensions, the tablet measures just 5.1mm thick and weighs 692g in its Wi-Fi configuration. The large display gives users room to keep multiple applications visible, while the slim chassis makes the device easier to slip into a bag between meetings, classes or trips.

An 11,600mAh battery is rated for up to 23 hours of video playback under Samsung’s stated conditions. The tablet supports 45W charging, although the charging adapter is sold separately. Its also been tested to IP68 lab test standards.

Galaxy AI and productivity features

The Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra runs Android 17 with Samsung’s One UI 9 interface, bringing Galaxy AI features and multitasking tools into the same workspace.

Multi Window supports three simultaneous app views. That means users can follow an online tutorial, take notes and consult reference material without repeatedly switching between applications. Note Assist can help summarise and organise information, while Gemini provides AI assistance for research and everyday tasks.

Gemini Notebook offers another way to organise material, bringing together information and helping users work through their notes and reference content. Together, these tools are intended to make the tablet useful for more involved tasks, rather than simply providing a larger surface for mobile apps.

Samsung DeX adds a desktop-style interface with a taskbar, resizable windows and drag-and-drop support. Combined with an optional keyboard accessory, it provides another way to approach document work and multitasking. As to whether it can replace a laptop, I reckon that’ll depend on the applications and workflows involved. But it sure seems viable, generally speaking.

Alternatively, if productivity is the very last thing on your mind, the Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra features powerful internal components tailored for high-end mobile gaming. Driven by the 3nm MediaTek Dimensity 9500 processor, it effortlessly runs demanding titles like Genshin Impact at a smooth 60 frames per second.

Up to 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM prevents background lag, while an advanced 3D vapor chamber ensures excellent thermal management during extended play. Backed by that expansive 14.6-inch 120Hz Dynamic AMOLED 2X display and a massive 11,600mAh battery, what’s here should deliver the sustained power needed for an immersive, top-tier portable gaming setup.

S Pen, Photoshop and more than $539 in included value

The Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra includes an S Pen in the box, valued at $129 in Samsung’s offer breakdown. The stylus supports handwriting, annotation and drawing without requiring a separate purchase.

Eligible new devices also qualify for a collection of software offers with a combined advertised value of $539.90:

● S Pen: $129, included in the box.

● Google AI Pro: Six months, valued at $197.94.

● Adobe Photoshop premium access: Four months, valued at $143.96.

● Notability Plus: Six-month trial, valued at $69.

Photoshop provides image-editing tools, including AI-assisted features, while Notability offers multimedia note-taking, audio synchronisation, transcription and handwriting conversion. Those additions are particularly relevant to users who plan to create, annotate or organise information on the tablet.

Pro tip: The advertised value isn't equivalent to a permanent cash saving. Eligibility and redemption requirements apply, some offers are limited to new subscribers, and subscription charges may apply after promotional periods unless cancelled. So best you check the terms before activating each offer.

Where to buy the Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra in Australia

The Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra launches in Australia on 22 October 2026, from $2,299. It will be available in Grey through Samsung Australia's, as well as retailers: Amazon, JB Hi-Fi, The Good Guys, Harvey Norman, Bing Lee, Officeworks and Costco, and carriers: Telstra, Optus and Vodafone.

For buyers who need a large display, stylus input and flexible multitasking in a slim tablet, the specification sheet gives plenty to consider. I’d say the key decision is how much use you'll make of those productivity and creative features, particularly at this price. Personally, it’s making a lot of sense to me right now.

Visit Samsung Australia for local availability and configuration details.

AMD FSR 4.1 has been a massive improvement for Team Red's AI upscaling tech, but it was previously only available on Radeon 7000 and 9000 graphics cards. But today, AMD has announced that the technology will now be coming to more devices like the Xbox Series X.

Just like DLSS, FSR 4.1 uses AI to take a lower resolution input image and upscale it back up to native resolution, but because it's more computationally expensive than FSR 3, support for lower-powered hardware has been slow. However, thanks to the ongoing partnership with Sony (dubbed Project Amethyst), AMD has been making huge strides to make it run better on weaker devices.

AMD announced the widened support in a video, and will bring the upscaling tech to RDNA 2 graphics cards like the 6800 XT, along with Z2-powered handhelds like the Xbox Ally X20. What stopped AMD from bringing this model to these older and less-powerful chips was that it was harder to run, which eliminated some of the benefit of even using upscaling. But, according to AMD SVP of Gaming and Graphics Jack Huynh, AMD was able to trim down the model to make it efficient on less powerful hardware that might not have the same suite of AI accelerators that RDNA 4 graphics cards do.

This comes just a couple weeks after AMD and Sony did the same exact thing with PSSR 2, trimming it down to a new model, dubbed QSSR, for the base PS5. QSSR does offer much better upscaling than FSR 2-based solution the PS5 had before, so I can only imagine this slimmer FSR 4.1 will have a similar effect for the Xbox Ally X.

But more importantly, this update will also allow FSR 4.1 to come to the Xbox Series X for the first time. The new upscaling model isn't out yet on Xbox, but AMD says it is 'coming soon,' although it's not clear what 'soon' means there. Hopefully, Microsoft is able to get it into a patch before Grand Theft Auto 6 launches next month.

After all, there have been plenty of concerns that Rockstar's next crime epic is going to be extremely hard to run for the base consoles, and a better upscaler just means better performance and improved image quality. But even if this FSR 4.1 update misses GTA's launch date, Xbox is going to continue working with AMD to bring upscaling to its consoles.

In the same video Xbox CTO Scott Van Vliet confirmed that AMD's next-generation FSR 'Diamond' would be coming to Project Helix. And now that Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has confirmed that Helix would be a whole 'family of devices,' I hope that this fancy new upscaling finds its way to all of them, no matter how powerful they are.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered was excellent when it came out, bringing the beloved RPG to the modern era, but just like many other games running on Unreal 5, it was a technical mess. However, a fan has used Claude to create a performance mod that improves the game's performance.

When The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered came out back in April 2025, it was absolutely plagued with performance issues – something that's unfortunately become pretty normal these days. But, more than a year after launch, the performance issues are still there, with patch 1.2, the most recent on Steam, coming out all the way back in June 2025. And even after that patch, there were still significant performance problems.

