Announced late last year alongside the new Steam Frame headset and the Steam Machine gaming PC, Valve also unveiled the next-gen and highly anticipated Steam Controller. All three devices were set to debut in Q1 2026; however, the memory and storage crisis led Valve to delay the launch of its new hardware lineup to sometime in 2026.

It's a shame because the Steam Machine is viewed as a potential disruptor in the gaming space, potentially kickstarting a new type of compact all-in-one SteamOS-powered gaming PC, similar to how Valve's Steam Deck changed the gaming handheld landscape. However, according to a new post from Valve insider and data miner Brad Lynch on X, Valve could be prepping to launch the Steam Controller sooner rather than later.

The post indicated that Valve received a "large quantity" of "Wireless PC Controllers" in the US last week, which one would presume to be the new Steam Controller. So now the question becomes: will Valve sit on a stockpile of Steam Controllers as it waits to launch the Steam Machine and Steam Frame sometime later this year (which is not a guarantee given current component costs), or release the Steam Controller early?

ASUS has officially announced the new TUF Gaming B850I WiFi NEO motherboard for Mini-ITX systems, and it's the first TUF Gaming board in this compact form factor. Measuring 17 by 17 centimeters, this AMD AM5 motherboard uses the more affordable B850 chipset for Ryzen 7000, 8000, and 9000 processors.

As it falls under the TUF Gaming banner, it sports a premium 10-layer PCB, which ASUS says is made from "server-grade" materials that extend to the reinforced PCIe slot. It also features an 8+2+1-phase VRM rated at 80A for a balanced power solution with real-time voltage control, and dual DDR5 memory slots supporting speeds of up to 9,600+ MT/s.

As a compact board, it includes only a single PCIe 5.0 x16 slot for a single GPU, along with two M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSD slots underneath a heatsink. As spotted on the spec sheet, the PCIe 5.0 x16 slot runs at full speed when paired with Ryzen 9000 and 7000 CPUs, but drops to PCIe 4.0 when paired with a Ryzen 8000 Series processor.

Last week, we reported that Lenovo increased the prices of its new flagship Legion Go 2 gaming handheld, powered by the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme chip. In addition, it features 32GB of LPDDR5X memory and up to 2TB of internal storage. With the current AI-driven DRAM and flash memory crisis causing havoc in the consumer space, it's putting a big question mark over the immediate future of the PC gaming handheld market.

As noted in our original story, the price of the Lenovo Legion Go 2 with 32GB of memory and 1TB of internal storage rose by a massive $650. This means that its late 2025 launch price of $1,349 is now $1,999 USD - a 48% or so increase. Well, with memory and storage prices seemingly increasing exponentially with capacity, the official price for the Lenovo Legion Go 2 with 32GB of memory and 2TB of internal storage has now reached an eye-watering level.

As noted on Lenovo's official site, the price for this model is now $2,849.99 USD, which is $1,369 above its launch MSRP of $1,480. The new price changes the value proposition so significantly that it's hard to justify the existence of a 2TB model. And when you factor in the recent news that AYANEO has paused and stopped taking orders for its new flagship PC gaming handheld, it's hard not to be concerned about the near future of the growing portable market.

Framework Computing, a hardware maker focused on releasing modular and upgradeable gear, has issued a statement saying the current memory crisis driven by the AI industry could have a devastating effect on the consumer PC market. Interestingly, this warning arrived with an announcement and blog post about the Framework Next Gen Event, scheduled for April 21.

"We've spent the last six years in Framework proving that it's possible to build high-performance, thin, light computers that last longer and respect your rights through repairability, upgradeability, and customization," Framework CEO Nirav Patel writes in the post. "We're happy to see repair rapidly becoming the norm rather than the exception, with even Apple of all companies embracing it on their latest notebook. I built this company specifically to reset and fix a broken industry. So, mission accomplished? Not quite. There is a very real scenario in which personal computing as we know it is dead."

Saying that personal computing, as we know it, could die is definitely alarming, since Framework sources all the memory, storage, and other components for its devices. So this comment is based on the current situation, which Nirav Patel describes as an AI arms race with the ultimate goal of metering access to compute "by the token."

Thermal Grizzly's new DeltaMate GPU Block is specifically built for the premium ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5080 GPU from ASUS. It features a "massive copper cooler" with a dual-cold-plate design, one for the GPU die and one for the VRM/VRAM. The VRM/VRAM-Coldplate alone weighs over 900 grams and is built with custom CNC machining to enhance heat transfer and thermal performance.

