When MSI took the wraps off its latest gaming handheld at the Computex show in Taiwan, I was one of the first people to get my hands on it and see what sort of power it was packing. The new Intel G3 Extreme chipset meant it was a given that it would have an eye-watering price, but we had to wait weeks to have that confirmed.

Now, the handheld is actually here, and the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ is indeed quite the beast. I've been gaming on it for a week to see how it holds up in regular use, but also to check whether it can make that sky-high price seem a little less crazy.

Price and Availability

The MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ has had a slightly confusing regional roll-out. In the USA, it's available now, having launched in late June – so you can order it through a few storefronts.

Here in the UK, however, there's still no clear and precise date, but you can pre-order it through Scan Computers now. It's listed on Amazon, but the shipping date remains a vague window.

That brings us to the price. The Claw 8 EX AI+ comes in at £1,399 in the UK and a massive $1,799 in the US. No matter how you slice it, that's a big chunk of change for a gaming handheld.

Design and Specs

I didn't expect MSI to make as many revisions between generations of the MSI Claw 8, but here we are, and the good news is that it's clearly been listening to feedback.

The most recent Claw 8 designs were frankly not great – the handhelds were huge, but didn't pair that bulk with great ergonomics, making them a trial to hold for long periods.

With the Claw 8 EX, that's been solved neatly, with much more rounded grips to keep hold of and more of a palm-friendly shape overall. That said, this is still a seriously large and tall handheld, so there's no doubt that those with smaller hands should probably seek one out to try before they buy.

The handheld also comes in a new default colour, a dark purple with just a hint of shine to it, and again, I think it's a great change. The two tones of the older Claws didn't do it for me, but this looks smart. It's also got RGB lighting around each analogue stick, something that doesn't move me much anymore. Those sticks are Hall-effect for drift resistance, as are the triggers.

In terms of inputs, there are all the traditional controller buttons, as well as some shortcuts on either side of the screen. These let you access pause menus but also MSI's software overlay to change power settings or access different games. Atop the machine, there's a power button with fingerprint reading, two USB-C ports, a microSD slot for expanded storage, a 3.5mm jack and the volume keys.

The back of the handheld has two extra macro-enabled buttons that you can easily programme to your chosen controls, along with a big MSI crest and quite a lot of air intake – the venting mostly happens out of the top of the machine.

The real star of the show, though, and the most eye-catching part, is that screen. It's an 8-inch 1920 x 1200 resolution touchscreen IPS display, with refresh rates of 48 to 120Hz and VRR compatibility to make it super smooth. It's vibrant and lovely to look at, although some might ask how this price doesn't bring an OLED panel instead. Still, it's an expansive panel, even if the way it protrudes at the bottom gives it a bit of a chin.

In terms of specs, the huge inclusion here is Intel's new portable chip, the Arc G3 Extreme – basically the most powerful handheld gaming chip on the market right now. It's a total beast, and probably a big part of why the Claw 8 EX is so expensive.

You also get a 1TB internal SSD for storage, a chunky 32GB of RAM, and an 80WHr battery, all of which are at the very top end of what any competitor can offer. It means that the specs list of the Claw 8 EX is basically best-in-class.

The whole thing, meanwhile, runs Windows, but with all the flexibility that you might want. Xbox's new handheld experience runs really nicely, for instance, but you can also get anything else you like running, including Steam and GOG. Some apps are more likely than others to be recognised by MSI's software, which can make for some awkward swaps between handheld and desktop modes, but the amount of options on offer is terrific.

Performance

The MSI Claw 8 EX lives or dies by its power – that much is obvious from the intersection between its price and its specs list. If you're going to ask this much for a handheld, it needs to deliver seriously eye-opening performance.

Luckily, that's almost exactly how I'd describe its gaming prowess. This handheld offers up the sort of graphical capabilities that I thought would be beyond a portable machine for a good while yet. Intel's G3 chip is a monster, especially in this Extreme configuration, and I have the benchmarks to underline that fact.

Cyberpunk 2077 remains about as demanding as a game can come, even years on from its hyper-ambitious release, and even if I didn't tweak a thing in the settings, it comes out of the gate supremely smoothly on the Claw 8 EX. Its default configuration goes for "Ray-tracing Low", and averages 47.75fps in the benchmark test, which is already pretty great.

Turn on XeSS, though, to get frame generation, and things leap forward, giving 76.14fps on the XeSS Auto setting with all other presets the same. That's a major boost, but there's still more headroom. If you go with XeSS Ultra Performance, you can get 104.63fps, or if you want to get super stable image quality, XeSS Ultra Quality gets you 67.87fps.

That last option, Ray-tracing Low with XeSS Ultra Quality, is probably how I'd play the game, but those who want zero input latency can always opt for turning off XeSS and going with the Steam Deck preset to get a similar outcome of 66.8 with slightly fewer graphical bells and whistles.

Whichever way you cut it, those are phenomenal numbers for a gaming handheld, and they put plenty of gaming laptops from recent years to shame when it comes to unplugged power. All of these are at the screen's native resolution, too, so you have scope to turn that down for even more performance.

Of course, numbers are all well and good, but testing the handheld on a range of other games, from Doom: The Dark Ages to Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced, I've been consistently impressed with how easily I've been able to get challenging games running smoothly on the hardware.

That performance is particularly staggering because ray tracing is often enabled – a feature that is generally beyond the ken of other expensive gaming handhelds without major resolution compromises. It honestly feels like a big leap forward in real terms.

It goes without saying that you can expect older or simpler games to run phenomenally, and battery life is thankfully also really impressive. I've been getting between two and three hours of gaming when cranked up to high settings on a demanding game, but in lower-power situations you could get way more – even up towards double digits.

That's remarkable, and underlines just how good Intel's power management options are, paired with MSI's implementation. I observed when this chipset launched that its efficiency could be just as important as its power, and that's how it feels in the hands some time later.

All of this looks excellent on that VRR IPS display, with the Variable Refresh Rate bit being key, since it eliminates most stutters to keep games feeling super smooth if they're in that generous VRR window (which they should be). That said, I'll say again that at this stonking price, you really would expect and hope for an OLED display for inkier blacks and better colours.

This superb power does come at a cost in terms of heat, though – while the Claw 8 EX never got uncomfortably hot in my testing, there's no denying that it gets pretty warm. It also has enough fan noise that you'll want headphones for any high-powered gaming to avoid distraction.

Verdict

The MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ is a genuinely remarkable gaming handheld and very arguably the best ever released by a mainstream brand in terms of raw power and performance. MSI has improved its design work massively, and the sheer brunt of Intel's newest portable chip is jaw-dropping to experiment with.

It's unfortunate that it comes with a price tag that makes it a luxury reserved for those who need the best of the best. In most ways, that's far from MSI's fault, of course, with the current economics just pushing back against it so hard, but it doesn't really change the arithmetic from a prospective customer's point of view.

So, buy the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ if your budget is chunky, and you insist on performance that puts other handhelds to shame. But for many of us, it might make sense to sit out a year or two to see if Intel's chip starts to trickle into more affordable devices.

Also consider

The gaming handheld market is getting harder and harder to navigate as price hikes bite – so in many cases the best alternatives are second-hand.

That said, in some territories, you can now get the ROG Xbox Ally for a reasonable price, and while it's not as powerful as this MSI machine, it's very good for being miles cheaper.

Still my favourite PC gaming handheld, meanwhile, is the Lenovo Legion Go S (SteamOS). It's the perfect size, and while it again can't hold a candle to MSI's power, as an indie game machine, it's hard to fault, with all the convenience of SteamOS.

There are some things in life that you just have to have, no matter how impractical they may be. This sofa designed to look like a PlayStation controller is exactly that - and I have to have one.

This design comes from Muddycap (shared by Yanko Design) and fits nicely into Muddycap's other chair design: it's impractical, but lust worthy. The same designer has a chair that's shaped like a pigeon as well as a set of keys, which looks about as comfortable as the Iron Throne.

Based around the classic DualShock PlayStation controller, there's space for two gamers in the centre, leaving the rest of this sofa to the iconic design.

Sadly it's just a 3D model, which makes it even more frustrating as I won't be able to buy one, but you can see how - thanks to the D-pad on one side and the buttons on the other - that this sofa could expand its skills beyond just looking great.

With so much space taken up by the design, it's begging for a pull-out fridge or snack drawer to the sides, or maybe just a charging dock for controllers at each end.

If there's one criticism of this as an actual gaming chair, I'm not sure it would be slouchy enough for me. I'm either almost horizontal as I become the sofa during long sessions, or I'm standing in the middle of the room when things get more fraught.

This is a far cry from the best gaming chairs, which give you full adjustability, lumbar support and arm rests, so this sofa is less of a Call of Duty chair and more of a Mario Kart chair, you know, where precision might be less important.

While I'm going through a crisis trying to figure out how I can commission a furniture builder to make me this sofa, PlayStation is enjoying its own crisis after announcing that PlayStation will stop physical disc releases from 2028.

That's going to put a nail in the used game market and while PlayStation would probably rather sell you the game at a higher price, for those seeking out games they missed well after release, getting it second hand has always been a way to snap up a bargain.

While PlayStation and its gaming community wrangles with that hot potato, I'm going to measure up my lounge and see exactly where I might fit a PlayStation controller sofa.

The handheld gaming PC market has become increasingly crowded over the past couple of years, but ONEXPLAYER is aiming well above the likes of the Steam Deck OLED, Asus ROG Ally X and Lenovo Legion Go 2.

Its latest X2 Mini Pro is built around AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ 388 processor, one of the company's powerful Strix Halo chips, pairing an 8-core, 16-thread CPU with Radeon 8050S graphics. That's desktop-class silicon squeezed into an 8.8-inch handheld, backed by up to 64GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 2TB of SSD storage.

There's a 144Hz OLED touchscreen with a 2.5K resolution, detachable controllers inspired by the Nintendo Switch, an optional magnetic keyboard cover that turns it into a compact Windows tablet. Plus there's support for an external liquid cooling dock for those wanting to squeeze every last frame from demanding games.

The entry-level model starts at around $2,399 with 48GB of memory and a 1TB SSD, while the fully loaded version with 64GB and 2TB storage reaches roughly $2,799. That's several times the cost of a Steam Deck OLED, and enough to buy multiple Nintendo Switch 2 consoles instead.

For most gamers, that's likely to be a step too far. But ONEXPLAYER clearly isn't chasing the mainstream. Instead, it's targeting enthusiasts who want the fastest handheld PC currently available and are prepared to pay desktop-PC money to get it.

Whether the X2 Mini Pro can justify that price in real-world gaming remains to be seen, but on paper it's shaping up to be one of the most powerful handhelds we've ever seen.

Steam Machine owners disappointed by the demise of Dbrand's gorgeous Companion Cube case have been handed a second chance – provided they have access to a 3D printer and a little patience.

Just weeks after Valve pulled the plug on Dbrand's officially planned shell over licensing issues, maker Jaron has released a fully printable alternative through the Printables community.

Rather than copying Dbrand's files, the creator says the model was built entirely from scratch using publicly available images as reference, complete with detailed assembly instructions and a list of the extra screws, magnets and components required.

The result is remarkably close to the design that captured PC gamers' imaginations before it was cancelled. It transforms Valve's compact gaming PC into the instantly recognisable Weighted Companion Cube from Portal, complete with layered panels and contrasting colour sections that can be produced on a standard single-extruder printer using filament swaps. It's not exactly a beginner project, but it looks well within reach for experienced makers.

The Companion Cube isn't the only project breathing new life into Valve's latest hardware. The growing modding community has also begun releasing replacement faceplates, alternative shells and even entirely new small-form-factor PC builds inspired by the Steam Machine's design.

"The Orange Box", is a greta example. This is a far more powerful custom gaming PC housed inside a SilverStone chassis but styled around Valve's ecosystem. Alongside printable accessories and cosmetic upgrades, these projects suggest the Steam Machine could end up becoming just as interesting for modders as it is for gamers.

If nothing else, it's proof that cancelling an official accessory doesn't necessarily kill the idea. As long as the maker community keeps designing clever alternatives, some of gaming's best concepts can still find a way into players' homes, one layer of filament at a time.

Xbox is testing a way to provide cloud gaming access for free, without the need for Game Pass membership. It is ad-supported and allows Xbox gamers to access their own library of games on different devices at no extra cost.

Initially available to Xbox Insiders with an Xbox account, the service is currently limited. It allows play in one hour sessions and you'll have to sit through adverts before each game starts, but the core experience is then uninterrupted.

Any Xbox gamer can join the Insider program to be part of the test, you just need to download the Xbox Insider Hub on your Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One or Windows PC and follow the sign-up instructions.

As this is not part of Xbox Game Pass, you won't have access to games outside those you've already purchased and own. You might also find that some of your games are unsupported, but Xbox is adding new games to the list all the time, so you might find additional titles become available over time.

Xbox free cloud gaming test – other details

It's also worth remembering that this is just a viability test for now – there's no guarantee that Xbox will continue to offer the service in future. However, it believes that there is a need for a free service for users who cannot easily access a console or PC.

It could also help Xbox One owners who are yet to upgrade play enhanced Xbox Series X/S games on their consoles.

The adverts that will be shown have been carefully vetted, the company claims, to ensure they meet the correct standards. They will also be "what players expect on each platform".

If you are an Xbox Insider and do not currently subscribe to an Xbox Game Pass tier that includes cloud gaming, you should be able to help test the ad-supported service now. It'll be available for a "limited period", although it's currently unclear how long that will be.

Amazon has followed Netflix by adding games to its Prime Video service, but it's raced ahead in quality and quantity. That's because the new "Games" tab on the Prime Video app gives you direct access to its ever-growing library of Luna games.

That means you will be able to play the likes of the multiple award-winning Dispatch, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, EA Sports FC 26, and the Harry Potterverse RPG Hogwart's Legacy for free, straight from Prime Video itself.

Luna is Amazon's cloud gaming service, which gives all Amazon Prime members access to a catalogue of console and PC quality games to stream over the internet. The game is run on remote hardware with the video feed streamed to your TV, while the controller codes are sent in the opposite direction.

There's a small amount of lag (latency) in comparison with playing directly on a PS5, for example, but everything is still very playable. All you need is a Bluetooth controller connected wirelessly and away you go.

Some of the games can even be played using a mobile phone or tablet as the controller, including an expanding selection of party games for family and friends to enjoy together.

That includes the new season of Courtroom Chaos, with Arnold Schwazenegger as the judge.

Other games available on the platform include some of Amazon's own properties, such as the most recent Tomb Raider trilogy. Fallout 4 is also available, to complement the TV series on Prime Video.

The Games tab is now available on Fire TV models in the UK and US, with a wider rollout coming "in the months ahead".