It's little wonder, then, that the community would try to take matters into their own hands. Reddit user LTSharp posted on the ChatGPT subreddit, with a video showing the unpatched game running side-by-side with their patched version. And, while the raw increase to the frame rate isn't huge, LTSharp's patch greatly reduces the stutter, going from 66 hitches in the unpatched clip to just 11 in the patched version of the game.

In their post, LTSharp says one of the reasons for the rocky frametimes was that "the game was reconstructing the whole lighting of a scene in each frame even when nothing was changing, which was obviously a huge strain on CPU that had to parse all this work on a single thread."

They then ran Claude Opus 5.5 alongside Oblivion Remastered and tasked it with identifying the problems, and after two weeks, ended up with a patch. Crucially, this mod wasn't created by just entering a quick prompt into Claude, hitting enter, and then calling it a day. LTSharp describes the process as "two weeks of intense work" with a lot of trial and error involved.

It seems like the biggest source of the improved performance is spreading the work to more CPU cores. At any given moment in LTSharp's video, CPU utilization jumps from 35-40% to 50-60% utilization, with around two extra threads (workers) engaged. And given that these samples were recorded on a rig with a 5800X, there's probably some more room for improvement there.

AI usage is one of the biggest controversies in gaming right now, but this seems to be a decent use of the technology. This was just a person who was disappointed that after "upgrading from 2070 Super to 9070 XT, the game continued to run poorly, with low fps and stuttering," and decided to use Claude to fix the problem, despite not having any background in software development. Luckily, they've posted their work on GitHub, and if someone who's relatively inexperienced was able to reduce stutters by this much, I imagine there may be developers who can create forks of this project that might be able to eliminate them altogether.

This project is in contrast to some of the most egregious uses of the technology recently, like Epic, which recently delayed a Star Wars shooter to implement an AI-first policy where 'no hand-written code' is allowed. Likewise, an Xbox Business Analyst recently went on Twitter and ranted about how the game industry is 'pretending' to not use AI, and even made bold claims like, "If you're a game developer refusing to believe that AI has a place in your future, you should not be in the business of being a business."

Strauss Zelnick and Hiroki Totoki, the heads of Take-Two Interactive and Sony Group Corporation, agreed that AI won’t replace humans in the entertainment business during a talk at the Paley International Summit in New York City on Tuesday morning. They did, however, explain that they do see the technology as a valuable tool.

“I don’t think an AI could replace humans because, particularly in the entertainment field, I think creativity is quite important. Creativity is for humans, not AI,” Totoki said. “How to use the technology profile is important. Of course, I encourage my people to use AI in a certain manner, but at [the] same time we try to keep the rights and rights holders and creators and artists.”

“One of our division heads has said to his team, ‘You’re not gonna be replaced by AI, but if you’re not careful you’ll be replaced by someone who knows how to use AI,’” Zelnick said. “I’m fond of saying AI is a collection of datasets, compute, and large language models. That’s what it is. And datasets, by definition, are backward looking. That’s all they are. And creativity, at its best, is forward looking. [...]"

“When the first Grand Theft Auto was created, we thought the phrase ‘Grand Theft Auto’ wouldn't turn into what it’s turned into today,” Zelnick continued, then launching into an anecdote of his stint as president and chief operating officer of 20th Century Fox (now called 20th Century Studios).

“One of the biggest movies I was responsible for, Home Alone — it was completely unexpected. It went into production at Warner Bros. and they put it into turnaround four days into production, which [...] never happens. [...] Everyone thought it was a disaster. And It turned out to be the highest grossing comedy of all time. So if hits are unexpected, data sets aren’t gonna get you there, no matter how fluent they are.”

AI use in the production pipeline for games, movies, and TV is a hot-button issue. Just this week, a business strategist at Xbox posted (and then deleted) the "truth that nobody wants you to know" about how "gaming is the only industry pretending not to use AI," and Steam users implored the company to ban AI slop from the next Steam Next Fest. Last week, Epic Games revealed that its new store launcher was vibe coded. But Biddy Blas? AI could never.

Gaming peripheral maker Razer has announced a trio of products to mark Xbox's 25th anniversary this Fall. The Xbox 25th Anniversary limited-edition collection consists of three translucent-green versions of flagship Razer products: an ergonomic mouse, a mechanical keyboard, and wireless earbuds. All three are available now.

The lineup, which, funnily enough, doesn't include an Xbox gamepad, nevertheless harkens back to the translucent emerald green color seen in a special-edition original-Xbox console and the original-Xbox "debug kits" that us media folks used to play in-development game builds. Here are the descriptions of each product, straight from Razer:

• Razer Basilisk V3 Pro 35K, Xbox 25 Anniversary Edition ($179.99 MSRP): Wireless ergonomic mouse with the Focus Pro 35K Optical Sensor Gen-2, configurable HyperScroll Tilt Wheel, 13 customizable controls, HyperSpeed Wireless, and Chroma RGB.
• Razer BlackWidow V4 75%, Xbox 25 Anniversary Edition ($209.99 MSRP): Compact hot-swappable mechanical keyboard with Orange Tactile Switches Gen-3 pre-loaded, a dedicated Xbox key for Game Bar, two-side underglow with per-key Chroma RGB, and a magnetic leatherette wrist rest.
• Razer Hammerhead V3 X HyperSpeed for Xbox, Xbox 25 Anniversary Edition ($119.99 MSRP): Wireless earbuds with HyperSpeed Wireless 2.4 GHz, Bluetooth 5.3, SmartSwitch, up to 35 hours of battery, IPX4 water resistance, and surround sound on Xbox and PC.

Microsoft itself is celebrating the Xbox's 25th anniversary with translucent green hardware of its own: a special-edition Xbox Series X console (that comes bundled with the perfectly good Halo: Campaign Evolved) and a matching controller. The actual anniversary arrives next month on November 15.

We've known for a while that Valve is working on a Steam Deck 2, but it's waiting for a chip that'll provide a "true next-generation" experience. Now, though, a potential APU for the handheld has appeared online, sparking speculation that work is ramping up.

The benchmark was posted on OpenBenchmarking, and shows an AMD APU codenamed 'Gainsborough,' with 6 cores and 12 threads, along with 24GB of LPDDR5 memory. However, while the the CPU side of the leaked chip is much more powerful, with 50% more cores, there is no information about the GPU, with even the graphics architecture remaining a mystery.