Interestingly, Thermal Grizzly notes that the DeltaMate GPU Block for the Astral RTX 5080 proved more challenging and complex to build than its previous RTX 5090 model, even though the RTX 5080 draws significantly less power. The reason is that the GeForce RTX 5080 has higher power density than the RTX 5090, making it harder to cool. Basically, it's a smaller, more densely packed GPU.

This helps explain why the price of the DeltaMate GPU Block for the Astral RTX 5080 is currently listed at $643.38 USD, given that it was difficult for Thermal Grizzly to source parts in Europe without paying inflated prices. And when you add in the specialized cold plates, anodized aluminum housing, brass terminals, reinforced glass window, and intricate design, that is why it costs roughly a third of the ASUS flagship GeForce RTX 5080 GPU it's designed to cool. The good news on that front is that it's highly effective.

Unfortunately, hacker collective ShinyHunters has apparently released Rockstar Games' leaked data, potentially revealing key details about the mega-popular GTA Online. It must be noted that there is a chance that this information is incorrect.

New info from Rockstar's recent data breach may reveal how much Grand Theft Auto Online makes on a weekly basis, and the numbers are eye-opening to say the least.

According to figures compiled on the GTA Forums, Rockstar makes an average of $8.5 million in net bookings per week from spending in GTA Online, with the PlayStation 5 leading other platforms with over half of those bookings.

We've reached a point where it's getting harder to tell which headlines are supposed to sound unbelievable. If you need the latest proof of that, Meta is reportedly building a photorealistic AI clone of Mark Zuckerberg. The Facebook founder is developing an AI-powered 3D version of himself that can respond to queries in his absence and offer feedback to employees.

The AI avatar is being developed using a wealth of data on Zuckerberg's mannerisms, voice, tone, and public statements. According to the Financial Times, the CEO himself is involved in testing and training his AI character, with the team feeding it his latest views on company strategy so that interactions with employees feel more natural. Quite the irony.

The effort comes as Zuckerberg's hands-on involvement in the company is growing, with reports that he spends 5 to 10 hours a week vibe coding AI projects and participating in technical reviews. This isn't Meta's only effort of this kind, either. Reports have also suggested the company is developing a separate "CEO agent" to assist Zuckerberg by streamlining information retrieval and reducing his need to communicate directly with staff.

Keizaal Online is a newer Skyrim online mod that allows dozens of gamers to jump in and play together in a shared world, complete with PVP, events, and a deep emphasis on roleplaying.

Creators have put together an interesting Skyrim online mod with a growing number of players. It's called Keizaal Online, and it's built on the SkyMP mod framework, the open-source Skyrim mod that enables real-time co-operative gameplay.

The team boasts that hundreds of players have joined Keizaal, and a recent video shows scores of players gathered in towns and even taking on huge multiplayer battles out in the wild. The scenarios have a kind of unique, player-driven charm that brings to mind early online games, with the added bonus that everything takes place in Skyrim's familiar world.

Microsoft has announced that support for one of its most widely used lightweight email clients is coming to an end. The app in question is Outlook Lite, the stripped-back email client designed specifically for Android, which will no longer be supported after May 25. According to Neowin, Microsoft is looking to migrate the remaining users to the main Outlook mobile app.

If you haven't heard of it before, Outlook Lite launched four years ago and was designed for older and low-powered Android devices with limited network connectivity. It was aimed at users on 2G and 3G connections running phones with 1GB of RAM or less, and occupied just 5MB of storage. Microsoft positioned it as a practical solution for individuals, schools, universities, and small businesses running lightweight mobile devices. The trade-off, however, was that it lacked the full feature set found in the main Outlook app.

The company has been preparing for this transition for months. Microsoft stopped new downloads of Outlook Lite on October 6, 2025, but existing users were allowed to continue using it as normal. Now, that window is closing too. Microsoft has confirmed the retirement as part of a broader effort to reduce overlap and focus development on Outlook Mobile as its primary mobile email experience.

Xbox's new CEO Asha Sharma is taking aim at Game Pass' rising fees, saying that gamers need more affordable and flexible options.

A newly leaked internal memo shows that Game Pass is top of mind for Xbox's fresh-faced CEO. The division changed leadership after Phil Spencer retired, with Sharma then taking the helm and bringing a new emboldened and energetic spirit to Xbox. After revealing the next-gen Project Helix hybrid PC console, Sharma is now scrutinizing the multi-tier Game Pass model, especially the costly $30/month Game Pass Ultimate subscription.