Hopefully that will include Prime Video apps on TVs and streaming devices from other manufacturers. As things stand, you can play Luna games through a browser on most devices by heading to the dedicated website.

I'm a child of Nintendo, and even if I won't always defend every generation of the franchise, it's always fun to remind myself that I've played Pokémon right since its very first games. The games have been long-term companions, but that doesn't mean I'm not open to new options.

Those of my generation have long known about a rivalry between Pokémon and Digimon, but the reality is that the former clearly won the war. It's a way bigger deal and has way more cultural capital – but that doesn't mean that Digimon's been left behind. Rather, it's just branched out in different ways.

I saw a decent amount of praise for Digimon Story Time Stranger when it came out last year, but didn't have a chance to play it – until now. A Switch 2 version of the game came out this month, and that's given me the opportunity to see what this parallel monster-collecting game has to offer.

I've been really pleasantly surprised by the setup of Time Stranger, which is actually way more like a Persona game than it is a Pokémon one. You're dropped into a funky sci-fi plot set in Tokyo and involving time travel without being too complicated, and soon introduced to Digimon, which are basically monsters that come into the real world from a parallel virtual one.

What I didn't realise is that Time Stranger, a bit like the Persona games, doesn't have linear evolution for its monsters. When you level up a Pokémon far enough, it'll evolve, but other than a few exceptions like Eevee, it'll always do so into the same new Pokémon. Not so in the world of Digimon – most monsters have a few forms they can turn into, turning the whole list of them into a sort of web that you can explore over time.

That one twist is enough to hook me – in Pokémon, unless you're aiming at competitive play, there's never a good reason to keep a Pokémon non-evolved, but in Time Stranger I'm already holding off to earn more stats and unlock new, more interesting-looking evolutions.

All of that sits outside of the core gameplay, too, which involves running around exploring environments and fighting turn-based battles. This uses a fairly familiar rock-paper-scissors system alongside some elemental twists, but it's really simple to learn, with a battle-speed toggle that makes less important fights far quicker.

I always like it when time-savers like that are available from the get-go, and after about three hours of gameplay I'm clearly just hitting the game's main stride, with new areas to access and the story developing at a decent clip. Another major advantage over Pokémon? It's got actual voice acting, even if some of it's a little over-the-top.

The game hits Switch 2 with both a quality mode that aims for 30fps at higher resolutions, and a 60fps at 1080p option. Neither really sticks to its target all that well, but I've found the 60fps mode much more enjoyable, so that's what I've been going with.

If you're in the market for an RPG that'll scratch a lot of that Pokémon itch while we wait for Winds and Waves, I think this is the best option out there right now, especially when you play on the Switch 2, so be sure to check out the free demo on the eShop to give yourself a taste of what it has to offer.

Xbox is currently undergoing a reset which has resulted in a vast amount of jobs being lost across the business. It is also dramatically changing strategy – nigh-on reversing a decade of decisions to refocus the company and brand. And it seems that some of the endeavours are working.

It has been revealed that, in the US at least, sales of the Xbox Series X and Series S consoles have "more than doubled" year-on-year.

In comparison, hardware sales for PlayStation and Nintendo have dipped – with the latter falling by 79%.

To be fair, that's understandable. The Nintendo Switch 2 launched in June 2025 so the company reported a massive spike in sales as pre-orders were shipped and launch stock sold out quickly. The sales for June 2026 were always likely to be much lower.

More interestingly, perhaps, is that PS5 sales dipped by 19% YOY. But then, Sony did recently raise its console prices significantly. And the Xbox Series X/S equivalent price hike is yet to come into affect.

It'll occur in just over a week, on 1 August, so consumers could be snapping up the consoles before that happens.

The sales figures are also relative. Mat Piscatella of data firm Circana revealed on Bluesky that while Xbox performed better than many expected last month, it still sold fewer consoles that its rivals. The Nintendo Switch 2 continued to be the best-selling option, in both units and dollars earned, with the PS5 in second.

Uncertainty in the games business

Whatever the trends, the games market is still looking uncertain at present. When it comes to the next generation, at least.

Xbox has admitted that its Project Helix plans might have to change in the light of the ongoing components crisis. Its hope to launch a "premium" PC/console hybrid might have to be scaled back to remain affordable.

Meanwhile, Sony is said to have delayed the PS6 for similar reasons, and we all know what happened with the Steam Machine. While it seems to have found a market, it is undeniably overpriced for what you get.

And so it seems we'll see this current console generation continue for the foreseeable, which is good news for those who already own a PS5, Nintendo Switch or Xbox Series X/S. At least the games are still coming thick and fast.

Meta is giving away free Xbox Game Pass membership with its own Meta Horizon+ subscription. That will give every Meta Quest owner who signs up a library of more than 50 Xbox games to stream on a virtual display in their headset, with 10 hours of cloud gaming access per month.

It's a similar deal to the one Discord started offering its Nitro subscribers in May. You don't have to pay any extra, but you will currently need an Xbox controller to play the games.

That's until Meta pushes a forthcoming update to the Touch Controllers for the Quest 3 and Quest 3S. They will soon be able to emulate an Xbox controller too, with the firmware patch rolling out "in the coming weeks".

The games in the new free Xbox Game Pass Starter Edition include the likes of Fallout 4, Fallout 76, Overcooked 2, Grounded and DayZ. They don't give you a full, immersive VR experience but you can play them on a huge virtual screen inside the headset – up to the equivalent of a 26-foot display.

You can even choose to play them from within an Xbox-themed virtual space.

Of course, a Meta Horizon+ subscription doesn't just include Game Pass, it also gives you access to more than 100 virtual games you can download and play on a Quest.

A subscription costs $59.99 / £59.99 per year or $7.99 / £7.99 per month, with the first month free for new members. That's a lot of gaming for the usual price of just one console title.

You'll just need to own a compatible headset and away you go. We're also hoping to hear plans on new Meta Quest devices during Meta Connect in September.

Whatever happens T3 will keep you informed all the way.

There's a big old genre of gaming that I've never quite got to grips with, despite a lot of trying, and that's skating games. I've never been a real-life skater, but the fashion and attitude has always been attractive, and that's meant I've tried over and over to get into giants of the genre like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, without ever really finding my jam.

Little did I know that the way I'd finally get my satisfaction was to swap skating on a board for literally tricking an entire train – the barmy premise of Denshattack!, which is out now on basically all platforms. It sees you take on the role of a train driver in a world where trains can do things you'd basically never believe outside of an anime.

Luckily, anime is very much the aesthetic here, as you make your way through a sci-fi future Japan full of abandoned train tracks. This is a world where rebels pilot trains in a sport called Denshattack, and do so much like skaters, pulling off wild tricks, rail grinds and more.

You drop into a course with a set objective, whether it's to make it to the end of a more linear one or to get a certain amount of combo points in an open-ended arena, and from there it's all about free-styling your way to success. With a variety of button presses, you can jump, drift around corners, and pull off tricks in the air, and chaining these moves together is your best path to profit and speed.

Each track also has a range of secrets to find, from collectables to interactions with the passing world (using your train's horn to startle some birds, for instance). These give you stretch goals to keep an eye out for as you race, and they're consistently fun to achieve.

The aesthetic is also great, all cel-shaded and stylish, with really colourful stages that zip past with an impressive sense of speed. Back in the days of the Switch 1, I think this is a textbook example of a game that might have been really compromised either by blurry visuals or a lower frame rate, but on the Switch 2 it's been a buttery-smooth joy both in docked and handheld mode.

I didn't expect it to get its hooks into me, but a few hours in I'm really loving the core design choices at play. The game's welcoming if you just want to experience its pulpy story and don't have that much manual skill to get high scores, but the skill ceiling is incredibly high for those who want to find it.

This is one of those games that you have to see in motion to really appreciate, and I'm confident that watching the trailer I embedded further up this story will go a long way towards clarifying whether it's for you. Don't be put off by the story, either – it's littered with skip buttons if you just want to get to the train-skating.

That's what I've been doing, honestly, and I've had a stellar time doing it. Weird games are the way forward, I think, and this is a great example of a low-cost game that deserves to build up a cult audience.

Xbox might be shifting back to a tried and tested exclusives model in the coming year, but one remaining consequence of its foray into cross-platform is that Master Chief will soon arrive on PlayStation 5 for the first time.

Halo: Campaign Evolved will officially release in just a week's time, on 28 July and it marks a real shift for the series. There's just one thing – it will only be available to purchase on PlayStation, while Xbox Series X/S and PC owners can get it for free with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass membership.

Rebuilt from the ground up, the remake of Halo: Combat Evolved (originally released for the first Xbox) retains the same gameplay and mission structure, but with dramatically improved graphics. It also features some control changes, such as when driving the Warthog.

The campaign mode is the real star – as the tweaked title suggests – although you still get four-player online co-op. There are new missions too, as well as a healthy serving of additional weapons, vehicles and enemies.

Those who pre-ordered the Premium Edition will actually get to play the game in early access from Thursday, 23 July, but if you're an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscriber, you don't have much longer to wait.

The additional Xbox Game Pass games for July 2026

Shift at Midnight is another day one release for Ultimate and PC Game Pass members that's arriving soon – tomorrow, in fact. While Hell is Us will be added for all members, including Premium, from Thursday.

Mistfall Hunter is coming at the end of the month, on 30 July, as a new release also. And Corsair Cove will be available for PC only the day after.

Xbox has announced a couple of games coming next month, too. Both Heretic + Hexen and Beast of Reincarnation will be available from 4 August. The latter is yet another day one release.

Sadly, there are eight games being removed from the service at the end of July, with the pixel-perfect platformer Celeste being a particular favourite. I advise you download and play it in the days you have left.

The Steam Machine was never intended to be one of the most expensive games consoles of all time. It was meant to be an affordable entry point to PC gaming in the living room.

However, AI came along and munched on available RAM chips like locusts in a wheat field, and Valve's good intentions ended up going awry. So, instead of a cheap and cheerful PC console, we got an overly-priced, under-spec'ed mini PC (albeit one that's cute).

That's not to say it's been a flop. Even starting at over $1,000, Valve is struggling to make enough units to meet demand. It is thought to have sold up to 15,000 Steam Machines so far and many on the lengthy waiting list are still awaiting.

If you're still undecided though, or are waiting for a price drop in future, we might have some bad news. There's every indication that the price will actually go up at some point.

As quoted by Jason Schreier at Bloomberg, one of the engineers that worked on Steam Machine, Yazan Aldehayyat believes the scarcity of components and the knock-on effect on prices isn't going to get better anytime soon: "Honestly, it’s still getting worse," he said.

The products and stock currently being sold are old, he suggested, and are soon to run out: "What people are seeing on retail shelves right now, from our observations, is lagging what we’re seeing from a bulk supply by at least three to six months."

The likely result of further price hikes for RAM and storage is that Valve will be facing higher costs to make more Steam Machines. And as a small company, those costs are likely to be passed on to the customer – just as they are now.

Aldehayyat's colleague, Pierre-Loup Griffais recently admitted that the existing elevated price the Steam Machine "ends up matching pretty closely" to the cost of its components. A sombre thought.

It could be why Valve has seemingly switched tact in recent times, from wanting its own console in some gamers' hands to wanting Steam OS in everyone's. It has recently started to release a version of its excellent front end and gaming platform for PCs of all shapes and sizes.

And so, if you want a more powerful Steam Machine, that's entirely possible. You just won't be buying it from Valve.

It's not every day that Aston Martin unveils an entirely new car, let alone one that hasn't been teased and leaked for months beforehand, but today it's announcing an SUV to potentially complement the DBX – except there's a major asterisk to that.

You see, this is what's being politely called a "digital-only" launch, which is a euphemistic way of saying that the newly announced Dreadnought will only exist in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 when it comes out later this year.

Unsurprisingly, for a car that's going to be featured in the world of a military shooter, it's a military-grade SUV that's intended to get people around big maps quickly, and was designed "without the restraints of the physical world".

That was apparently a great bit of fun for Aston's designers, although it's not like the end result is the maddest-looking car you've ever seen. It apparently sports "advanced armour technologies", which is almost certainly a way of saying that it'll be able to take quite a lot of punishment in-game before it gives up on you.

If there's one bit of the car that is hard to argue with, I'd say it's that paint job, which is indeed peak Aston Martin, using the brand's iconic Chiltern Green colour to really rich effect.

In design terms, you can tell that the lack of real-world shackles did indeed let Aston Martin go a little crazy – it's a wild-looking slice of car, raised up on enormous tyres and with a really interesting, sleek look despite its size.

Right now, it's a little unclear whether the car will be featured in the game's singleplayer campaign, but we do know that it'll be in the big new map being added for the DMZ extraction shooter mode and the returning Warzone battle royale mode. In each case, players will be able to use it to get around the map nice and quickly.

I'm expecting to learn quite a lot more about Modern Warfare 4 in the next few weeks, too. Lord knows that Xbox (which has now owned COD for quite a while) will be desperate for a big win in terms of the game's sales. It won't be on Game Pass, as we know, but with the last couple of COD entries having failed to capture the zeitgeist, and Battlefield 6 having a fairly stellar time, this is a big entry for the biggest traditional shooter brand in the land.

Sony has announced the latest lineup of games coming to the PS Plus game catalogue and, in a break from the norm, they will be staggered over the next couple of weeks in the UK, US and Japan.

That's a release strategy more akin to Xbox Game Pass than PS Plus in the past, but we're sure PS5 fans won't be whinging as the excellent Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will be leading the way.

It'll be available for PS Plus Extra and Premium members from 21 July in all regions, and is one of the best first-person action adventure games I've played in many a year. It's also arguably one of the best movie tie-ins ever made.

The other games being added might be available a little sooner or later, with the dates jumping around a bit depending on where you live.

Rise of the Ronin, for example, is available for PS5 in the UK, US and Japan now, but in other regions from 21 July.

Firefighting Simulator: Ignite, also PS5-only, will be available everywhere from 21 July, while Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind will be added for PS5 and PS4 from 28 July in UK, US and Japan, 21 July everywhere else.

That's the same day another of my favourite first-person games arrives, too. Dying Light (the PS4 version) will be joined by Citizen Sleep 2: Starward Vector (PS5), as well as Snow Bros. Wonderland.

Things are a bit more regular when it comes to the new (old) games being added to the classic catalogue for PS Premium members. Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy and Indigo Prophecy (AKA Fahrenheit in the UK) will be available globally on 21 July.

Physical media has been in the news a lot lately, not least when it comes to gaming. PlayStation has announced that it is ditching discs for a digital-only future, Xbox is likely to follow suit, and some games are being released as download codes in boxes – including GTA 6.