It's not the first time that the Gainsborough chip has appeared online. Earlier this month, Moore's Law is Dead spotted import documents for the chip, using the same 'GBR' abbreviation as the leaked AMD engineering sample. It is possible that this won't be the chip used in the final version of the Steam Deck 2, but the original Steam Deck APU was codenamed 'Aerith,' then the Steam Deck OLED got the 'Sephiroth' chip, so there's clearly a theme going with AMD's codenames for handheld chips.

At first glance, the performance on the leaked Gainsborough chip doesn't look super impressive, clocking in with a FurMark score of 3,508 points, compared to 3,323 points on the original Steam Deck, according to TechPowerUp. However, the new chip was tested at a lower 768p resolution than the Steam Deck's 800p, which likely makes up for some of the difference. Plus, this is an engineering sample likely running on very early drivers, so there's a lot of room for improvement before this chip ever sees the light of day — if it even does.

These benchmarks don't really say much about how the Steam Deck 2 will actually perform when it actually comes out, either, but their existence suggests Valve's next handheld is closer than I thought. But, if we're at the point where Valve is just trying to nail down the drivers before it makes an announcement, I could see the handheld launching in the next year or two.

Whenever the Steam Deck 2 comes out, it'll launch into a gaming hardware market that's vastly different than when the Steam Deck first came out in 2022. Valve has said that the ongoing RAM crisis hasn't changed its plans for the sequel, so I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being much more expensive than the original handheld.

Valve has also had to learn the new hardware landscape the hard way, launching the Steam Machine and Steam Frame at prices a lot of gamers have balked at. Valve has even had to raise the price of the Steam Deck so much that it makes it hard to recommend in the face of newer, more powerful handheld gaming PCs.

An Xbox staff member went viral this week for taking to social media to tell "the truth that nobody wants you to know": that the video game industry is "pretending" to not use AI.

Xbox Business Strategist, Brandon Stirrup, tweeted to say he'd used AI to create a "little bad game" after just three hours of work. He then used that as a springboard to talk about AI in gaming, and how the technology is more widely used than the industry lets on.

In his posts, which have been preserved on Reddit, Stirrup insisted that "gaming is the only industry pretending not to use AI," and, "If you're a game developer refusing to believe that AI has a place in your future, you should not be in the business of being a business."

Stirrup added: "Look if I'm fired tomorrow it will be because I told you the truth that nobody wants you to know. You can make a game with a simple prompt and yes you can make custom, tailored games. Everything you want in a game is right there for the taking, for better or worse.

"I'm happy to take the hit if it means hundreds at Xbox can stop pretending that they're not using AI. It's time to accept and move forward."

"I love Xbox and Microsoft and I have spent 10+ years proving this," he added. "My goal is to get this over with so we can move on as a company, despite the fact that some will persecute me for this: we use AI, just as all companies do in 2026."

The comments sparked a flood of responses on social media, which a source at Xbox indicated led to Stirrup disabling his X / Twitter account.

AI is the hottest topic in the industry. Fortnite developer Epic Games has already declared that code for its upcoming Star Wars shooter is going to be entirely written by AI, with the game director even declaring "no handwritten code" for the game. Epic boss Tim Sweeney has spent much of the last week trumpeting AI on social media, even as some hit out at the company's plans and its "vibe-coded" Epic Games launcher.

Capcom also had a presentation recently where it presented 'REX' as a way to help the RE engine continue to mature, using, you guessed it, AI. However, the Resident Evil developer subsequently clarified that it would just be integrating AI tools to boost "the efficiency and productivity of the game development process," rather than using generative AI to create assets and code wholesale.

AI is also being increasingly used for decompilation and modding. There's been an entire wave of AI-assisted mashup mods on X / Twitter that continues to gain traction. Plus, AI has become such a big part of the decomp scene that it's forced at least one community focused on manual decompilation to go offline. Microsoft has responded to this wave of AI in the modding community by launching Xbox Labs, which aims to do a lot of the same things that the community is already doing, including porting games to browsers.

Perhaps more impactful — or damaging, if you're in the business of selling video game consoles — is the role of AI in jailbreaking hardware. Sony is currently facing the possibility of a PS5 jailbreak on the eve of the launch of GTA 6, which could, theoretically at least, open the door to people making Rockstar's game available on PC. Rockstar parent company Take-Two would likely take a dim view of the PS5's encryption if that were to happen.

As for Stirrup's claims, the only aspect of AI that game developers have meaningfully distanced themselves from by large is art and asset generation. As AI tools continue to mature, they're only going to be used in games more often. Heck, even Epic's Unreal Engine, which is used in every other game these days, has generative AI tools built into the UI. So, if this is the state of AI in gaming when developers are "pretending" to not use it, what will it look like when these companies stop "pretending"?

Steam Next Fest, Valve's festival for indie games and demos, started earlier today, and while there are usually a ton of low-effort games included, there seems to be more than usual this time around.

Browsing through the Next Fest, it's easy to spot plenty of games with art that looks like it was generated with a quick ChatGPT prompt. And now that Claude Opus 5.5 is out and has been at the center of the decompilation and mashup mod explosion that's been happening over the last few weeks, it's not surprising that there'd be a deluge of games that are either being promoted using AI-generated images or were just flat-out generated with AI.

Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of Steam fans who aren't exactly excited about having to dig through these AI games to find human-made material, with one user straight up begging Steam to filter out the slop. In a post on the Steam subreddit, user ScalesGhost wrote: "I've been looking over the Next Fest, and I really enjoy the Discovery Queue feature, I just wish I could personalize it a bit more. Specifically, I would like the ability to filter out all games that have AI-Generated content in them (after all, steam already requires you to disclose it), and also I'd like to exclude certain tags, e.g. Incremental Games."

Steam already has a robust tagging system, so this kind of filter wouldn't be a huge lift to implement, but Valve did cut down the amount of user-defined tags back in May. Iin order for that kind of filter to exist, Valve would have to add 'AI' as a tag.

ScalesGhost is far from the only person who's noticed the amount of low-effort submissions in this Next Fest. In another thread about how AI has "ruined Next Fest," user EmmaBooney said, "Yeah, noticed that myself. Usually I scroll through and look for interesting games... it's all AI slop and I dont want to participate."