In the memo, which was acquired by The Verge, the new Xbox CEO acknowledges that Game Pass is too costly for gamers and unwieldy for Microsoft, leading to a very inflexible and rigid model. Sharma says that Game Pass hasn't reached its final form yet.

New evidence shows that ShinyHunters has put a $200K asking price on Rockstar Games' data, but the information has been marked as "non-material" by the studio and may not be important or negatively affect Rockstar's business.

A bit ago, Rockstar Games was hacked, but not in the same way as the 2022 instance that saw GTA 6 assets spilling onto the internet. Rockstar has fortified their security since the famous GTA 6 leak, and this time around the hackers were only able to access unspecified metrics data. The hackers, a group named ShinyHunters, originally indicated that this info could be related to more sensitive metrics, however Rockstar has since confirmed the leak in an attempt to respond to the situation while assuaging fans--and investors--that nothing critical was stolen.

Now it appears that ShinyHunters has attached a sale value to Rockstar's data. New reports from Dark Web Informer indicate that the hackers are attempting to sell the data for $200,000, however this info remains unverified, with one independent security researcher claiming that the account is misinformed.

While others like Meta have leaned on big-name eyewear brands to make their tech glasses look less like a science project, Apple seems to be taking the road less traveled. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman in his latest Power On newsletter, Apple could launch some or all of the four styles it is currently testing for its smart glasses. Instead of partnering with brands like Ray-Ban, the iPhone maker is doing something very Apple.

Apple's design team has created at least four styles available in multiple color options, including black, ocean blue, and light brown. The designs include a large rectangular frame similar to Ray-Ban Wayfarers, a slimmer rectangular option, a larger oval or circular frame, and a smaller oval or circular alternative.

Internally codenamed N50, the glasses will compete directly with the second-gen Ray-Ban Meta model. To differentiate from Meta's offering, Apple's design incorporates a camera setup with vertically oriented oval lenses surrounded by lights. Like Meta's smart glasses, Apple's version will be simple wearable spectacles with integrated cameras for photos and video, microphones, and sensors, but designed to sync more tightly with an iPhone.

Danish gamer Mongo TV has gone viral for playing Red Dead Redemption 2 at cripplingly-slow frame rates, showing sheer dedication and patience in experiencing Rockstar's magnum opus.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is largely regarded as one of the best video games ever made, but what about playing at 4FPS? The game can be quite demanding and push hardware to its limits, but some tech is just too old to belt out the game's complex physics and high-resolution asset geometry. In other words, if you try to run a game like RDR2 on a woefully under-specced PC...you might run into some pretty frustrating gameplay.

Reddit spotted an older YouTuber named Mongo TV who has been chronicling his gameplay in RDR2 on a very underwhelming machine, leading to instances where the game drops to single-digit frame rates. The streamer's PC is quite old, featuring an Intel i5-8300H CPU with 4 cores and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050ti graphics card with just 4GB of VRAM. RDR2's minimum PC specs require double that VRAM, with Rockstar calling for 8GB of memory.

Over the past few years, Roblox has come under heavy criticism, facing lawsuits from governments and families around the world alleging that the platform does not do enough to protect children from harmful content and communication with older users. The company's most recent effort was an age verification system aimed at limiting contact between adults and children under 16. Now it is going a step further.

Starting in mid-May, Roblox will age-segment its massive library of games and push users into one of three account types. Users aged 5 to 9 will be assigned a Roblox Kids account. Those aged 9 to 15 will be assigned a Roblox Select account, and anyone 16 and older will receive a standard Roblox account. The same age-check technology used for chat access will now assign users to their respective account type.

Each account type aligns with the platform's existing content maturity labels (Minimal, Mild, Moderate, or Restricted). Roblox Kids account holders will have access to games rated Minimal or Mild, with chat turned off by default. The only way a Kids account user can chat with another person is if a parent manually selects approved individuals their child is allowed to communicate with.

UPDATE: Bethesda has responded to Starfield's issues on PS5, saying that they have identified "a small number of causes" and plan to roll out a new hotfix coming this week.

Starfield just released on PlayStation 5, but in somewhat predictable Bethesda fashion, the game is having some performance issues leading to crashing, FPS stutters, and even infinite loading screens.

All signs show that Starfield is doing well on PS5, having broken into the top 10 best-sellers (right now Starfield is #6 on the US PlayStation Store's top sellers list). What's not so great are the reports of widespread crashing and big frame rate drops, even on PS5 Pro.

Rumors are swirling that Xbox is set to host a small show next week, with industry insiders NateTheHate and Windows Central's senior editor, Jez Corden, both discussing it.