But ask PC gamers about it and they'll point out that bar some special releases, they've had to make do with digital downloads for years. Steam is the biggest storefront for PC game purchases and there are no physical copies to be found. Well, until now...

One gamer has built an ingenious cartridge system for PC that can play Steam games from custom SSD-based cartridges.

Taking to the PC Master Race Reddit (via Tom's Hardware), Jibril-sama detailed how they turned cheap SATA SSD cards into game cartridges, and built a dock to read and play them automatically.

Steam Game Cartridges from r/pcmasterrace

The SATA dock is plugged into a PC, while the custom software detects when an SSD cartridge is mounted. An execute script then loads the game.

The builder even custom built the cartridge casings using 3D printing and added cover art.

"Got a couple of used 2.5-inch SSDs for cheap so I decided to make a game cartridge system," the Redditor revealed.

“Games are actually on those SSDs with a script to auto-navigate Steam to the game's page. Auto-starting the game right away is also possible."

Each SSD used cost Jibril-sama just €7 (less than £6), so the project is affordable. Whether it could be replicated by others is unclear at present. There are also question marks over Steam updates and patches for each game, which will be tricky to keep on top of.

However, they can be manually installed once each SSD is plugged in and the creator doesn't seem too concerned as the cartridges are for "games that I want to replay once in a while".

They also look good on a shelf, we expect.

Two renowned games controller manufacturers surprised many at CES in January, with both 8BitDo and GameSir each announcing similar accessories for those running emulation software on their phones.

But while GameSir managed to get its Pocket Taco to market speedily, it's taken a while for its rival to catch up. And so, if you wanted to turn your iPhone or Android device into a Game Boy, you really only had the one option.

Until this week, that is. It looks like 8BitDo is finally ready to take orders for its FlipPad which, like the Pocket Taco, adds physical Game Boy style controls to a mobile phone.

The 8BitDo FlipPad works differently to the Taco in that it connects via USB-C rather than Bluetooth. That could potentially provide a lower latency experience – ideal for the twitch-friendly controls of classic platformers. It can also flip down when you need to use the full screen, without needing to remove the add-on.

According to Russ at Retro Game Corps (via NotebookCheck), the 8BitDo FlipPad will be available to pre-order this week, from Wednesday 15 July. It'll then ship from 30 July.

And a pleasant surprise is that it is claimed to cost just $30 (around £22). That's cheaper than the Pocket Taco, although you can also see that drop at times during big sales periods.

There are no further details yet – not even on the pre-order page location – but we'll keep you informed as and when there's more.

Obvious to some but not all, you'll have to provide your own emulators and games (roms), and it's advised you stick to games that can be played on the top-half of your phone's screen. You'll also need to consider that there is no thumbstick, so games that work with a D-pad will work best – such as Game Boy, Game Boy Color, SNES, Mega Drive/Genesis, etc.

Indeed, considering the only colour option expected to be released for now is based on the Game Boy DMG, that's clearly the main intention anyway.

Xbox is in the news for all the wrong reasons at the moment, with 1,600 employees sadly losing their jobs in the last few days, with the same number again poised for redundancy next year too.

It ends a decade of investment by Microsoft into studio and publisher acquisitions, and in Xbox Game Pass – the subscription service thought to be the future of the brand. The gambles simply didn’t work out.

But that doesn’t mean it is ready to give up on Game Pass just yet. And with this month’s lineup of free games, it seems to be business as usual. The addition of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 on 21 July is a true highlight, as it becomes available to Xbox Game Pass Premium members, as well as Ultimate and PC Game Pass.

It is without a shadow of doubt one of the greatest remakes of all time, with two essential skateboarding games updated with modern graphics and control systems.

It’ll also be joined by Gears of War: Reloaded (now for Premium members), Tamashika, Ascend to Zero, PBA Pro Bowling 2026, Quarantine Zone: The Last Check, Mavrix by Matt Jones, FixForce, and The Planet Crafter. While Fogpiercer is coming to PC.

There’s just one caveat… the list of games leaving Game Pass is arguably even better.

Sadly, if.you haven’t played the excellent Dungeons of Hinterberg yet, you only have a week left to do so. The same with Powerwash Simulator and Shadow of the Tomb Raider Definitive Edition.

They lead a lineup of 10 games being removed on 15 July, which seems like more than usual. Let’s hope this doesn’t become a trend.

Still, regardless of Xbox’s current issues and the great “reset” it’s undertaking, taking to the half-pipe in Mr Hawk’s Converse All-Stars should take your mind off it for a while.

The games console scene is currently going through its biggest most troubling times since the 80s. PlayStation has announced it is ditching physical media releases, sparking much anger, Valve's Steam Machine has underwhelmed with its performance for the price, and Nintendo is withdrawing the Switch family of consoles in Europe.

But they all seem minor inconveniences in comparison with what's going on over at Xbox.

A company-wide reset has resulted in studio closures and mass layoffs across the brand – with 1,600 losing their jobs immediately and another 1,600 redundancies expected to follow next year. It has left Xbox's game makers on tenterhooks at best, unemployed at worst.

Asha Sharma, who took over as CEO earlier this year admitted that the gaming giant was in shambles, with the last decade of acquisitions and strategical decisions not paying off. It is simply losing money on the likes of Xbox Game Pass and many of the studios it bought, and is thus restructuring for a complete reset.

Some might wonder where that leaves Project Helix – the company's next Xbox machine, which was originally announced as a premium PC/console hybrid. But while that's facing its own challenges due to the ongoing components crisis, it seems it's business as usual for the hardware division.

In fact, that's the part of Xbox that will now be given more attention.

According to T3's sister site Windows Central and its sources, Helix is "safe and on track".

The hardware division has been hit by the layoffs the least, while the team working on Project Helix have been tasked to find ways around the RAM and storage pricing issues that are plaguing every corner of tech right now.

According to the site, they are tackling "margin pressure" through "aggressive innovation". This will hopefully reduce costs yet keep the core ideals of the next-gen console – maintaining its premium capabilities through workarounds, rather than reducing the spec, as Valve seems to have done with the Steam Machine.

Of course, that might have put Project Helix back by a few months, even a year, but with the latest announcements, it seems the entire company is backing on it to be a success.

That will come as scant compensation to those who have lost their jobs so far, or are worried that they will be in the next round of planned cuts. But Xbox itself might be able to weather the storm.

The only question is, will you still be waiting on the other side?

Although the big news came out last week, not this, it's still a complicated time to talk about a big new videogame. After all, we know now that PlayStation won't produce discs from January 2028 onwards, something that basically ushers in the end of being able to own most games physically – so it's interesting to consider how many more Assassin's Creed titles will ever come out on a disc, for instance.

I've written about a few of the ways in which this is basically a disaster, already, so I won't dwell again, but it does put a slightly sour twist on things when you play a game as detailed and vibrant as the new remake of Black Flag, which I've had for a little over a week and enjoyed hugely.

I've been playing the game on my gaming PC, not as a deliberate gesture of rebuke to PlayStation, but rather because the 5070 Ti inside it simply gives me the best experience out of the options I have access to, and because I've been testing an ultrawide monitor to really make things as "PC gaming" as they can get.

It's been fun to underline just how good that experience can be when everything works straight out of the box, too. Black Flag Resynced is one of the most gorgeous videogames I've ever played, with its version of the Caribbean offering you a new vista practically every time you pass an island.

The game's also a lovely throwback to an era when you could polish off the mainline story of a big game like this in a couple of dozen hours, rather than something like 75 of them, and the speed at which its story clips along has been refreshing to enjoy.

I was a big fan of Assassin's Creed Shadows, and I'll maintain that its version of Japan was more interesting to explore in mechanical terms than the more stylised one offered up by Ghost of Yotei the same year. Now, Black Flag Resynced has confirmed for me that Ubisoft (despite rumblings in industry terms) has clearly reached a point of impressive technical mastery over its Anvil in-house engine.

The game is well-optimised, and I've been getting a pretty smooth 80fps experience with everything maxed out, Nvidia's wizardly frame generation at 2X, and the resolution at a scary 3440 x 1440 because of that ultrawide. The fact that the game ships with that resolution natively supported is a lovely bonus, of course, and ultrawide owners will know it's never a given.

Similarly, I haven't really encountered many bugs or issues – the game really does just feel like a substantial facelift for a beloved entry from years ago. I'm not sure exactly what made Ubisoft choose Black Flag as its first proper remake, but I'm extremely hopeful that we could get revamped versions of the Ezio games now, to really get my nostalgia firing.

Just like with Shadows, the single technological inclusion that has most consistently blown me away is the global illumination – a lighting system that radically transforms how daylight and other conditions look, making them unfathomably more realistic and impactful.

When you pair this with dynamic weather and water simulation, which is really superb, you get the recipe for some incredibly dramatic conditions, from huge seaborne storms to dappled sunshine through palms on islands, and it's amazing to see a game equally good at portraying nature and human settlements.

Gameplay, meanwhile, is just as you'd hope for, which means it's extremely identifiably the same game as before, with the same tools and abilities, but there have been some modernisations to improve how intuitive things are. For example, the post-launch improvements to the parkour model from Shadows are here from the start, including a dedicated jump button and easier exits from climbing.

The naval combat, meanwhile, remains rewarding and surprisingly challenging – if you think that the "brace" command is optional, for instance, you'll soon realise the opposite, and you really can't take on boats much better-equipped than you. By contrast, combat on foot is refreshingly simple, like the old days of the franchise, with far fewer enemies that act as damage sponges, a problem for modern AC games.

It all makes for a bit of a throwback, one that lets you take things at the pace you want (with difficulty options for those who need more challenge). Except, it's a throwback that looks absolutely enviable, and while I've no doubt the game will be a real looker on the PS5 Pro too, I'm glad to be playing it on PC.

2026 is turning into a fairly terrible year for the gaming industry, with the last few weeks in particular feeling like a parade of one depressing announcement after another. Hot on the heels of Sony declaring that it's binning off all physical disc publishing from early 2028, Xbox has now swung the axe that we all knew was hanging over its gaming portfolio.

Alongside some other layoffs around Microsoft's large empire, Xbox is being hit extremely hard, with a total of 3,200 people set to lose their jobs as part of what it's calling its most significant restructuring ever. 1,600 of those professionals will be laid off today, making for an absolutely brutal day.

There's no real way to sweeten that pill, and to its faint credit, the announcement that Xbox has published is frank and self-critical. It also confirms much of the reporting and rumours that have circulated around the gaming giant for years now, including the theory that its Game Pass bet isn't all that close to paying off, and that its acquisitions look extremely suspect in terms of a return on the investment.

In fact, the acquisitive phase that Xbox went through now seems to be definitively over, and the fact that four (or potentially five) of the development studios it bought are now trying to transition back to independence is quite the indictment of both its strategy and its management.

If the likes of Double Fine and Ninja Theory manage to survive, finish their current projects, and go on to greener pastures, then it'll almost be the perfect confirmation that the problem was Xbox and its approach from the beginning.

In theory, those studios will be taking their IP with them, so franchises like Psychonauts and Hellblade needn't loiter in limbo for the rest of time, but it's still far too early to be feeling particularly optimistic about any of this.

That Xbox is now admitting it has too many layers of management, and that those layers are often too disconnected from the projects over which they have power, is more surprising than the facts themselves. It also means that the next generation of Xbox hardware is even more important than it already looked.

With the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S generations having seen Sony establish a crushing lead in hardware sales, if Xbox is to have any hope of remaining a genuine competitor, it surely needs Project Helix to be a big hit. How might that happen, given the rumours about lofty prices and no disc drive mean it's unlikely to be obviously differentiated from the PlayStation 6?

Well, raw power has some appeal, obviously, but I honestly couldn't plot a way out of this mire from Xbox's point of view, although cost reduction does have a certain depressing logic to it. Microsoft runs a brutal business, and these decisions are often made by spreadsheet, so it's no surprise that a terrible downturn in Xbox's fortunes has brought these layoffs about, whether it's self-inflicted or not.

The question is whether this makes for the leaner and more efficient Xbox that this press release is trying to sketch out, or whether it just makes an ailing division look more anaemic and therefore easier to cut further when things don't turn around. That's the fallacy behind all layoffs, of course, and I'm not in a pay grade that gets to solve such issues.

With the memory crisis showing signs that it'll get worse before it gets better, and Xbox now shrinking its roster of franchises, though, it's hard to avoid the sense that we're going through some sort of end of days in gaming. What the landscape will look like in five years is hard to predict, but it's a little difficult to imagine Xbox having the same presence that it does now.

It's had a glorious run, but Nintendo is to discontinue its Switch family of consoles.

Released over a decade ago, the original Nintendo Switch faced its fair share of criticism – mainly due to a poor launch lineup of games. However, that proved to be short lived with the console and its follow-ups – the Switch Lite and Switch OLED – proving incredibly popular ever since.

Indeed, Nintendo has shipped around 160 million of them since. That's almost 50% more than the hugely popular and successful Wii.

But all things must come to an end, and Nintendo is calling time on the Switch. As revealed on an official support page (via VGC), it will cease providing units to retailers by February next year. Nintendo will also stop selling Switch consoles on its own web store.

This has partly been prompted by new EU regulations that come in effect that month. They state that any electronics with chargeable batteries must make those batteries easy to repair and replace. Manufacturers must adhere to these new rules or face a ban in the European Union.

Nintendo will release a new version of the Switch 2 for the region, with a user-replaceable battery, but it doesn't make sense to release upgraded models of the consoles it succeeded.

As for existing Switch owners, your console will continue to be supported with updates, games and Switch Online for the foreseeable future. The announcement specifically relates to new consoles sold.

It's not exactly clear if this will affect all regions or just EU member states for now, but it seems likely that it's a global decision. The Switch has had a 10-year run, after all.

Hopefully, with retailers looking to shift their remaining stock from now until February 2027, it'll mean that big sales periods, like Black Friday, will see Switch units at very affordable prices. So it might mean you can pick one up for a bargain – if you don't own one of the 160 million consoles already out there, of course.

One of the perks many Amazon Prime members forget about – or simply aren't aware of – is the ability to play games on multiple devices through Luna. Amazon Prime includes a free Luna subscription and that means more than 100 games are available to play at no extra cost over the cloud.

There are party games for families and friends to play on a TV, using their mobile phones as controllers, and there are AAA and indie hits you'd normally only see on a console or PC.

The list is regularly updated and this month it includes one of my own personal favourite games of 2025 – the multiple award-winning Dispatch.

An interactive adventure game for adults, Dispatch puts you in the shoes of former superhero Robert Robertson, the "dispatcher" of a group of misfit heroes who fight crime around Night City. You're like a taxi cab controller sending them to trouble spots.