Meanwhile, user aesoprowwy said, "Hopefully there is a significant drop in the engagement metrics due to the overabundance of vibe coded games being featured and steam implements some stricter guidelines for submissions."

Steam Next Fest being full of low-effort games is nothing new, however. Valve has long had a laissez-faire approach to curation on Steam, usually relying on the algorithm to boost popular games and bury the low-effort slop. And while this Next Fest does seem worse than previous events, most people are probably better off ignoring the event for a couple of days until the popular demos naturally rise to the top and most of the shovelware gets buried.

But this comes at a time when AI in game development is getting more common by the day. Just last week Epic delayed its upcoming Star Wars shooter in order to pursue an "AI-first" direction. Epic's CEO also bragged on Twitter last week about how the company has vibe coded the Epic Games Store launcher. Even Capcom seems to have embraced AI, using it as part of its REX program, which will reportedly help it continue to improve the RE Engine that has been used in some of the best games of the year, like Resident Evil: Requiem and Pragmata.

The PlayStation 6 hasn't even been announced yet, but little rumors pop up now and then that add speculation on what to expect from Sony's next-gen console. The latest is a shocking claim that the RAM and storage configuration of the console will cost more than the entirety of the PS5.

Today's rumor comes via a long thread about next-gen hardware on NeoGaf, where known leaker Kepler_L2 simply said: "RAM + NAND alone is over $680." This was in response to another commenter who optimistically hoped that the console would come in at around $680. But, if Kepler_L2's numbers are right, and you should take them with a grain of salt, there's little chance of that happening.

This isn't the first time that Kepler_L2 has shared the leaked manufacturing cost of the PS6. Back in March, elsewhere on NeoGaf, they suggested the BoM (Bill of Materials) for the PS6 would be $760. But, due to the ongoing RAM crisis, they amended that estimate by saying the cost has gone up by around $200 in June. That would leave an estimated BoM of $960, which doesn't take into consideration additional costs like R&D, marketing and shipping. Keep in mind, though, that Sony has yet to say anything official about the price of PS6.

However, while the presumed cost of the RAM and SSD are high, the rest of the console's hardware could be quite expensive, too. All of this speculation happened in a thread responding to previous speculation from Kepler_L2 that the PS6 would have a GPU with around 40 teraflops of compute performance, and Project Helix would be around 56 teraflops. Now, teraflops isn't the best predictor of gaming performance, but if these numbers are accurate, it would mean that the PS6 would be a little more than twice as powerful as the PS5 Pro, with a GPU that's roughly between the Radeon RX 9070 and Radeon RX 9070 XT.

For reference, the Radeon RX 9070 costs around $900 right now, due to ongoing price increases, but even at launch it was still a $549 part. Part of that cost is made up of the VRAM, which would be accounted for in Kepler_L2's $680 figure, but the GPU itself is still a huge portion of the cost. Sony would likely get a discount for buying in bulk, but the chips powering the PS6 are probably still going to add a couple hundred dollars to the equation.

I wouldn't be surprised, then, if the total cost of manufacturing the PS6 crosses the $1,000 or $1,100 mark. Sony has already suggested it won't sell the PS6 at a "significant" loss, so I doubt the company is going to slash hundreds of dollars off the price to move more consoles. So, if these leaked prices are accurate, I don't really see a world where the next-generation PlayStation sneaks in under $1,000, and we'd be lucky if we get it for under $1,200. I hope I'm wrong, though, I really do.

But even though the PS6 is likely going to be very expensive, the company has been working overtime filing patents for some wild technology that may find its way into the PS6. Just last week, Sony filed a patent with its own take on frame generation, and before that filed another patent that would let games use player behavior to train NPCs.

The company has also patented a technology that would turn your controller into an NFC card reader, and would use an AI agent to watch your console for hardware flaws, and deploy vibe-coded patches to fix problems before you even notice them.

But don't hold your breath on a release date for the PS6. Following Sony’s shock decision to kill video game discs on PlayStation consoles from January 2028, analysts predicted 2028 at the earliest, potentially the end of 2028.

Frame generation is established tech in games at this point. We already knew that Sony was looking at the tecnology for the PlayStation 6, but the company has filed a new patent that gives a better idea of how it'll work.

The patent, titled "Generation Super Sampling," (US-20260320740-A1), describes a mostly standard form of frame generation, where the model takes information from a traditionally rendered frame and then uses that information to generate an interpolated frame. The major difference is in how the model will be predicting how the frames will change.

DLSS frame generation works by taking rendered frames and then pulling motion vector information from the game engine. The suggested PlayStation model will also take input data from your controller to more accurately predict how you're going to be moving from frame to frame. The hope, according to the patent notes, is to limit the amount of latency or 'hitching' from frame to frame.

The patent also leaves the door open for multi-frame generation, which was introduced on PC with the RTX 5090 back in 2025. According to the patent notes, "In some embodiments, the predictions are not limited to an immediate next image in the image stream. The decoder system may be trained to predict any number of images before or after the input image."

It's hard to imagine why a console that'd presumably be attached to a TV needs to generate multiple frames, though. With PC gaming, multi-frame generation is only really useful when you're playing on a super-high refresh rate gaming monitor at 144Hz or higher. Even the TVs that do support high refresh rates are limited to 120Hz, which really limits the need for multi-frame generation. Still, having the option wouldn't be terrible.

My only concern with bringing frame generation to consoles is whether or not users will be able to turn it on or off at will. The nightmare scenario in my head is developers using it as a crutch, forcing it on to hit 30 or 60 fps in a game that'd otherwise be getting 15–20 fps. That kind of solution would introduce a ton of latency and visual artifacts, but then again, it's possible that taking user inputs into the frame gen pipeline could alleviate that issue.

Sony has been on a tear lately with its patents, and it really does seem like the company is building up to its next generation of consoles. Last month, it filed a patent that described an AI agent keeping an eye on your system and deploying fixes before you even notice a problem. Then, there was a patent that would implement an NFC reader into your PlayStation controller and would enable tap-to-pay. Because these are all only patents, there is a chance that none of these technologies see the light of day, but either way, the PlayStation 6 is turning out to be quite the interesting console to say the least.

It's no secret that Nvidia loves its AI, and fresh off of launching RTX Spark – the new chipset for Agentic laptops – the Nvidia app now has a toggle that'll let AI agents control it. The problem is that it's turned on by default.