The swirling of an Xbox Developer Showcase next week began when Corden said on a podcast that Xbox fans might want to tune into what will be announced next week at a "little show", and that Metro fans will specifically want to tune in as the show will feature the next Metro title, Metro 2039.

For those who don't know, Metro 2039 is pegged to be the next mainline Metro game following Metro Awakening in 2024. Nate also claimed Sony was planning to host a State of Play event on April 16, which he reiterated in his post about the Microsoft broadcast, stating he was not able to confirm it was factual information, only something he had heard. The rumors of the next Metro game follow a recent data leak revealing a shelved version of the fourth Metro game, which 4A Games reportedly canceled in 2022.

Over the weekend, clips from the upcoming animated movie Avatar: The Last Airbender, "Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender," appeared online, prompting immediate, well-founded concerns that they were simply AI-generated by a fan. However, the entire movie is now being passed around via various vanishing links, and those clips are being taken down over copyright claims.

The initial leak came from an X user who wrote "Nickelodeon accidentally emailed me the entire Avatar aang movie🤦they made Toph straight yall." Additionally, the user threatened Paramount, writing, "If Paramount doesn't post a trailer within the next couple of days or something, I'll livestream the movie alongside some Peggle Deluxe gameplay." The videos themselves have showcased crucial plot points of the movie, which was expected to release on Paramount+ on October 9, reportedly skipping its theatrical run.

The clips showcase the characters much older than in the iconic animated cartoon, and without getting into spoilers, characters such as Aang, Zuko, Katara, Sokka, and Toph are all reunited, with each character receiving a new voice actor. Nickelodeon and Paramount have yet to release anything official regarding the movie, making this leak particularly tragic for both companies, as the entire movie has already been passed around online and will likely end up on torrenting websites.

If dual-mode monitors with 320Hz refresh rates aren't enough for you, TCL CSOT might be cooking a new display panel that will take these monitors to the next level. TCL CSOT, one of the major display makers in China, is reportedly planning to introduce a new dual-mode esports panel with 4x refresh rate switching. According to IT Home, the new monitor will offer refresh rate switching from 160Hz to 640Hz, with a launch window around Q3 2026.

This isn't our first dance with dual-mode monitors, but with conventional ones, your refresh rate typically doubles when you switch to a lower resolution. A 160Hz-to-640Hz jump would put TCL CSOT in a small group of panel makers pushing 3x- and 4x-dual-mode designs instead of the usual 2x setups.

Detailed specifications are scarce right now, but the monitor will likely offer 4K resolution at 160Hz and switch to an ultra-high-refresh 640Hz mode at 1080p. As for the panel type, we'll see whether TCL CSOT adopts IPS or OLED. Given that the company is one of the leading OLED manufacturers, an OLED panel is a real possibility. ASUS uses an IPS panel on its ROG Strix XG27UCG Gen 2 with 3x refresh rate switching, so an IPS option on TCL's model isn't off the table either.

Following leaks and rumors, 4A Games has officially announced the existence of Metro 2039 and confirmed a premiere date for their new mainline sequel.

It's been no secret that a new Metro game is in development--we've known about the project for over half a decade, but 4A Games has been markedly silent about the new game...until now. The studio today revealed that Metro 2039 will be the next game in the series, with a big unveiling on April 16, 2026 at 10AM PST, 7PM CEST, 8PM EST during an Xbox showcase.

The developers have also launched a Metro 2039 website with newsletter sign-ups and promos, including an early giveaway that could secure a free copy of the game.

Developers have decided it's time for Wolf from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice to put down the sword and pick up the skateboard in what is now called Jet Set Sekiro.

In what looks like a hilarious secret level a player could unlock in an old PS2-era game, Jet Set Sekiro is actually a mod designed by The Sekiro Resurrection, a group of developers that have decided to turn their attention to transforming Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice into a Tony Hawk Pro Skater-style experience. Players who download the mod will be able to perform a trick with the skateboard, which also deflects projectiles in a 360-degree radius around the player, and if used in the air, will deal more damage, plus get a higher score. Yes, there is a score tracker.

There is also a button for Kicking, which is used to maintain high speed, and the modders recommend keeping it high as fast movement and tricks "will dominate." Additionally, there is a jump button; when performed at high speed, it will "give a huge 360 lunge," but players will need to be careful, as Wolf will "eat dirt" if he flies too high. There is also a brake button that lets players quickly stop all momentum and turn quickly. The brake button, when used in conjunction with the jump button, enables a short hop that can clear small gaps or perform a quick trick to deflect an incoming projectile.