However, the team is made up of ex-supervillains and aren't exactly responsive to being bossed around.

The game is split into two styles and mainly hand animated. There are the interactive adventure parts, where your dialogue choices and actions determine the story, while the dispatching element is like a time-management game, in which you are scored at the end.

It makes for a fascinating blend of play. And it's hugely addictive, with the full game split into multiple episodes that you can't help continuing with long into the night.

In many ways, it's like an interactive version of Invincible – the animated series based on the comic books of Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ottley. It's adult and pulls no punches, but also with a sharp, dark sense of humour.

Voice actors include Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad) as the lead, seasoned video games and animation star Laura Bailey, and Casino Royale, The Last of Us and Westworld's Jeffrey Wright.

How to play Dispatch for free

You can play Dispatch anywhere Luna is available, either on PC or Mac by heading to the official web page and streaming from there, or on any other compatible device.

That includes streamed via Fire TV Sticks and Ember TVs; on iPhone, iPad and Android devices; or many Samsung or LG smart TVs.

You just need a Bluetooth controller for TV play, although you can also play using a mouse (trackpad) and keyboard on a desktop PC / Mac or laptop.

Amazon Luna also includes a wide variety of other great games, such as Death Stranding: Director's Cut, Control: Ultimate Edition, Alan Wake II, and another personal fave, Dave the Diver. EA Sports FC 26 can be played for free as well, right now.

Games stream at 1080p 60fps where possible, although you can drop the resolution down to 720p in the settings if you're worried about data usage. You will need minimum broadband speeds of 10 Mbps for 1080p gaming.

Prime members should also remember that Amazon gives away a big bundle of PC games for free each month, to download and keep. You can claim them on the same Amazon Luna homepage.

When Grand Theft Auto 6 – or GTA VI as it's widely known – went live for pre-order last week, the internet almost came grinding to a halt, such was the huge interest in the upcoming game.

What quickly transpired, however, is that pre-orders of the game, including boxed versions, wouldn't actually ship with any disc inside. And, increasingly, it seems that such a physical version may never transpire.

Indeed, every GTA VI pre-order that arrives on 12 November – ahead of the 19 November go-live date – will contain a download code only, providing ample time for players to download the game instead.

Which raises the question: why bother with a boxed copy at all? You might as well just download it in the first place, right?

Death of the disc

It's also having a waterfall effect, as Sony just revealed that PlayStation would be axing disc formats from January 2028.

That means future PlayStation consoles will be digital download only – a format that, frankly, nobody asked for or actually wants. Such is the huge nature of Grand Theft Auto, however, it seems to have somehow made it acceptable.

Gaming communities and retail stores are up in arms about this announcement – and rightly so. As reported on TechRadar, Game has vouched to "not sit idly by" as Sony removed the physical format and swathes of its business.

It's broader than that, though, as no physical media means no second-hand market. And that just isn't good for gamers. If you're buying GTA VI for £70/$80 and, god forbid, you don't enjoy it – then, as has been the case for decades, you'd likely sell it on at a lower price to another player.

The option for gamers to function in that way has provided less 'risk' in their purchases. Sure, there are demos in abundance to sample games, but the big open-world titles of today might not gel with all players, or quickly lose their appeal. Not knowing is part of the fun of play.

Digital divide

The knock-on effect of that is potentially huge. If a gamer is willing to spend X amount on titles in a given period, only being able to do so at full price – and, as we've so often seen, an elevated price compared to physical – from a digital download store will limit the volume of their purchasing power.

Fewer games getting played, fewer explorations from players and therefore experiments from studios actually creating the games – simply fewer benefits to the industry as a whole.

It's like what's happened (and continues to happen) in cinema: arthouse struggles to find an audience, while huge-budget blockbusters are the only mindless movies that pass time and again. Not that everyone asked for it.

In gaming, just as is pointed out in a savvy Reddit thread, the move to digital only is akin to removing your purchase power altogether: "You are renting permission to play it," remarks the post. It shifts the power in a way that, ultimately, is less beneficial for gamers.

The Nintendo Switch 2 recently celebrated its first birthday, meaning we’ve now had a good year or so to really put Nintendo’s latest hybrid console through its paces.

Just after it launched, I wrote about three games in the console’s initial lineup that really showed off the improved hardware, and in the months since I’ve played a lot more.

Unlike its predecessor, which in its latter years shipped too many limp third-party ports that sometimes even had to turn to the cloud to get a game running, the Switch 2 has come right out of the gate with a host of very impressive efforts that you wouldn’t think twice about playing on the platform. And a number of Nintendo’s own games have been lookers too.

There have been loads of Switch 2 games that have impressed me in its first year, but here are three that have really stood out.

Star Wars Outlaws

It would have been a bit of a shame if the first truly open-world Star Wars game had skipped Nintendo platforms altogether, but luckily Star Wars Outlaws made its way to Switch 2 a year after it first launched. And it’s a bit of a stunner.

The game is understandably scaled back compared to the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions, with a noticeably softer image in handheld and docked mode and less visual detail to pore over. But that’s to be expected.

What’s remarkable is that Ubisoft’s development teams have managed to translate this feat of virtual Star Wars tourism to a handheld platform without it feeling completely compromised.

The game’s signature ray-traced reflections remain intact and Kay Vess can whizz around Tatooine’s vast desert on her speeder bike at a mostly rock solid 30fps. Unless you’re doing side-by-side comparisons with the game running on a PS5, it’s hard not to marvel at how good it all looks.

Star Wars Outlaws launched with some frustrating mandatory stealth sections that made parts of the game a bit of a slog, but thankfully those have long since been removed, allowing you to scoundrel your way through the galaxy in any way to see fit.

Motion controls in the Switch 2 version make the fairly rudimentary gunplay a lot more enjoyable, and the game features some of the best HD Rumble effects I’ve experienced on the console. And the best thing of all? Ubisoft has somehow managed to fit this sprawling Star Wars epic into a 20GB(ish) file. May the storage space be with you.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle started its life as one of the crown jewels in this generation’s Xbox lineup, before instantly becoming one of the best PS5 games when it eventually made its way to Sony’s console. A couple of years later, MachineGames completed a hat-trick of excellency with its miraculous Switch 2 version of the game.

I’m happy to report that Indy’s whip-cracking original adventure is no less thrilling on Nintendo’s hybrid. In fact, I might have enjoyed the brilliant tutorial section – a deeply nostalgic playable recreation of Raiders of the Lost Ark’s opening scene – even more on Switch 2 than I did on my PS5 Pro, largely owing to the novelty of playing through it in bed.

In relentlessly high-speed first-person games, the 30fps target we get here might be a non-starter, but it’s less of an issue in this one, with Indy spending as much time puzzling as he does knocking out Nazis. And I found the slapstick brawling to be just as much fun at half the frame rate.

A lot of the graphical features, including ray-tracing, survive the transition to Switch 2, and while the game’s stunning environments are rendered at a much lower resolution than on more powerful hardware, DLSS is mostly very good at maintaining the detail.

MachineGames pulled out all the stops with its Switch 2 version of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, implementing gyro and even mouse control options. Do I wish it also had Wii-style motion-controlled whipping? Of course, but you can’t have it all.

Pokémon Pokopia

At first glance, this ingenious Pokémon-infused hybrid of Minecraft, Animal Crossing and Dragon Quest Builders doesn’t look like a game you’d use to highlight the Switch 2’s power. But as well as being a delightful game about restoring a mysterious post-apocalyptic world with the help of endearingly upbeat monsters, Pokémon Pokopia is also quietly a technical showpiece for the console.

While its visuals won’t immediately wow you like Cyberpunk 2077’s, the cute and colourful art style really pops, complimented by a lighting system that really brings your blocky Poké-paradises to life.

Once you’ve really started to fill out your Pokédex and build up some towns, Pokémon Pokopia quickly becomes a very visually busy game, so it’s a testament to the developers that I very rarely noticed frame drops whether playing in docked or handheld mode.

The handheld resolution is slightly blurrier in motion, but I’m happy to make that tradeoff for the rock solid performance.

Pokémon Pokopia may also be the best advert yet for the Switch 2’s mouse controls. Playing this way makes it a lot easier to build and terraform with precision, while techniques like Rock Smash are more intuitive when you can directly point at the blocks you want to pound.

I do still wish using the Joy-Con as a mouse was more comfortable, but I’m very glad it’s an option when I sit down to rebuild my grateful Pokémon’s broken home.

Sony's announcement yesterday signals the end of physical game media – when it comes to current and next-gen consoles, anyway. Xbox is also rumoured to be following suit.

It means that from 2028, we'll no longer be able to buy games on disc for PlayStation consoles – PS5 and, most likely, PS6. If Xbox does indeed also ditch the disc, Project Helix will be digital-only too.

However, one much-loved gaming giant is bucking the trend. Sega is embracing physical games for a special release, and anyone with a Mega Drive / Genesis or an FPGA homage (such as the Mega Sg) will appreciate the gesture.

That's because it will be releasing two "Legacy Cartridges" in collaboration with iam8bit, to celebrate the 35th anniversary of its famous blue mascot.

Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 will come on playable Mega Drive / Genesis-compatible cartridges, with additional collectable bumph in "nostalgic" packaging.

There will also be a surprise cartridge "infused with Chaos Emerald energy" with one in eight orders.

How much do the Sonic the Hedgehog cartridge reissues cost?

Each bundle costs $99.99 and is available to pre-order now. The first wave of orders will be shipped in Q3 this year, the second in Q4, while all remaining pre-orders will be sent to customers in Q1 2027.

The sets look superb for retro gaming enthusiasts for sure, but are also a reminder of what we are set to lose when PlayStation puts a nail in the coffin of its physical releases. Digital copies are just not the same, and certainly not collectable.

And, as it also showed recently with the announcement that 100s of movies are being removed from PS5 owners libraries, they're not permanently yours either – no matter how much you pay for them.

Still, at least there's the likes of iam8bit and Sega, plus Evercade with its expanding cartridge library to keep the retro flag flying.

Sony has announced the games coming to all PlayStation Plus members next Tuesday, and they are lead by a bit of a surprise inclusion.

Xbox recently made a big decision on Call of Duty when it comes to Game Pass Ultimate, but PS5 and even PS4 owners will be getting one of the best entries in the series at no extra cost.

In preparation for this year's Modern Warfare 4, PS Plus subscribers will get the cross-gen bundle of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III.

Comprising a four to five hour single-player campaign, multiplayer and a Zombies mode, the game sees Captain Price return to track and take on Vladimir Makarov. It's also notable for introducing open world areas to its campaign missions, and giving you more freedom on routes and gameplay styles.

What's interesting is that Xbox – owner of Activision Blizzard – recently announced the decision to stop adding Call of Duty games to its Xbox Game Pass Ultimate service, in order to cut the monthly price.

Admittedly, that comes into effect with COD: Modern Warfare 4 and beyond, but it's a strange look putting another big release on the rival PS Plus platform soon after – even if it's already available on Game Pass.

I'm sure PlayStation fans won't care though.

It'll be available for PS4, PS5 and PS5 Pro from Tuesday 7 July, as will For the King II and CrossCode – two additional PS Plus games for the month. All members can redeem them – Essential, Extra and Premium.

They'll be available to grab until Monday 3 August.

PlayStation Plus pricing and membership tiers

There are three tiers of PS Plus membership. You will need to subscribe to one of them if you want to play multiplayer games online. However, each also offers additional benefits.

PS Plus Essential is the cheapest. Priced at £6.99 / €8.99 / $9.99 / AU$11.95 per month it gives you online play, plus three or four free games at the start of each month.

PS Plus Extra sits in the middle. It costs £10.99 / €13.99 / $14.99 / AU$18.95 per month, and adds access to a game catalogue of more than 300 full games to download.

PS Plus Premium is the most expensive tier and has all of the above and more. It is priced at £13.49 / €16.99 / $17.99 per month, and includes game demos, and an additional catalogue of classic games. There's cloud streaming too, for many games. That works across PS5 and the PS Portal handheld.

Note: in some regions – including Australia – PS Plus Premium is replaced with PS Plus Deluxe for AU$21.95 per month. This is the same as Premium, but without the cloud streaming.

Well, what a time it is to announce this one. Hot on the heels of news that GTA 6 won't have a disc in its "physical version", we're now learning that all PlayStation consoles will stop getting physical game disc releases from January 2028 onwards.

PlayStation announced the move in a surprisingly short blog post, with little deeper explanation of its thinking beyond touching on market trends (which are hard to ignore). It's blunt: "Physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028".

In its own continuing words, "This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs."

Closing the gap

There's no getting away from the fact that around 85% of games sold right now are digital, with physical media ever-shrinking, but this is still an absolutely enormous step, and one that will have major effects on the whole gaming industry.

After all, you'd put solid money on a PlayStation 6 coming out sometime around 2028 based on the current trajectory, and some observers would say this basically confirms that it will be digital-only. Unlike the PlayStation 5 Pro, it would also seem likely that it won't have an optional disc drive, since that drive would only be for older PS5 games anyway.

This will mean that, unless there are major changes to how purchasing works on PlayStation consoles at some point, the PlayStation Store will be the only way to get games directly on Sony's consoles, with the physical market becoming entirely code-in-a-box, and no likelihood of used games.

Digital ownership

Given that PlayStation is already fighting a multi-billion-pound lawsuit here in the UK around the prices on the PlayStation Store, it's hard to avoid the suspicion that this is a fairly dire change from the point of view of most consumers. After all, even if you rarely bought used discs, you always had the option to, and that option will now disappear.

On top of that, we're not even a week on from Sony catching major flak for deleting purchased movies from people's PlayStation accounts, underlining just how tenuous the concept of "ownership" is when you don't have a disc in hand.

It's also worth remembering that it's harder to actually capture the scale of the used market from retailers like CEX and marketplaces like eBay – again, there are plenty of buyers who will suffer from being restricted to digital purchases only.

Given the discontent generated by the lack of a disc in GTA 6's box, expect a fairly significant wave of backlash to be generated in the coming days. There's almost certainly nothing that anyone can do to change Sony's mind on this, but that won't stop people from making their unhappiness known, and loudly.

Gaming accessory manufacturer has made a habit of rubbing console manufacturers up the wrong way – with PlayStation and Nintendo in particular having issues with the upstart start-up. However, it seems to have gone too far this time.

Before Valve managed to announce its launch plans and pricing for the Steam Machine, Dbrand cheekily announced its own case for the forthcoming console – one that was based on the Weighted Companion Cube in Valve's Portal.

It looked great, got loads of publicity – including from T3 – and influencers took to YouTube to say just how cool it was. The only issue is Dbrand had missed out one important thing – permission.

At no point during its seven-month development did Dbrand ask Valve if it could make the case.