Nvidia added the option in Nvidia App 11.0.9.565 on October 13. In that update's patch notes, it says, "Nvidia App includes a local MCP server (Model Context Protocol) that lets a compatible AI agent control the Nvidia App using natural-language requests. This means your AI assistant like Hermes, OpenClaw or Perplexity can see your installed games and apply optimal settings, or enable Shadowplay to record gameplay, all through simple conversation."

It's not terribly surprising that Nvidia has added this option to the Nvidia app; after all, it did just debut its RTX Spark platform, which is built entirely around AI agents, so it makes sense that the Nvidia App would let users hook those agents in. But the setting isn't exclusive to RTX Spark systems and shows up for anyone who installs the latest version of the app.

And, of course, some people are upset and worried about the security implications of letting an AI agent control their graphics cards.

Silent Hill: Ascension cinematic director Agustin Cordes tweeted about the update, saying, "PSA: Can confirm that the Nvidia app is automatically updating and has *enabled by default* a setting which allows AI agents to control the app with very permissive rights. Besides the obnoxious privacy invasion and lame AI features, it's a high security risk you may not want."

Meanwhile, a swath of fans quoted his post, like user TheAcidBurns3, who says, "Please pay attention to this. You do NOT want your graphics card being accessed like this!"

User DATGUYCOOP, who appears to be a cybersecurity professional, urged most laypeople to turn the feature off, saying, "Just gonna say turn this feature off. Trust from the cyber security man. If you work with AI agents, its a good way to add filtering and protections and secondary checks, but to the common folk, it adds a threat vector that is better off closed. Now, there [are] no reported exploits as of yet, but it's new and adds possible connector that could mayhaps do something later, so just turn it off."

The problem really seems to be that the Nvidia App update turns the setting on by default, which is almost a surefire way to get people to hate any given feature in a tech product. Nvidia isn't new to letting AI systems and agents mess with your graphics card; after all, the company revealed Project G-Assist at Computex 2024, which was essentially an LLM that helped you manage GPU settings like clock speeds, fan curves, and more.

I've reached out to Nvidia about the security implications of this new Nvidia App update, and will update this article if a response is given. But regardless of what Team Green says, it's unlikely that this option is going anywhere any time soon. So, if you don't want your GPU driver to have a door open to AI agents, either install your graphics driver manually or turn off the setting by going into the Nvidia App, hit Settings, then scrolling down to 'AI Agents and App Connections' and disabling 'Allow Agents to control Nvidia App.'

Last night, Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled a car that he claims can fly, followed by a short demonstration of its ability to go airborne — and it's hard to think of a Tesla vehicle that's sparked more online reaction since the Cybertruck.

The demonstration was held outside of a Texas SpaceX test facility, where Musk unveiled the car in front of a live audience. During that demonstration, Musk took to the stage, where he said, "We need an audience to prove it's not AI or SI, so you guys can tell people you saw it with your eyes," and that "you're going to see the results of what happens when you have a collaboration between the world's best car company and the world's best rocket company."

When the flying Roadster was revealed, it was remotely piloted to "make sure we don't kill anyone." The demo started off with the car facing a steep ramp, where it used suction to drive and park upside down, before eventually zooming up the ramp, jumping off, using rockets to right itself and land safely.

Turns out the future does have flying cars https://t.co/6fexPp6SXI

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 16, 2026

The car uses thrusters from SpaceX in the rear of the vehicle and along the bottom to "basically fly like a rocket." Musk admitted this is "not necessarily a safety-optimized car," which is likely why, earlier in the event, he claimed that it would be "long-term the only manually driven car that Tesla makes." Musk added that this new Roadster would enter production in 2028, but with something like this, I'd expect a number of delays, if it ever makes it to the street at all.

Regardless, the car has been blowing people's minds. Christopher Lloyd, who famously played flying car driver Doc Brown in the Back to The Future movies, took to X / Twitter to say: "Finally...flying cars." Meanwhile, other folks, like user CARN0N tweeted out highlight reels of all the stunts that Tesla pulled off with the prototype rocket car. Some have even compared it to Rocket League.

Highlights of all four stunts Tesla showed off with the new Roadster today. https://t.co/chP6QEuVMk

— Oli (@CARN0N) October 16, 2026

"Rocket League is just a video game"

Tesla engineers: https://t.co/iPzBNywL4p

— Spawn Wave (@SpawnWaveMedia) October 16, 2026

There is a healthy dose of skepticism, of course. Tech influencer MKBHD tweeted out his disbelief, saying, "They really just got on stage and said this newly designed 4,000+ pound car can do flips and go half the speed of sound (380+mph) and will ship in 2028. This is a prank, right?"

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman was impressed, even if he was a bit skeptical, posting: "Hard to think of a wilder product unveiling. Not sure how quickly drivers are going to be leaping over each other in traffic, but damn, this was a cool way to introduce Roadster to the world."

Only time will tell if this new flying Roadster will ever actually see the light of day, or if it'll even be street legal in most places when it does. Musk sure seemed hopeful that Tesla would be able to get it out the door and into customer's hands in the next couple years, but really, we'll just have to wait and see.

Photo by FilmPublicityArchive/United Archives via Getty Images.

Last year, Asus and Xbox worked together to launch the Asus ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X, and the latter is still one of the best handheld gaming PCs on the market right now. Not only is is great at playing games, but even amid the RAMpocalypse, the Xbox Ally X hasn't gone up in price and will still cost the same $999 that it did back in October 2025.

While the Xbox Ally X is an incredible little device, its relatively small display has been outclassed by the likes of the Lenovo Legion Go 2 and MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ — even though they're much more expensive. But Asus took the 20th anniversary of ROG to update the Xbox Ally X with an OLED display, and it takes the handheld to a completely new level.

With a better display and a new chassis comes a higher $1,299 price tag, but if you have the cash, that extra $300 is absolutely worth it.

Same Guts, Different Screen

The Xbox Ally X20 has a fancier looking chassis and a much nicer OLED display, but it's functionally the same handheld as the Ally X beneath the surface with no real difference in the specs. It's still rocking the AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme, along with 24GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. It shouldn't be too surprising that performance is largely the same, netting 42 fps in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p High settings with FSR set to Quality compared to 43 fps from the Xbox Ally X with the same settings.