That has turned out to be a fatal decision, as the Companion Cube is now set for the dustbin. Valve's legal team not only requested the product was removed from the accessory firm's webstore along with all marketing videos and images, but it refused to enter licensing negotiations.

The Steam Machine Companion Cube is no more.

Dbrand has issued a humble statement explaining the situation, and has taken full responsibility: "On 12 November 2025, the day the Steam Machine was announced, we put up a concept render and sign-up page to see if anyone would be interested in a Companion Cube enclosure.

"It went moderately viral, with over fifteen thousand people signing up to be notified in the first day. In the months that followed, we built the idea into something real without ever asking Valve if we could.

"We’re going to regret that decision for a very long time," it says.

"Over the next seven months, we poured our souls into this project. More than a thousand hours went into engineering from our industrial design team. Forty-four sets of injection molding tools were developed, one for each of the cube's sub-components.

"The entire product was redesigned from scratch more than once, just to get the way it cradles the console exactly right. We literally rented out a university campus to film the launch video. By the end, we were losing money on every $99 Poverty Cube sold, but it didn’t matter. This had turned into a passion project for the entire organisation.

"Unfortunately, being proud of the thing we made did not give us the right to make it."

The statement also goes on to say that none of this is Valve's fault, and that the legal team have been "direct, fair, and respectful throughout".

And if you are one of those who pre-ordered your Steam Machine Companion Cube last week, you will receive a full refund by the end of the day today.

That seems to be it for the project sadly, and we're no longer going to be able to put our new (and expensive) Steam Machines in what seems like their natural shell. Still, Dbrand will have a new range of skins to check out soon.

And it'll be hoping we'll do so in droves – after all, it has tooling and many man hours to pay for.

Although the pre-order process is well underway, we still have months to wait before Grand Theft Auto VI actually arrives. It'll be released on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on Thursday 19 November, and if you're anything like us, we're struggling to contain our excitement.

However, you can get yourself prepared in the meantime. Not only are there plenty of official screenshots and a couple of trailers online, a community project has popped up to give us a virtual tour around Leonida, including Vice City and the other confirmed and rumoured areas of the game.

We're apparently getting the largest open world setting seen in a GTA game yet – at least according to a listing accidentally posted on Amazon's Brazilian site. And you can scroll around it, Google Maps style on an interactive website.

There are pins where it's believed each of the release game screens are taken from, while additional information has been gleaned from leaks and other art.

Of course, Leonida is loosely based on Florida, including its own Keys area, while Vice City is Miami – and there are nods to some real-world photos for comparison.

It's a truly impressive project and if the game does indeed allow you to travel the length and breadth of the map on show, it will indeed be huge. Let's hope so.

Back to the Amazon leak and the listing also revealed (via VGC) that there will be dynamic weather conditions and, perhaps most excitingly, an in-game social network to "watch viral videos, follow influencers, and discover world events".

NPCs will also reportedly have their own lives – navigating their our routines and random events around you.

Hopefully we'll find out a bit more soon, with a third game trailer thought to be on its way. You'll have to make do with the map for now though, and check out the pre-order details if you haven't have managed to place yours yet.

I've been a huge fan in the last few years of Square Enix's push on what it calls 2D-HD. This art style involves 2D sprites superimposed on 3D environments that can be much more intricate than they used to be in truly 2D pixel-based games of yore, and it's already proven that it can look pretty stunning in the right circumstances.

Until this month, all of the 2D-HD games that Square had released had been old-school RPGs with turn-based battle systems, and I've really enjoyed plenty of them. Still, its latest game in the lineup, The Adventures of Elliot, confirms that there was indeed room for a different approach.

This game is more of a traditional action-adventure game, much like the older titles in the Zelda franchise, and it really clearly demonstates that there's still so much life in the art style.

The game sees you play as Elliot, the titular adventurer and all-around good guy, as he's drawn into a fairly classic RPG plot. His local king has a dastardly advisor with his own eye on power, and when he uncovers a way to get it involving time travel, he kicks off the plot in a big way. That plot sees you following him through sort of wormholes to explore the world in multiple different eras.

You travel from pre-history all the way through to the future, seeing how the world grows and decays, and how the place of magic within its society waxes and wanes, too. It's a really fun idea, although it's fair to say that there's a lot more dialogue than I expected from the genre, and some of it can get a tiny bit dull and predictable.

What's much more reliable rewarding, though, is the game's visual style, which really does make the most of its retro aesthetic to propose a way forward for ambitious RPGs. Rather than games that need to cost hundreds of millions to make over the course of half a decade, this game looks beautiful and artistic with a much more limited approach.

Its environments are sweeping and evocative, but they're also not always that high-resolution, and while the game runs really smoothly on the Switch 2, that might well be partly because it's not actually that graphically demanding. I intend this as praise, to be clear – it's really clever management.

The gameplay is also nice and fun, with a very old-school approach to actual movement and combat, but a faster pace thanks to more movement speed. It also remixes things by giving you what are effectively unlockable perks for the various weapons you collect.

These perks can change how you use a weapon quite substantially, for example making it way more profitable to use slower power attacks than quick ones, or vice-versa. They're a fun way of keeping you on your toes and changing up your play-style in small but meaningful ways.

I'm about five hours into the game, so I can't pretend to know exactly how its story will play out, and I'm looking forward to it hopefully throwing me some curveballs (although reviewers have maybe indicated that won't happen much). What I know, though, is that the strong visual presentation of The Adventures of Elliot offer a map of how we could more well-made, well-presented games from big studios, rather than them all chasing photorealism.

Sometimes the old ways can be blended with the new, and 2D-HD certainly proves that retro gaming is as relevant as ever right now.

The PlayStation 5 Pro is expensive. Like, really bloody expensive. But, hot on the heels of Rockstar Games announcing Grand Theft Auto 6, I'm going to take the tumble and actually buy one. Gulp.

Sure, I don't need one, as I already own an original PS5 console. And, to be fair, I use that aplenty thanks to its disc drive – my 4K Blu-ray Club wouldn't have an output source otherwise. So I'll need to buy that pesky separate Sony disc drive, too. And probably a dedicated 4K Blu-ray player.

So, why now? The PS5 Pro launched back in November 2024, so it's kinda getting old already. But we've already seen a price increase since that date – and not a small one, either, as it was a £90 / $100 hike back in April. That's not down to inflation, it's down to market conditions.

When that happened I was further put off rather than thinking "I'd better get in line to buy one". But now, just two months on from that rise, I think yet more bad news could be imminent. Nothing's official yet, mind.

The Xbox impact

Take, as a key example, the recent Xbox boss's comments in revealing significant price rises for Microsoft's console across the board. That's not an isolated issue, it's down to significant memory price increases that affect the whole PC and games industries – and beyond, quite frankly.

So, in my mind, it's not a case of if Sony will be forced to follow suit, but rather when. Currently PS5 Pro sales have significantly dropped – but that's no surprise, as many rushed to buy in April, with a 50% sales drop thereafter being a direct consumer response to the price rise.

But here's what I believe will happen next. As someone who's just ordered GTA VI, which arrives this November, there's now a 'countdown clock' ticking away for the next five months. The game's release is undoubtedly going to be huge – and people are going to want to play it in the best way possible.

The GTA VI effect

Right now, even Sony is leveraging that GTA VI "plays best on PS5". In that official blog post, a number of reasons are given – but a key one, for me, is that the game "leverages the PS5’s ultra-high speed SSD, enabling you to experience ... near-instant load times."

The step up from PS5 to PS5 Pro is sizeable. Current rumours suggest that you'll get a locked frame rate on the Pro version. So it'll "play even better on PS5 Pro" (my words, not Sony's – yet, anyway). And people, myself included, are going to want a slice of that pie.

I think that's eventually going to cause a sudden rush of PS5 Pro purchases. Not right this second, granted, as people need to brush the April price rise off their shoulders and have ample time to forget it ever happened. But once they do and more Pro units continue to sell, the stock dwindles, the production line needs to source more components – and, you guessed it, those will cost more.

Result? The increased production is pushed onto you and I, the consumers. So I cannot see how the PS5 Pro won't be more expensive by the time GTA VI launches this November. I'm sure an official bundled box set will be arranged prior to the holiday period to really capitalise on the game's launch.

The offer of good credit

As it stands, however, promotional bundles are already available. Indeed, EE is currently selling one in the UK market for £808. I can't even find a Pro console on Amazon – which seems to me like a precursor to what's incoming.

Therefore EE's deal above is tempting. In particular as the offer of 9 months interest-free credit is an option, at £89.78 per month to cover the full purchase (longer payment plans are available – but the APR is high, so you'd pay over the odds).

I could hit the 'payday f-it button' right now, have a PS5 Pro in my lounge by next week, and have everything – GTA VI included – paid off and fully my own by next March. There's not going to be a PlayStation 6 to worry about in 2027, so assume an earliest 2028 launch for that – and I'm sure my Pro as a trade-in option will provide a decent discount as and when.

I know, it's bonkers to drop almost £800 / $900 on Sony's best current console. But with Valve's Steam Machine showing where prices are heading and, get this, the Xbox Series S (not X!) now set to cost more than a Switch 2, prices surely aren't going anywhere but up. And I want to be ahead of that curve – even if I'm a little late to the party already.

To call the Switch 2's Star Fox "just a remake" of the original 1997 N64 game, Star Fox 64 (well, Lylat Wars as I and so many others knew it – as that was the obscure European release name), would be to do it a disservice.

I've spent the last week-and-a-bit playing Star Fox on Switch 2 and, for me, it's set the nostalgic floodgates wide open – taking me back to school-age memories, yet keeping me in the here and now thanks to the game's complete and total graphical rework. It's added much more, too.

Cut from a new cloth

When a game is knocking on the door of being three decades old, I often ponder: "Was it just good for the time, or good enough to stand the test of time?" Now, I couldn't fire up Lylat Wars, as I no longer possess an original N64 console, but have since gone down YouTube rabbit holes to watch online playthroughs.

The look is night and day, with the Switch 2 version not simply adding a greater draw distance and sharper definition visuals. It's fully reinvested in the Lylat System's worlds, with new objects, visual and sound effects, voice-overs, and even brand new cut-scenes to tie the storyline together. To me it simply feels like a brand new game.

Yes, Fox McCloud's father's voice-over sounds amateurish, but – spoiler alert! – he dies in the opening cut-scene anyway. Set the game's timeline to five years later and we're left with an entertaining ensemble in Fox, Slippy Toad, Falco Lombardi, Peppy Hare and General Pepper – all of whom convey their characters' personalities convincingly.

While the cut-scenes set the backstory, it's the in-game action that really sells Star Fox. Once again, Nintendo has proven its genius – as the core structure of this rail shooter is effectively the same, but doesn't feel dated like you might expect. Indeed, for those who never played the original, it'll feel completely fresh.

Perfect timing

That's why now is such a great time for Star Fox to release for the Switch 2. Nintendo has savvily managed to sit between generations, so whether you were a teenager when the original dropped or are one now and exploring the new release for the first time, it's like digging into an all-new game.

It's more than stood the test of time, too, with great controls – if you can handle the inverted Y-axis (which you can change in settings), which I remember causing quite a stir among friends back in the day – and what is simply fun shooting fare.

There's an essence of arcade shooter about Star Fox, not that it ever enters the difficulty realms of an old-school side-scrolling shooter from the 1980s (that surely inspired its very core in the first place – R-Type, anyone?).

Huge replayability

But while a single run-through won't take an age – indeed, you'll "complete it" in an evening – there's heaps more to this game. And not just throwaway tidbits. Medal-earning challenges, multiple routings through the game's pathway, a true final boss, and incremental difficulty modes. They're addictive enough to keep you returning – which is exactly what I've feverishly been doing in the evenings over this past week.

The Switch 2 brings yet more to the party, too, with a Battle Mode that I'm sure will be the mainstay for many online gamers – as here you can embark on 4v4 dogfights (foxfights?) and squeeze never-ending playtime out of this release. If co-op is more your thing, however, then that's also present and correct for the main storyline.

When the franchise seemed like it might be dead and done – thanks to Star Fox Zero's poor performance upon release a decade ago – the Switch 2's new release shows that's anything but true. It was Zero's much-maligned Wii U controls that were its core criticism, though. With a controller in hand, the Switch 2 game feels much more natural.

Not that you have to play Star Fox with a controller. Another Switch 2 feature, mouse control, has also been added as an option. It gives you a cockpit view and table-top inputs – which, personally, I loathe. The finicky nature and hard-to-see viewpoint feel too removed from the game for me. But I'm sure some will love this setup.

More reimagination than remake

Sure, Nintendo has been leaning more than a little heavily on its stock in remakes to help propel the Switch 2 along. That's felt taxing at times (and I've heard many others say so), when there's been no true new Zelda or Mario game for the latest console.

We did get brand new Donkey Kong game and a joyous side-scrolling Yoshi title, mind, plus I've loved all of the remakes to date. Star Fox, however, looks to elevate the practice from remake to reimagination – and that's great footing ahead of the Switch 2's Ocarina of Time release later this year.

Until then, whether you played Star Fox 64 (or Lylat Wars) or not, I thoroughly recommend grabbing Star Fox for the Switch 2. It's such a fresh take on the classic that it will be new for those who've never played the original, while feeling anew for those who lived through the N64's 90s reign.

It's been a rough year for gaming hardware, with prices that just keep on rising, but Xbox's latest round of hikes is arguably the most shocking yet. That isn't because they're unexpected (they're very much not), but rather because they push pretty much all of Xbox's current-generation hardware into territory where you'd be hard-pressed to recommend that anyone at all should buy them.

The announcement was made in typically low-key fashion, in the form of a blog post on Xbox Wire, and there's no sugar-coating it. The post confirmed that on 1 August 2026, Xbox's 512GB consoles will get a $100 rise, while 1TB versions will go up by $150.

The damage that this set of price rises will do is perhaps underlined by the fact that Xbox didn't then do the math for its readers, but here's what the hikes actually look like in practice:

• Xbox Series S (512GB): Up from $399.99 to $499.99
• Xbox Series S (1TB): Up from $449.99 to $599.99
• Xbox Series X Digital (1TB): Up from $599.99 to $749.99
• Xbox Series X (1TB): Up from $649.99 to $799.99y

Those are prices that are almost impossible to swallow, in all honesty, and they're particularly terrible where the Xbox Series S is concerned. Once Nintendo's price rises come into force in September, the Series S will be the same price as the Switch 2, and there's no planet where I'd recommend the former over the latter.

Meanwhile, $750 for an Xbox Series X also looks fairly laughable when compared to the PS5 Pro for $100 more, and again, there's no way I'd point anyone towards Xbox's console when the comparison is made. If you bring the standard PS5 into play at $599 (for now), there's just no competition whatsoever.

Xbox's blog post is full of explanations for the hikes, with the biggest being the rise in memory component costs, as we all know by now – although in this case, Microsoft itself is obviously a big driver of the AI boom that's fuelling the crisis, something that isn't acknowledged.

Perhaps the most important part of the post, though, is the second half of this line: "Unfortunately, console storage and memory prices have increased by more than 2.5x, and we expect another doubling by the fall of 2027."

That's right, folks – this is far from the end of things, and if that doubling comes to pass in the next 12 months, we might get to the point where once mainstream consoles are priced at genuinely luxury levels. People have been speculating about $1,000 PS6s, but at this rate, the Xbox Series X might get to that point well before a new generation of consoles is ready.

That should worry basically anyone interested in console gaming – the market wasn't built up around consoles priced this prohibitively, and there's no way the impacts of unaffordable hardware don't ripple out over time. Xbox is already bleeding badly from a console war that was honestly already lost midway through the Xbox One era, but this could be another dismal turn.

With a scattergun approach to exclusive titles now leading to unpredictability about its biggest franchises, and layoffs happening left, right and centre in studios that it owns, Xbox is in full-blown crisis, whatever it's projecting in press releases.

It probably does need the reset that it claims to be going through, but it's hard to know what'll come out of that process. The Xbox Series S was intended to be a cheap entry point to get people hooked on Game Pass, but when it's $500, and Game Pass is no longer the top priority, where does that leave things?

We might know more in a year or so, as its plans for the next generation continue to leak and be reported on, but right now, there's only really one thing I can say – buying an Xbox just went from an interesting choice to a downright bad idea.

While we don't yet know numbers, if we were to guess how many copies of Grand Theft Auto VI have been pre-ordered so far, we'd estimate "sh*t-loads".

Amazon US, for example, sold out of PS5 copies at one point. And that's even considering that the physical edition doesn't include a disc – it's just a download code in a box.

It's certainly proven contentious. Many will pre-order the game through the PlayStation or Xbox stores on their consoles, of course. But even if you do so online, through the likes of Amazon, Argos, GameStop or Best Buy, you still have to download the game entirely.

And there will be no trading it in again once you've finished, as the code will have been redeemed to your account forever.

• GTA 6 pre-order stockists, prices and details here

However, there might be some better news coming for those who would rather own GTA 6 on a disc. Polish website PPE (via VGC) claims that a disc version could be coming in December – a month after the game is launched (on 19 November).

PPE already got it spot on when it suggested the physical box would be download code only at the pre-order phase, long before we found out.

The leaker has also got retail information right before the launch of other major releases.

Whether this is enough to make you hold off from a pre-order purchase is another thing. After all, there is no physical release for the Grand Theft Auto VI: Ultimate Edition, and according to the people we know who have ordered the game already, that's the version they've opted for.

You can currently only get that on the respective digital stores from PlayStation and Xbox. And considering it contains exclusive in-game items and at least one mission, it seems an attractive option for just a little more cash (£20 extra in the UK, $20 in the US).

The biggest game of the century so far is nearly here – GTA 6 is open to pre-order now, ahead of its release on PS5 and Xbox on 19 November. Still, you might have some questions about it, not least because every screenshot and trailer of the game released so far appears to be jaw-droppingly high-fidelity.

If you're a PS5 owner wondering about the game's compatibility, or if you don't currently own a console but plan to buy one to play what is a genuinely titanic gaming release, you're in the right place – here are some key answers about what hardware the game will run on, and how.

Will GTA 6 require a PS5 Pro?

Here's the big headline question – given how good it looks, will you need a PS5 Pro to run GTA 6? No.

Rockstar has long since confirmed that the game will release for the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles, meaning that it will be available to play on base hardware from the launch of this generation. That means that if you have a PS5 right now, you're absolutely fine to play the game when it launches.

It also means that if you don't have a console, you can choose between a PS5, PS5 Pro, Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S as to where you end up playing it. The game isn't releasing on PC at first, although that will hopefully come later, and it also hasn't been announced for the Nintendo Switch 2.

Will GTA 6 be PS5 Pro enhanced?

This is a more difficult question to answer. According to the PlayStation Store listing for GTA 6, the game will indeed be enhanced for the PS5 Pro. However, Rockstar and PlayStation have said absolutely nothing about what this actually means.

Sometimes game developers tell us before a game releases what the differences will be between playing on PS5 and PS5 Pro, whether it's higher resolutions, framerates or better ray-tracing.

In this case, we don't know anything about what'll improve; that said, we have months to go before it comes out, so there's no reason to believe that we won't get these details eventually.

Frankly, given the extra power offered by the PS5 Pro compared to every other console on the market right now, it's a given that the game will run better, but we'll have to wait for further details to know in what ways.

Will GTA 6 be better on PS5?

Here's another more contentious question. In theory, the versions of GTA 6 coming to PS5 and Xbox should be the same in terms of content, PlayStation and Rockstar have a marketing partnership pushing people towards the PS5.

A recent blog post confirms that there will be various PS5-specific enhancements, too, including using the DualSense's haptic triggers, its built-in speaker, and the console's 3D sound engine for more immersion.

In practice, none of those will be all that game-changing (and I always turn the DualSense's speakers off in-game as I hate how they sound), but these little touches do mean that the game will arguably have slightly more to offer on PS5 compared to Xbox, if you're keeping track of all the minutiae.

Where to pre-order GTA 6 on PS5

If you're a dedicated PlayStation gamer and you want a copy of GTA 6 locked in for launch day, you'll find some links above for pre-orders. It's worth knowing and reiterating that the "physical copies" being sold in stores won't actually have discs, though.

They're going to be download codes in boxes, which is a frankly grim step that nonetheless will mean that Rockstar is completely safe from pre-release leaks. The firm indications are that a disc version will follow eventually, but it's fairly rotten to know that this won't be available at launch.

As I predicted at the end of last week (and reiterated yesterday) Valve finally launched its Steam Machine yesterday, announcing pricing, full specifications, and the pre-order process.

And as with many others, I expect, the moment the page went live I jumped at the chance to register my interest in purchasing one. Now though, I'm not so sure.

The price is obviously a barrier. Starting at £879 / $1,049 for the 512GB model without a Steam Controller makes it considerably more expensive than the more powerful PS5 Pro. And if I needed a Steam Controller too (I already have one), that'd be £938 / $1,128.

Then there's the 2TB version at a whopping £1,149 / $1,349 or £1,208 / $1,428 with the controller, putting it in the desktop gaming PC category.

However, I was still willing to take a punt on the 512GB version. I have a spare 1TB SSD card lying around that I could upgrade it with, so storage wasn't my concern. And while still expensive, I appreciate the market conditions and challenges presented by the ongoing components crisis.

But then I discovered something else – a decision Valve has made that affects performance and one I'm not sure I'll be able to live with.

Steam Machine specs issue

There are some red flags when it comes to the Steam Machine's specifications, which don't really match the original promise of 4K 60fps gaming. But according to several online reviews that have appeared already (such as from Digital Foundry) it's still possible to eke decent 1440p performance out of the PC console in AAA games.

The "semi-custom" AMD Zen 4 6-core / 12-teraflop CPU and AMD RDNA 3 GPU with 28 compute units seem decent enough, even though the latter is effectively a cut back version of the three year-old Radeon 7600 graphics card with 8GB of VRAM.

Where it gets more concerning is when you consider the on-board RAM. While it sports 16GB of DDR5 RAM, Valve has opted for a single stick solution, rather than dual. This is something I've seen a lot during RAMageddon, especially from mini PC manufacturers and it truly throttles performance.

For example, I built my own Steam Machine alternative months ago, from a Geekom A7 Max mini PC with 16GB of internal RAM. That too shipped with a single stick of DDR5 (5600MHz) and it struggled. I ended up adding an extra stick, increasing the graphics rendering performance by up to 80%.

But even when I tested it with two 8GB sticks instead, I was getting anywhere up to 20% more performance from the same amount and type of RAM.

It seems Steam Machine reviewers are seeing this in tests. It is underperforming in comparison with equivalent machines running the Radeon 7600 GPU.

One solution is to split or add to the RAM, which is something I might end up doing as I do have spares, but it's hardly the plug and play experience a console is designed for. And if I'm tearing it apart to add my own SSD and RAM, why not build my own Steam Machine (again).

After all, while I've been using the third-party Linux alternative Bazzite on my Geekom and AceMagic mini PC builds, Valve will soon launch Steam OS for all PC types so you can do it on your own.

It's certainly food for thought.

Steam Machine alternatives

That being said, I do love the design of the Steam Machine, and once FSR 4 arrives on it, higher performance will be possible.

I've also recently converted a Geekom A9 Max to a Steam Machine-alike, with its more powerful, AI-supported internal processing and GPU and am getting 1440p gaming out of it, but it isn't quite the same. Oh, and it's also well over £1K.

You could build a small form factor PC from scratch, of course, and even with component shortages, you might manage it for less than the 2TB Steam Machine, but that's hardly the point. In that respect, the Steam Machine isn't for you.

It's a games console, not a gaming PC replacement. It's designed to sit under a TV, not a monitor. It's really a PC for those who don't like PCs. And that's why I might hold onto my slot in Valve's lottery, after all.

Either that or just switch on my PS5 Pro and enjoy that instead.

We've waited 13 years for a new Grand Theft Auto game and will have to wait a few months more, but the game is nearing its final stretch. Pre-orders for GTA VI on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S have opened around the world, including in the UK, US, Europe and Australia.

Available both digitally and in physical boxes (with a caveat, which you can read about below), you can now place your order from PlayStation, Xbox and multiple retailers. So, here's everything you need to know, including pricing.

Grand Theft Auto VI release date – when can I play it?

GTA 6 will be available from 19 November 2026 for PS5, PS5 Pro, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S.

All pre-orders will be able to be pre-loaded ahead of the release date, so you can play the game as soon as it's launched.

That includes physical pre-orders, as they will contain a download code rather than a disc. In fact, you will get your boxed copy a week before release (on 12 November) to enable you to pre-load the game in time.

Grand Theft Auto VI pricing details – how much does it cost?

There are two versions of Grand Theft Auto VI available – a standard and an "Ultimate Edition.

The standard edition of Grand Theft Auto VI is $79.99 / £69.99 / €79.99 / AU$129.95.

The Grand Theft Audio VI: Ultimate Edition includes exclusive vehicles, weapons, apparel, and even missions. This is priced at $99.99 / £89.99 / €99.99 / AU$159.95.

To sweeten the deal, all pre-orders made before 20 November 2026 will also receive a "Vintage Vice City Pack". This will include items that hark back to GTA: Vice City.

Digital pre-orders will get a free month of GTA+ too, to redeem in GTA Online and play classic Rockstar GTA games at no extra cost.

The game is available physically from multiple retailers, but be aware that the box merely contains a download code for the digital version. It will be available the week before launch, however, so buyers can pre-download the game to play on day one.

Grand Theft Auto VI on Xbox Game Pass and PS Plus – will it be free to subscribers?

As far as we know, there are zero plans to launch Grand Theft Auto VI on either Xbox Game Pass or PS Plus, for any members.

GTA V has appeared on both services over the years – as have other Rockstar games – but only after they've been available to buy for a considerable period.

If you do want to play GTA 6 at launch – and likely the year or so after – you'll have to buy it.

Grand Theft Auto VI pre-order stores – where can I order it?

You can now order GTA 6 from multiple retailers, both in digital and physical forms. However, as we've said above, the physical copy for PS5 and Xbox only contains a download code, NOT a disc.

It is likely therefore that the vast majority of pre-orders will be made on the PlayStation Store or Xbox Store.

Note, the Ultimate Edition is only currently available at one of those stores. You can also get the standard edition from them, as well as at third-party retail outlets (see the top of this page).

Grand Theft Auto VI formats – will there be a PC or Nintendo Switch 2 version?

Rockstar Games has given no indication on whether it plans to release a Nintendo Switch 2 version of GTA 6 somewhere down the line. However, it would be highly unusual if it didn't introduce the game for PC eventually.

There's no date or announcement as yet, but the studio generally adds a Windows edition a year or two after its console releases. We therefore fully expect an enhanced, PC Grand Theft Auto VI at the tail end of 2027.

Grand Theft Auto VI – the hidden trailer

One last thing, although the cover art trailer didn't include any gameplay or cutscene footage, there is a new clip sneakily hidden on the Rockstar Games website.

You can see it on the page if you scroll down, with the mouse scroll wheel making an animated vista move. Here you can see a brief pan backwards through Vice City as the sun is setting.

This has lead to Digital Foundry suggesting that ray tracing support seems to be in the game. There's little more than that for now, but maybe we'll be treated with a more extensive trailer on pre-order day.

Last week, we revealed a couple of reasons why Valve could finally announce its pre-order phase for the Steam Machine in the coming days. And we also understand that it could even be as soon as today.

One of those was because we received a heads-up from accessory maker Dbrand about its first, dedicated Steam Machine case. Launched today, Monday 22 June, the Companion Cube resembles the in-game block from Valve's Portal and is a natural fit for the cubed Steam Machine console.

You basically pop your Steam Machine inside it and it does the same as its popular inspiration – pretty much nothing, except sit there. If you do happen to have a pressure switch in your home, you could use it to activate something, but other than that, it's purely aesthetic.

It does come with a removable front, though, and a strip where you can see the Steam Machine's LED lightbar. It also allows for air to flow through, to passively keep your console cool.

Each Dbrand Companion Cube also comes with a Test Chamber-themed skin for the Steam Controller, and a Super Button stand that doesn't actually do anything but looks good.

The bundle costs $129.95 (just shy of £100), which includes a themed "collector's" box, but if you want to save some cash, a "Poverty Cube" version is also available to order which arrives in a plain cardboard box instead.

As Dbrand says it's for those "who truly broke the bank on their Steam Machine purchase", suggesting we'll soon find out the true cost of the new console.

The Steam Machine Companion Cube will ship from July with pre-orders being taken now. The Poverty Cube edition will ship from October, priced at $99.95.

As for the Steam Machine itself, considering the accessories are now starting to appear (and Dbrand's own announcement is now public), it is only a matter of time before Valve reveals all about its own pre-orders, shipping dates, and perhaps most importantly, price.

We'll update you the moment we find out more.

Capcom is on a generational run right now, something that was evident even back when Monster Hunter Wilds came out, let alone Resident Evil Requiem or Pragmata. It can't seem to release a bad game, but it seems it's not just new releases that are showcasing its strengths at the moment.