In 3DMark, the performance also lines up. The Xbox Ally X20 gets 598 points in the Steel Nomad test, compared to 602 points from the original Xbox Ally X, which is within the margin of error. In Time Spy, the X20 gets 4,030 points, compared to 4,016 points from last year's model — also virtually the same performance.

Of course, because OLED displays are slightly more efficient than your standard LCD screen, the Xbox Ally X20's battery fares a bit better than its predecessor. Starting from 100% battery, I played Cyberpunk 2077 until the X20 died, and it lasted 2 hours and 43 minutes with all stock settings. That makes it the longest lasting handheld I've tested, beating out the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+'s 2 hours and 14 minutes, and the Xbox Ally X's 2 hours and 34 minutes. You're only getting an extra 10 minutes of battery life, so it's not exactly groundbreaking, but it is an improvement.

If you already have the Xbox Ally X, it's not worth upgrading to the X20 based on specs alone. But the star of the show is the improved OLED display.

OLED Makes a World of Difference

While I still love the original Xbox Ally X, the display has always been a problem for me. In a lot of games, especially as time has gone on, I've found myself needing to squint at the screen in dark scenes to make out what's happening. Likewise, in games like Monster Hunter Rise (which I've unfortunately found myself recently obssessed with), the original Ally X's screen isn't great at making the bright colors pop off the screen as well as an OLED display can.

For a long time, that led me to daily driving the Lenovo Legion Go 2, which has its own problems. I have pretty small hands, and there are times where I struggle to stretch my thumb to hit all of the buttons. Plus, with all the dials and buttons built into the Joy-Con-like controllers on the Legion Go 2, it's easy to accidentally hit something and trick the game into thinking you're playing with a keyboard and mouse, even for just a second. But because the screen is so good, I would just power through, and it's become one of the default ways I play games in bed, whether it's something that's running locally on the Legion Go 2 or streaming through Moonlight.

After spending a few days with the Xbox Ally X20, I've shoved the Legion Go 2 back into storage. The X20's screen is smaller, but it's much easier to hold for long periods of time, which completely equalizes it for me. Plus, the crystal-clear display makes it easier to see whatever's on the screen, so having less real estate there doesn't make much of a difference.

More Than Just a Screen

While the new OLED display is the highlight, the Xbox Ally X20 also has a new, partially transparent chassis that's evocative of '90s gadget design. It does look great, even if I prefer the simple black aesthetic of the original. The menu buttons are all gold now, which is apparently the standard color of 'anniversary' or 'celebration' editions of tech products, and other buttons, like the volume rocker and all the standard controller inputs, are black.

What's more interesting is the D-pad. Asus worked in a transforming D-pad that you can pull out and rotate to transform it from a classically defined pad with four directional buttons to a concave version akin to what you'd find on the Xbox Elite controllers. A lot of controller makers do offer this choice, but it's usually handled by having a removable D-pad rather than one that can transform. If you do have a preference for one type of pad, you can set it that way, but really, I've just been fidgeting with it because of the satisfying clicking noise it makes whenever you pull it out and rotate it.

The sticks have also been updated from the standard sticks on the Xbox Ally X to new TMR sensors on the X20. Day to day, that difference hasn't been noticeable for me, but it does mean that they should last much longer without stick drift. That's super important in a device where, if the controller breaks, you can't easily swap out the controller or its parts without taking the whole thing apart.

Unfortunately, It's Still Running Windows

Just like any other handheld, what really holds the Xbox Ally X20 back from greatness is the software. Windows 11 is still a pain to use with a controller, and while the Xbox Full Screen Experience does mitigate many of the problems, there are still some definite issues.

In the few days I've spent with the Xbox Ally X20, I've run into one specific problem over and over again: If I try to swipe up on the display to go to another window, the controller will bug out. It acts as though the Xbox button is being held down, which means every button press is read as a shortcut, either opening the keyboard, pulling up the task manager, or some other silly behavior. It's bad enough when I'm trying to scroll through my library, but when I'm trying to pull up a guide in a browser and swap back and forth, it makes the X20 unusable until I reboot the thing.

To be fair, the original Xbox Ally X had problems with the Full Screen Experience when it launched, too. But that was when it was brand new, and none of the problems were as toxic to the experience as making the controller essentially non-functional. I've been able to get around these problems with the X20's UI by avoiding using the touchscreen as much as possible, but that's not something I should have to do with a $1,300 device, especially when it's essentially just a chassis and display upgrade.

This should be something that future updates should be able to fix, but in the meantime, I'd advise forgoing Windows and installing SteamOS or Bazzite, unless you really want to use it to play Game Pass games or Call of Duty.

The Price Is Right

Looking at what is essentially a PC version of the Nintendo Switch 2 and seeing a $1,299 price tag is going to turn some people off from the jump, but I'm still surprised that this handheld is as affordable as it is. The Xbox Ally X20 has nearly the same specs as the Lenovo Legion Go 2, except with 8GB less of RAM, but it costs $700 less at the time of writing.

It's not hard to look at other PC gaming hardware this year and imagine that Asus could have raised the price more, considering the much-improved display and the addition of TMR joysticks. Just look at the Steam Machine, which came in at $1,049, or even the 4-year-old Steam Deck, which Valve bumped up to $789 back in May. Compared to the Xbox Ally X20's Z2 Extreme, 24GB of RAM, and 1TB SSD, the Steam Deck's aging RDNA 2 GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD at nearly $800 doesn't seem like that great of a deal at all.

Crucially, Asus also isn't discontinuing the existing Xbox Ally X, which is still a $999 handheld despite the price increases that have hit pretty much every other tech product this year. I keep bracing myself for what feels like the inevitability that Asus is going to raise its prices, but that hasn't happened yet. Now Asus is launching a new version of the Xbox Ally X, but with an OLED panel and TMR sticks for $1,299. That upgrade could be a bit cheaper, but it's hard to think of a single handheld gaming PC with an OLED display that is a better value right now.

Have you ever looked at your phone and thought, "This should only play music, and it should be shinier?" Well, good news, Sony is bringing out a $5,899 Walkman, and it's gold plated. The NW-WM1ZM3 model will be available in January, but preorders are available now.