This week, it's adding another excellent port to its ever-expanding Switch 2 lineup, in the form of Devil May Cry 5: Devil Hunter Edition, a complete collection of Devil May Cry 5 with its various additional content slices, costumes and customisation options. It's one heck of a package, and it gets ahead even further by coming in at just £34.99 in the UK and $39.99. Some early deals are bringing that down further if you're a quick buyer, too.

That's a compelling price (or perhaps it's more that it would just be quite frustrating to charge more for a game that's now pretty old), but the clincher for Capcom is that the game performs really well. I've had access to it for a few days now, and while I can't claim to have played through the entire story again, I've tested enough to be really impressed by the port.

Not having checked out much about it pre-release, I wasn't sure what to expect in performance terms, but there's no way around the fact that this sort of hack-and-slash classic is really only to be played at 60fps or better. Dropping down below that would immediately compromise the action, so the good news is that Capcom has managed to bring 60fps to both docked and portable play.

This means that whether you're on a train or your sofa you can play it without it feeling like a major compromise compared to the versions that have been out on other platforms for years. Plus, while the visual downgrade can't really be argued with compared to the PS5 version, for instance, it's still not as harsh as I worried it might be.

In fact, the comparison I couldn't stop making in my head was to Bayonetta 3, which I played on the original Switch when it came out in 2022. Putting art styles and direction aside, when you put the visual fidelity of that game, even with the newer boost mode making it sharper, it looks terrible compared to this version of DMC 5.

That shows how far we've come in terms of power, and really makes me curious to see what could be cooked up for Bayonetta 4, but also for the next Devil May Cry game, getting back to Capcom. It's already demonstrated a commitment to Switch 2 releases that still feel great to play, even if they're not as pretty as on other consoles or PC.

So, when this series eventually gets the blockbuster new entry that it surely deserves at this point, I'd say we're highly likely to get a great port on Switch 2 at release. Whether that game can also manage 60fps will be potentially more curious, but on this evidence it looks like Capcom knows what it has to do to make a genuinely compelling portable version.

In the gaming headset stakes, Turtle Beach is an established name. It's one of the longest-standing brands in the market, and particularly in the US there was a time when it felt like basically anyone with a third-party headset had a Turtle Beach one.

That's changed a lot, though, and the best gaming headsets now come from a more diverse pool of brands. Still, Turtle Beach is clearly trying to move with the times, and the Stealth Pro II demonstrates that with a spiffy new design and premium price.

I've been using one for a couple of weeks to see if Turtle Beach's flagship can live up to the billing. Here's what I make of it – the good and the bad.

Price and Availability

The Turtle Beach Stealth Pro II is available now in most regions and comes with an undeniably punchy price tag attached. In the UK, it's £299.99, in the USA that's $349.99, while in Australia it's AU$549.95. No matter how you spin it, that's pricey.

For only a little more money you could have my top recommendation in this device category, the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni, which boasts very similar features – so Turtle Beach is undercutting that slightly, while clearly trying to fight for the same ground.

One important note – like many others, there are two versions of the Stealth Pro II on sale. One is seemingly standard and works on PC, Switch consoles and PlayStation. The other has Xbox in the name and adds compatibility with Microsoft's consoles at no extra cost. So, if you're going to buy one, make sure it's the Xbox one for maximum compatibility and no downsides.

Design and Features

I've tested Turtle Beach headsets for well over half a decade at this point, and I've consistently marked them down for mediocre designs and ergonomics. They've often been very sensibly priced, but generally felt plasticky and cheap, which is something the Stealth Pro II completely fixes.

It has a sleek new design that's way more futuristic than past generations, and has a really lovely look, whether you pick it up in the white version or black. Each earcup is really big and spacious, and on the outside it has a metallic plate with the Turtle Beach logo.

One of these earcups can be pried off to reveal the replaceable battery pack, but the other is fixed. On the left earcup, you'll find a button to swap between audio modes, a dial for master volume, another for game/chat balance, a USB-C charging port as a backup, and a power button.

The microphone comes out of the same left earcup and is removable if you don't want to use it. It can flip up out of your way when not in use, too. The right earcup, meanwhile, holds a microphone gain dial, a device-switching button, and a Bluetooth pairing button.

Each earcup is secured to a slim metal arm that joins up to the headband, and each can telescope for adjustment. The headband itself is sturdy plastic, with a section of woven stretchy mesh at the top. This is clearly intended to soften how the headset sits on your head, but I didn't find that it worked too well.

Wearing the headset for a few hours, I found that the top of my head did ache a little, which isn't a great sign, especially since its weight of 393g isn't all that substantial. My gold standard comfort-wise remains SteelSeries' suspended headband system, and this falls quite a way short of that, even if it looks really slick.

The Stealth Pro II comes with a base station that holds a battery on standby to swap out when your headset runs low. Swapping them is fairly easy, and you get around 40 hours from each. It's a great system, cribbed shamelessly from SteelSeries, and means you never really need to think about charging.

That base station connects to your console or PC by a USB cable, but curiously, this is where Turtle Beach takes a new approach. Rather than having multiple wired inputs that you can swap between to manage more than one device, you instead get another, traditional and small USB dongle in the box. This adds a second device to the headset's connection options, and you can swap between devices on the headset itself.

I'll be honest, this system is a mixed bag. In some ways, it can look really flexible since you can have devices that aren't next to each other paired to the same headset. In practice, though, most of my gaming happens at my desk, and this just became a more inconvenient way to swap devices, and with more dongles coming in at £30 / $25, I'm not convinced this is great for most people.

If it would suit your setup, though, it could be a boon instead of a detriment – that's going to be a personal situation. What's more universally solid is the audio suite on offer here. The headset uses 60mm drivers to provide its sound, and comes with active noise-cancelling (ANC) to help cocoon you too.

Finally, the headset comes with a hard case for storage and packing, although it's worth knowing that this case is massive. It's flat and has slots for the transmitter, headset, microphone and cables, and that makes it a beast, albeit one that I'm still glad comes at no extra cost.

Sound and Performance

The blend of features that Turtle Beach has stuffed into the Stealth Pro II is quite an interesting one, then, and its redesign is better visually than in comfort terms, but how does the headset perform from a sound and connectivity standpoint?

Well, in terms of gaming immersion and clarity it does very well. I've used the Stealth Pro II in a range of games, from Forza Horizon 6 to Battlefield 6, and have found it an adaptable and reliable performer in all of them. In shooters I've been able to locate footsteps and gunshots easily, while single-player games have been immersive and three-dimensional.

The headset is a little quieter than I'd expected, so you might find yourself dialling it up a bit, but that's not something that matters given its loudness ceiling goes really high. I've also been extremely impressed by its microphone, which is really clear and doesn't suffer from much muffling or fuzziness – an otherwise typical bugbear in the headset world.

Its ANC is also very solid, with a clear difference made if there's background noise (whether it's a washing machine, a roommate, or traffic noise). Similarly, connectivity has been rock-solid, and when I've been connected to the main transmitter it's been exemplary, with a range that can easily stretch to a few rooms' distance if you need.

That said, the nature of the connection system that Turtle Beach has designed does mean that it's less immediately flexible than something like the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Omni, but it's similarly easy to customise the Stealth Pro II. On PC the Swarm 2 software is slick and simple, while console gamers can use a mobile app when connected to their phone by Bluetooth.

Verdict

The Stealth Pro 2 is a great step forward for Turtle Beach, showing that the brand can compete in design terms and make sleeker, more modern headsets.

That makes it all the more painful that its design also brings a flaw that holds it back – a headband that I found uncomfortable to wear for more than a couple of hours.

That'll be partly down to my head shape, and I can't know whether others will find it more comfortable, but it makes me feel people should try the headset on if they can before buying it.

Aside from that, though, the sound quality on offer is excellent, the ANC is better than before, and connectivity could be perfect for some disparate gaming setups. That makes the Turtle Beach flagship feel like a winner in many areas.

Also consider

My favourite gaming headset has already got a couple of mentions in this review, and it's the clear upgrade on the Stealth Pro II at the moment – the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni. It has all the same features, but I prefer how it handles multi-device swapping, and it's incomparably more comfortable.

Another more comfortable alternative with fewer features but equally excellent sound is the Sony Inzone H9 II. It's almost unbelievably light and has great precision, while stripping things back for a simpler experience.

The Nintendo Switch 2 has just celebrated its first birthday, and the console has already amassed an eclectic library of must-play games.

But what’s next? Last week, Nintendo put out a near hour-long Nintendo Direct presentation that was designed to tell us just that. Mario is still conspicuously absent, but there’s plenty to get excited about while we wait for the plumber’s triumphant return.

My Switch 2 wishlist is growing all the time, but here are three standouts on the upcoming release slate.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

This really should have been the mother of all surprise reveals. A rare internet-breaker. Sadly though, it was leaked several months ago so everyone and their grandma already knew it was coming.

Still, to see Nintendo itself actually confirm that a remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is not only coming to Switch 2, but coming this year, was a bit of a thrill.

Unfortunately, the Japanese gaming giant confirmed little else. We heard some familiar Zelda motifs and watched an admittedly charming patchwork setup of the seminal N64 game’s story.

We also got a very brief glimpse at the fairyless child Link sleeping on a bed of straw. But that’s it. After several months of speculation and hype, Nintendo opted not to give us even a millisecond of gameplay, meaning we don’t yet know exactly what kind of remake this is.

Ocarina of Time has of course been remade before, for the 3DS in 2011, which is now widely accepted to be the definitive version of the game. So why do it again?

The Switch 2 version could just be a 1:1 remake of the original with much shinier graphics and improved gameplay. But in a post-Breath of the Wild world, would Nintendo go back to the old style of 3D Zelda games without modernising the experience in some way?

We don’t yet know the answers to these questions, and as annoying as that is, it is quite fun to wonder for a bit longer.

Star Fox

The Star Fox series is one of Nintendo’s IP misfits. Unlike Mario, Zelda and Kirby, which have all had countless entries, Star Fox tends to go years – in this latest case a decade – without new entries. And most of the games it does have are just remakes of Star Fox 64, the only near universally beloved one.

Hilariously, the upcoming Switch 2 game, just called Star Fox, is also a remake of the N64 entry. It's a now incredibly old-fashioned rail shooter about an anthropomorphic fox pilot on a mission to save the Lylat System with his mercenary animal friends.

You can blast through the campaign in less than an hour, and the whole point is that you play it again and again to discover new routes and improve your score.

How well this decidedly arcade-inspired experience will go down with a new audience in 2026 remains to be seen, but here’s the thing: Star Fox 64 remains a fantastic game, maybe the best of its kind, and the Switch 2 remake looks like the ultimate version of it.

We’re going to see the game in high definition for the first time, with much higher production values and new cutscenes. And after Fox McCloud’s cameo in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, we might be about to enter a golden era for the franchise.

If it begins by re-experiencing his best adventure with shiny new graphics and glorious 4K fur, then so be it.

Nintendo Switch Sports Resort

I’ve had a soft spot for Nintendo’s motion-controlled sports games ever since I took a fiver off my dad for beating him at Wii Sports golf one Christmas. Good times.

The series is making its Switch 2 debut later this year in Nintendo Switch Sports Resort, a collection of 12 new and returning sports to thrash your relatives at.

Taking us back to Wuhu Island, the iconic setting from 2009’s Wii Sports Resort, Nintendo Switch Sports Resort looks like more of the same, but that’s no bad thing.

Thanks to their built-in sensors, your detached Joy-Con controllers once again become rackets, boxing gloves and golf clubs in accessible sporting contests you can play solo or against others.

Classic sports like tennis and bowling are enduring crowd-pleasers, but it’s new additions like skateboarding and thumb wrestling that have caught my eye. Nintendo seems to be particularly excited about the latter, if the amount of time it reserved for demonstrating it during the game’s reveal is anything to go by.

My only gripe with Nintendo Switch Sports Resort is that we have to wait until late October to play it, with Wuhu Island being the perfect virtual summer getaway.

There have been several recent rumours suggesting Grand Theft Auto VI would be delayed again, but yesterday Rockstar and Take Two responded in the best way possible.

Still scheduled for release on 19 November 2026, we have also got a date for when GTA 6 pre-orders open.

You will be able to place your order for the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S game on 25 June 2026 – just under a week away.

There's still no word on a PC or Steam version, but the pre-order reveal suggests that everything is on track for consoles in November.

The date was also accompanied by the cover art – revealed in a YouTube video for the first time.

There are no further glimpses at gameplay or cutscenes – the most current trailer was posted a year ago – but that will surely come soon, too. Maybe we'll see something new as ordering starts (as if the hype machine wasn't already at a frenzy).

Importantly, we'll also find out the price of GTA 6. Many have expected it to be one of the most expensive game releases of all time, with rumours suggesting it could be anywhere between $80 and $100 (up to £75) for the standard edition.

It's highly likely that there will be special edition and/or collectable versions too, and they'll cost more. However, that's not exactly new for the games industry today, and many games already ask steep prices for extra DLC skins and content.

Either way, this is a vital step in the release for a sequel 13 years in the making.

We'll update you when we find out any further details, but until then mark next Thursday in your diary.

Video game showcase season has been and gone, and we now have a pretty good idea about what we’re going to be playing for the (ominously stacked) rest of 2026 and beyond.

The recent Xbox Games Showcase was a mix of big-hitting first-party titles we already knew about and some fun surprises, and with this year marking 25 years of the Xbox brand, Microsoft had to deliver.

It’s fair to say Game Pass subscribers are going to be very busy in the next 12 months or so, and the three games I’m most looking forward to playing on my Xbox Series X will all be on the service from day one.

Fable

A recent delay into early 2027 hasn’t dampened my enthusiasm for our long-awaited return to Albion.

This reboot of the cult favourite Xbox RPG series is being developed by Playground Games, the team behind the excellent Forza Horizon series, which has already proved that it knows how to build amazing open-world environments.

A fantasy RPG is obviously a big departure from racing shiny supercars around real-world locations, but everything we’ve seen so far suggests this uniquely British series is in good hands with the Leamington Spa-based studio.

In last week’s Xbox showcase we saw some new gameplay footage, and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning’s Hayley Atwell was the latest cast reveal. She brings to life Isabel, the Hero of Wraithmarsh, and joins the likes of Matt King, Richard Ayoade and Natasia Demetriou in a game that looks certain to delight sitcom fans.

The trailer also teased the return of Jack of Blades, the iconic villain of the original Fable, whose role Playground is keeping quiet about for now. I’ve seen more than enough of the game’s combat and faithfully foul-mouthed language to know I will be playing it on day one next year.

Gears of War: E-Day

Microsoft appears to have done a bit of a 180 on its feelings towards exclusivity recently. This time last year, you might have been planning to wait for the inevitable PS5 Pro version of Gears of War: E-Day to see the game running at its gloriest, goriest best, but it sounds like Xbox is going to be the only place you can play it on console now.