According to Sony, the gold isn't just there for show. According to the official announcement:

"The NW-WM1ZM3 is built around a precision-machined, gold-plated oxygen-free copper (OFC) chassis, engineered specifically to further elevate the sound quality of this flagship model. It features a 99.99% (4N) purity OFC main chassis and an OFC rear chassis. These are secured with screws featuring a low-resistance gold-plated treatment applied exclusively for this model, providing a stable ground connection that delivers powerful bass, an expansive soundstage, and smooth, extended high frequencies."

It also has 35 hours of battery life, a 5.5-inch screen, and uses Sony's DSD Remastering Engine for better sound quality.

This isn't Sony's first gold-plated Walkman; it released the NW-WM1ZM2 for $3,200 back in 2022. Those now go for around $1,500 on eBay, if you're looking for a bargain.

If you've been on gaming Twitter at all over the last month, you're probably aware of the massive wave of people using AI to rapidly decompile, port, and remix games. That wave of AI decomps has forced a massive decompilation community to sunset.

In a blog post, admin @encounter from decomp.dev, a community repository for people to track decompilation posts, cites a wave of bad actors who are using AI to essentially steal the hard work of programmers working on existing decompilation projects.

The act of decompiling games itself isn't new, and people have been taking games and trying to decompile them down to the source code for years. But what was once a herculean task requiring coding expertise can now be done with little effort thanks to new AI models like GPT 6 Astra and Claude Opus 5.5.

The blog post doesn't blame the models themselves for the surge of vibe-coded decompilations and ports, but rather claims that bad actors are taking existing projects and then using AI to rush them to completion. While there might be some developers who are open to people with a Claude subscription using their work to create, say, a browser port of Halo, that should be up to each developer.

The post says, "Every project works differently: some may not want to use AI for legal or ethical reasons, and others may be okay with AI, or use AI themselves, but do not want drive-by contributions from folks who have put no effort into making sure the contributions are good. The bottom line is that these kinds of hostile forks put little to no effort into meaningfully contributing to existing projects, tearing apart our community fabric."

As for the ports themselves, the blog claims that people are taking the code from hobbyists and forcing a barely functioning port out of them. "While community members put in the effort to decompile a game, opportunists have frequently raced to release a half-baked, barely-functional port from it," @encounter writes.

The blog post also mentions that this recent wave of AI decomps, recomps, and ports is muddying the waters of what the decomp community is trying to do. A lot of classical decomps are done out of the love of games and a desire to know how they work, but this trend of using AI to brute force working PC ports has caused a lot of people to rush into communities like decomp.dev looking for simple ways to create easy PC ports of games.

As for decomp.dev itself, the website will still exist, and users can use it to track existing projects, but @encounter is taking down the main index and disabling new projects.

Unfortunately, when it comes to Opus 5.5, Astra 6, and decomps, the cat is out of the bag, and it's unlikely that one decomp repository going offline is going to meaningfully stop this trend. We've seen everything from making Minecraft playable on X/Twitter to modders shoving Minecraft and Elden Ring together. There have also been a lot of browser ports, with games like Halo: Combat Evolved and Grand Theft Auto 5 being briefly playable on Chrome before those games' respective publishers predictibly brought them crashing down.

Either way, it's a shame to see a community built out of the love of programming essentially die off because a bunch of people with Claude subscriptions are using game developers' work as a starting point and finishing it with AI.

If you care about raw throughput when picking a microSD Express card, SanDisk’s officially-licensed microSD Express Card for Nintendo Switch 2 may be the one to beat. I’ve been testing one for the last week, and in almost every test I threw at it, it outdid IGN’s current budget pick for the best Nintendo Switch 2 microSD Express card, the Samsung P9 Express.

The real question is whether that’s even worth paying for. MicroSD Express cards are already very fast compared to the older microSD ones still used on every gaming handheld that’s not the Switch 2, and it’s not even close. SanDisk’s card is demonstrably faster in many ways than competing options from PNY and Samsung, but unless you’re transferring game files back and forth between it and your Switch 2, you’re really not going to notice. Faster is better, but there are other things to consider, including price.

SanDisk offers its card in 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB capacities. I’ve found 512GB to be the sweet spot, giving you three quarters of a terabyte overall when you factor in the console’s internal 256GB storage. But SanDisk’s cards cost more than similar options from PNY or Walmart’s Onn brand.

Performance: Throughput

When you’re looking at the specs for a microSD Express card for Switch 2, you can safely ignore the main throughput numbers that most manufacturers like to promote. In the case of SanDisk’s card, that’s 880 MB/s reads and 650MB/s writes, which is faster than almost all the other cards I’ve tested! (The only one rated higher is the PNY one, at 890MB/s and 750MB/s, respectively.) But that number refers to the sequential read figure, and as my testing showed, is a poor reflection of actual performance during the random reads and writes.

See, video games aren’t monolithic files; they’re packages containing countless smaller files so the process of transferring them is constantly starting and stopping, slowing things significantly. How well a card performs there depends on how it handles these herky-jerky transfers.

Getting a handle on a microSD Express card’s Switch 2 throughput means timing file transfers between it and my console in docked mode. And in that, SanDisk’s card proved super capable. For instance, it reached 94 MB/s when writing Mario Kart World, currently a 22GB game (versus 21.9GB when I tested for the Samsung P9 Express before) to the card. It was actually slightly slower when it came to moving games back to the Switch 2’s internal storage, only mustering 91MB/s.

That played out the same way for every game I tested. It averaged 105MB/s when I transferred Resident Evil 4 to the card and just 80MB/s on the way back to the console, and I measured 95MB/s to the card and 85MB/s from it when moving Super Smash Bros. back and forth. The 8.9GB Donkey Kong Bananza was the fastest one; it took just over a minute to write the 8.9GB game to the card, making its throughput 122MB/s. (It averaged 88MB/s when I sent it back to internal storage.)

Despite yielding slower reads than writes, SanDisk’s card still outperformed most other cards I’ve tested in most cases. Samsung’s card put up a higher 96MB/s when I transferred Resident Evil 4 from it to my Switch 2 but otherwise ranged between about 1MB/s to 12MB/s slower on other games. The PNY card put up mostly similar read speeds, but managed closer to half the writes of the SanDisk option when it came to write speeds. That could be a difference of minutes on larger files — Mario Kart World took over seven minutes to write to PNY’s card, something that only took about four minutes with SanDisk’s. Basically, if you find yourself shuffling games on and off your Switch 2, the SanDisk microSD Express card could save you real time.

Performance: Load Times

Things equalize where it’s most important: actual loading times for games. Measuring these, I found that the SanDisk card looked almost exactly the same as both the PNY and Samsung cards I tested before. Donkey Kong Bananza took 21 seconds to go from choosing it on the Switch 2’s home screen to its title screen, just like those cards. Mario Kart World averaged 19.4 seconds, or a tenth of a second behind the PNY card and about two seconds faster than the Samsung P9. It got me into The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom nearly a full second faster, at 8.5 seconds, than either of those cards, though.

It’s clear that SanDisk’s officially-licensed Switch 2 card is at least as good as the other high-performing cards on the market, so you won’t be disappointed. It’s still slower than loading games from the Switch 2’s internal storage for the most part, but the difference is negligible – most games only load a fraction of a second faster from the Switch 2 itself than from microSD Express.

The iPhone Duo, Apple's first foldable, is already an incredibly expensive phone, rolling in at $1,999 to start. While the buy-in price is high, it's also going to be extremely expensive if it breaks.

Ahead of the iPhone Duo's release next week, the foldable's repair costs were found by 9to5Mac, and they're staggering if you don't have AppleCare+. They range from damage on the glass back of the phone costing you $199 to inner screen damage costing $999 to repair. Apple will apparently also charge up to $1,499 to fix "other damage," though it's not clear what exactly that means.

All of these prices will be drastically lowered by having AppleCare+. Because the iPhone Duo is such an expensive and complicated device, anyone dropping the cash to buy one should seriously consider bundling AppleCare with it. I'd even go further and suggest picking up an iPhone Duo case on top of that.

As scary as these high repair prices look, Apple basically skipped the era of fragile foldables. Back when the first Samsung foldables were coming out, they were notoriously prone to damage, with displays that had gaps when folded, allowing particles of sand to get in there and wreak havoc on the inner screen. You could even peel the outer layer of the display off, a problem so bad that Samsung actually had to get around by putting out a statement telling people that the outer display layer was not a screen protector.

To Apple's credit, the iPhone Duo probably won't be quite as fragile as the foldables of yore, but it is still a phone with plenty of moving parts, which can always lead to unforseen damage. But we probably won't know exactly how durable it is until it actually makes its way into people's hands later this month. There's also a chance that the Duo's unique display aspect ratio will make it one of the first foldables that's actually good for gaming.

The Steam Frame came out a month ago, and while it's one of the best PCVR headsets out there, its lenses weren't quite as high-quality as some of its competitors. However, it seems like Valve might be working on a mid-generation refresh with OLED optics.

According to SteamFrameHub, which dug through some of the source code for the Steam Frame kernel, the OS has references to a different Steam Frame with OLED optics, code named 'Plano.' Take this with a massive grain of salt, of course. But if it's real, the Plano headset would have largely the same specs as the existing Steam Frame, just with OLED panels with a per-eye resolution of 3,552x3,840, compared to the 2,160x2,160 pancake lenses found in the Steam Frame.

A higher-resolution OLED display would do wonders for the Steam Frame, especially for anyone using it for PCVR, rather than trying to play standalone games. Those better lenses would come a much higher price, though; as SteamFrameHub notes, the leaked optic specs line up nicely with the lenses found in the Samsung Galaxy XR headset, which starts for around $1,799. However, that headset launched before the RAM crisis kicked off, so a Steam Frame that matched its specs would likely be at least a bit more expensive.

Just like the rest of Valve's hardware this year, the Steam Frame was supposed to kick off a new era of accessible PC hardware, fueled by SteamOS at its center. However, because of an ongoing RAM crisis that won't be ending any time soon, the impact has been greatly diminished. Still, there are at least some people who seem to be buying the Steam Frame and the Steam Machine, as they're both still completely sold out at the time of writing.

Because Valve is still working on getting through the reservation list and waitlist for the Steam Fame, it's safe to assume that even if a Steam Frame OLED is a thing that will actually exist, it probably won't come out for quite a long time. The real question then, is whether or not that'll happen before Valve finds the perfect chipset that'll make the company want to make a Steam Deck 2. Just like with everything else Valve, we'll simply have to wait and see.

Xbox controllers are already the default option for a whole range of devices, from the Xbox itself to gaming PCs and tablets. But Microsoft has just announced the Nano Controller, a smaller and cheaper Xbox controller.

The Xbox Nano controller is essentially just a smaller Xbox Series X controller, and while Microsoft's blog doesn't share exact measurements, it is "about 5 inches" long and weighs 3.5 ounces, which is much smaller and lighter than the existing Xbox controller. The Nano Controller is also more affordable, coming in at $49.99, rather than the $69.99 that Microsoft typically charges for a controller. It's available to preorder now.

But while the Nano controller will be compatible with Xbox consoles, the focus here is on other devices like smart TVs, laptops, and any other device that, until recently, Microsoft would have claimed to be an Xbox. To that end, Microsoft is teaming up with Samsung to bundle the new Xbox Nano controller, along with two months of Game Pass with "select Samsung TVs" over the holiday season.

According to Microsoft's blog, the company is also working on a deal with Meta to include the Nano Controller, along with a Game Pass subscription to new Meta Quest owners, but it doesn't sound like that deal is quite set in stone. Still, Microsoft is targeting a holiday release for that, too.

Of course, the compatibility will stretch even further than just Samsung TVs and Meta Quest. Becuase the controller has both the standard Xbox wireless connection, along with Bluetooth, the Nano Controller should work with pretty much any device that supports Bluetooth. So, you could use this to play Fortnite on your iPad, if you're so inclined.

But while the Xbox Nano controller is Microsoft's first foray into mini controllers, it's far from an original concept. Companies like CRKD and 8BitDo have been selling mini controllers for years, and the selling point is the portability. With a controller this small, it's incredibly easy to slip it into a bag and take it wherever you go, without taking up too much space or adding a lot of heft to your bag.

This isn't the only thing that Microsoft's controller team has been working on. For months, there have been leaks suggesting that the new Xbox Elite Series 3 controller is right around the corner, and might even fix some of its predecessor's compatibility problems.

The Xbox Nano Controller will be available starting in November, and you can preorder it now. But as for the partnerships with Samsung and Meta, we'll likely just have to wait until those companies announce more details as the holiday season approaches.