Luckily, having seen the game in action, I’m more than happy to fire up my Series X for this one.

As someone who hasn’t really kept up with the Gears of War series since the Xbox 360 days, I’m happy that E-Day is a prequel. Set 14 years before the events of the first game, it won’t require me to play through every entry to date to know what’s going on, and I like the idea of experiencing Emergence Day, which is when the Locust Horde first emerged from the ground and launched its attack on humanity.

We play as a younger Marcus Fenix, with the game setting up his bond with Dominic Santiago that plays such a key role in later entries.

As you’d expect from a Gears game, it’s brutal and bloody stuff, and Unreal Engine 5 should make the series’ trademark cover-based shooting – now with added mobility – feel fresh again.

Vivarium

Xbox showcases are typically dominated by headshots and explosions, and as you can see from my previous pick, I’m all for that. But I’m also always looking for something to balance out all the uber-violence, and Vivarium fills that slot perfectly.

It’s a non-linear slice-of-life adventure in which you play as a child named Jenny who lives in a small town inside a terrarium.

There seems to be some sort of mystery surrounding this idyllic “pocket world” and you will apparently unravel it through the choices you make in the game. That is, if you can drag yourself away from tending to your garden and expanding your enviable vinyl collection.

There’s also an Animal Crossing-style real-life calendar system at play, so in-game days only end when yours do.

I’ve got two paragraphs in without even mentioning the most striking aspect of Vivarium, which is undoubtedly its stunning 90s anime-inspired visuals. Entirely hand-drawn (without, we’ve already been assured by its developer, any assistance from AI), it really does look like a lovingly crafted playable Ghibli cartoon, and I can’t wait to jump into the terrarium in 2027.

The Steam Machine hoves into view – we've been waiting months now for Valve to get into gear and announce both the release date and pricing for its highly-anticipated Steam mini-machine, and rumours are now swirling that everything will become clearer next week.

Depending on which leaker or report you pick, you might end up being told confidently that pre-orders will open on 22 June, next Monday, or that they might go live any time that week, but everyone seems to agree that we'll get some proper news in that window.

That's got us thinking once again about what we want from the Steam Machine, and what it has to do to really make a proper impact on the market – so here are three things we want to see from it.

1. Decent value, if not the steal of the century

If Valve had managed to get the Steam Machine ready a few years ago, it might have been too early to the market for the demand to have built up, but it probably would also have been able to build a proper little bargain of a machine for people. It's fairly clear at this stage that such a thing might be too difficult a demand in the year 2026, with the memory crisis continuing to wreak havoc.

Pricing is a huge variable for the Steam Machine, in case that wasn't obvious, and rumours about what it'll cost go from £999 here in the UK (which would be no disaster) to options closer to £1500 (which would indeed be fairly dire).

Where the machine lands is going to be massive for its long-term fortunes, and we can only hope that it ends up being around that £999 mark to give it a chance of looking like fair value. At this point we're no longer expecting a stunning deal, but something that looks solid enough might just be doable.

A decent amount of stock

Valve has been making popular hardware for a good few years now, but that doesn't mean that it hasn't had plenty of brushes with stock shortages. Even the new Steam Controller's launch has been noteworthy for how scarce it's been, albeit not to the levels of a launch PS5 back in the back old days.

So we're very much hoping that Valve has calculated the interest levels properly for the Steam Machine – it would be a real shame if it sold out instantly upong becoming available. Of course, it almost certainly will, but we're moreso hoping that Valve has plans in place for further waves of stock.

It should probably launch with an immediate reservation system much like the one now in place for the Steam Controller, but it's fairly hard to know whether that'll happen straight away. We hope it does, to cut down on pre-order chaos when things go live.

Some proper power

The last big question for the Steam Machine is how it'll run the latest games – meaning how much power it'll have at its disposal. Valve has already said that its machine should be able to run many modern releases at 4K resolution at 60fps, but there's still a lot of grey area there.

With FSR upscaling at play to sharpen things up, that means it sounds like there's quite good headroom in the Machine's capabilities, but it's still hard to know what that looks like until we get actual benchmarks out.

If we crank Cyberpunk 2077 up to its maximum settings, how will things fare? How will the Machine's ray-tracing capabilities stack up? And how will it do with even more recent releases like 007 First Light and Forza Horizon 6, both of which tie in really well with Nvidia GPUs, with less active partnership on the AMD side?

These are all unknowns until Valve goes deeper into the technical side of what it's offering, so all we can do right now is hope that the power on offer is enough to make this a proper living room option, something that can compete with the PS5 Pro but with more versatility and compatibility.

There's been a lot of talk about the Steam Machine this year – mainly in a "Will it? Won't it?" kind of way. The ongoing RAM crisis (lovingly called "RAMageddon") has had an impact right across consumer technology, and Valve is far from immune.

However, after confirming that it was still on course for a summer release, it looks like the console might only be days from launching – from preorders being accepted, anyway. Two clues have dropped into our laps that give us hope that we'll hear more very soon.

For starters, import listings have been found that suggest Valve has received tons of new product units in the last week. Posted on X by EOZ VR's Brad Lynch it claims that the company has taken in tonnes of "Game Consoles".

It has also received a huge selection of "Virtual Reality Devices", thought to be the Steam Frame.

On top of this, T3 has heard through the grapevine – not from Valve directly, though – that we could get an announcement early next week.

It might even be that we hear more this week about an imminent registration phase, in preparation.

It is already assumed Valve will adopt a similar preorder format to the recent Steam Controller sale period. Only existing Steam account holders who have bought items over the years will be allowed to order one, and even then it's like a ticketing system where you register your interest and will be invited to purchase later.

This was introduced to reduce the likelihood that they'd all end up in the hands of scalpers. It worked for me, as I got my Steam Controller about a week or so after I successfully registered my interest.

The big difference will be price, of course. While we still have no official confirmation, the current speculation is that the Steam Machine could be around $950 (around £707 at today's exchange rate). And while that might seem steep, it's around the same as a PS5 Pro, so it's all relative.

If Valve has managed to keep component costs down enough to hit $950, while RAM and storage is two to three times more expensive today, I'll be pleasantly surprised, in fact.

After all, the Steam Machine is targeting AAA PC gaming at 4K 60fps, while my current Steam Machine-like build using a Geekom A7 Max can only safely handle 1080p 60fps – although that has recently been slashed in price.

Thankfully, it doesn't look like we'll have too much longer to find out either way.

When the Switch 2 was first unveiled, I didn't realise that one of its biggest upgrades over the previous generation would involve older games. It was easy to be caught up in the hype around Mario Kart World and later exclusives like Donkey Kong Bananza without thinking about one of the biggest time-sinks on my old Switch 1, but now that I've had the console for a year, I've been unable to avoid it.

I used my Switch 1 to play a bunch of games I missed from previous generations, since it became a home to thousands of ports and remasters. While plenty of these were from eras long enough ago that they ran like butter, many others were limited to 30fps modes that didn't feel amazing to play.

Now, I'm playing a newly-released Switch 2 Edition that underlines just how much better the Switch 2 is for this sort of long-delayed play-through of a big game. Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition is a beast of an RPG that I've wanted to check out for ages, and its newly upgraded version makes it totally different to play on Switch 2.

The biggest change is an obvious one – the game's previous 30fps limit is now raised to 60fps, and that makes it wildly smoother to play. Frankly, the 60fps performance isn't even the most stable in the world, with some relatively obvious drops in places, but it's still way nicer than 30fps in my book.

The game's also miles sharper, with 4K resolution in docked mode (which is how I've been playing it over the weekend), and while you can still tell that it's an upgraded older game, it's still remarkable to compare it to something like Pokémon Violet and Scarlet, even with those games' Switch 2 patches.

In short, it's a really good-looking game, and so far I'm really enjoying its storytelling and battle system, having previously only played Xenoblade Chronicles 3, a later title that has a bit more involved of a combat setup. This one's more stripped-back since it kicked the series off, and I'm enjoying it a lot.

With a game of this size, the question is always whether I'll actually make it through the whole thing, and while I can't be sure on that front, it's still great to have the best possible version of it available on Switch 2 now. With the series' next game (Xenoblade Genesis) now unveiled and coming out in 2027, it's a fun time for the franchise.

The fact that there are two more Switch 2 upgrades coming later this year, too, for Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and 3, means that those who like a good JRPG but haven't yet dipped their toe in this series could queue up an absolute mountain of content for themselves if they're so inclined. That might be too much of one series even for me, but I'm having a great time for now.

It again raises the question of what I'll end up using my Switch 2 for the most over the next half-decade or more, and I think there's a really good chance that ports make up a huge part of that playtime. After all, being able to play things on the go and while travelling frees up loads of time for extra gaming, and that gives it a sustained advantage over my PS5 Pro and PC.

When you've got a PS5 Pro to call on at any time, but also a Nintendo Switch 2 and a gaming PC that just so happens to have a 5070 Ti inside it, knowing what platform to choose for a game isn't always that straightforward. A lot of the time, I'll base my decision on what hardware I think will be most interesting to evaluate, and in the case of Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, I found myself drawn to the PS5 Pro for reasons I can't fully explain.

I've been playing the Lego games since the very earliest incarnations – the mid-2000s were a great time to be a kid with an Xbox 360, and I played some of the Lego Star Wars games to death. I've given them a bit more space recently, being a full-on adult and all, but the buzz around Legacy of the Dark Knight made me think I should check it out.

I wasn't wrong – this screams out that it's a great place to get back into the franchise if you haven't played one in a few years, not least because it's basically a hybrid between a Lego game and a sequel to the superb Arkham series that has been so badly missed in recent years.

I've played half a dozen hours of Legacy of the Dark Knight and enjoyed every minute, crunching through the prequel scenes that establish Bruce Wayne as Batman, and fairly quickly acquiring the core gadgets to make moving around this brick-built version of Gotham City super fun.

What's been most interesting in that time has been how the game approaches the PS5 Pro's beefier hardware. Principally, unless it has something going on behind the scenes, there's actually no Pro setting here in the menus, meaning you get the same choice between "performance" and "fidelity" modes as those on the normal PS5.

The performance mode targets 60fps, while fidelity aims for 30fps, and the visual difference is actually quite obvious. Fidelity is a good chunk sharper, but also has more accurate and vivid reflections and lighting, while the performance setting obviously strips things back a bit.

Normally, I gravitate straight to performance options for smoothness, but I've actually been playing the game on fidelity mode to get the most of it visually, because this is a surprisingly lush-looking game at times. Its nighttime cityscapes can be really pretty, and the detail in its Lego constructions is really fun, especially when they're at a sharper resolution.

That said, there's no getting around the fact that I'm surprised there's no "Pro" mode here, or at least that the in-menu information could be clearer about whether the PS5 Pro has any boosts to offer. The game looks great, but it's still quite surprising to find a Lego game limited to 30fps if you want the best visual performance, especially when you think about the modes on offer in something like Assassin's Creed Shadows, for instance.

I'm hopeful that we'll get a patch down the line to improve things, even if it is just a matter of clearer communication, but I'll still be having fun with Legacy of the Dark Knight regardless. I didn't expect it to pull me away from 007 First Light on my PC, but it's done a good job of offering a low-stakes palate cleanser, and there's a reason it's been met with the reviews and word-of-mouth that it has.

Thanks to Summer Game Fest stepping in and taking the place of E3 (RIP), June remains the big month in the year for video game announcements and news – and 2026 is no different.

PlayStation put out a near hour-long State of Play presentation at the beginning of the month, mapping out the big PS5 games on the horizon, some of which we already knew about and others we didn’t.

As a lucky owner of the PS5 Pro, I’m always waiting for a game that can blow me away, and while I’m sure these games will also look amazing on the regular PS5, too, I’m particularly excited to see them running on the Pro, especially now the console’s PSSR upscaler is really starting to mature.

Marvel's Wolverine

Insomniac’s Logan-themed diversion from its excellent Spider-Man series is the big PS5 game for the second half of 2026, and we finally got an extended look at gameplay in the State of Play.

Interestingly, the development team have decided to set their game in a world where X-Men aren’t a thing (even if Jean Grey does make an appearance), so this is a purely Wolverine-focused single-player experience with brutal, bloody combat.

Unlike Spidey, Logan can’t dance around enemies for fun, but he can tear through them with those Adamantium claws. Insomniac has really nailed the visceral violence.

Marvel’s Wolverine isn’t an open-world game, with Insomniac instead wanting to focus on building the most cinematic Logan simulator yet, and it looks like the right approach. We got to see Wolvie riding a motorbike in one set piece, so it isn’t all about melee combat, and if Insomniac can blend varied gameplay with a compelling original story, this could be another superhero classic from the studio.

Luckily, we don’t have to wait too long to find out.

Until Dawn 2

Supermassive Games’ Until Dawn became an instant survival horror classic when it first released on PS4 back in 2015. Essentially an interactive popcorn slasher movie about a group of teenage friends stranded in a remote mansion with a murderer on the loose, it left it up to you to keep as many of them alive as possible over the course of one in-game night. It’s also possible for the whole lot to die, depending on your choices.

It’s a stupidly entertaining premise, and now we get to do it all again in the recently announced sequel – this time from the developer of Horizon: Call of the Mountain, Firesprite. It swaps the classic scary house setting for a sun-kissed haunted island, but expect similar scares and gore.

The first game famously starred the likes of Hayden Panettiere and Rami Malek, taking advantage of what was at the time pretty groundbreaking motion capture and facial animation tech. In the debut trailer for its sequel I immediately spotted Dacre Montgomery, best known for his incredible performance as Billy Hargrove in Stranger Things. Bring it on.

God of War Laufey

With Naughty Dog absent from this month’s State of Play, it was up to Sony’s Santa Monica Studio to grab all the headlines with its reveal of the next God of War game.

God of War Laufey looks almost like a spin-off at first glance – you won’t be playing as Kratos for starters. Instead, you'll be taking on the role of his late wife and the mother of Atreus, in what seems to be a story that runs parallel to the events in the last two God of Wars.

And so, after waking up in what appears to be a mysterious afterlife for the gods, Laufey soon discovers that being dead doesn’t mean putting your feet up. Before she knows it she’s being lobbed into a cell by a guy whose head is on fire and befriending a talking gelatinous cube. It’s a lot to take in.

As you’d expect, Sony Santa Monica appears to be doing the cinematic one-shot thing again with God of War Laufey, and it looks very impressive even at this stage of development (we didn’t get a release date so don’t expect to be loading this one up for a while).

Combat looks very different to what we’ve come to expect from Kratos, with Laufey being a lot lighter on her feet and immediately handy with a sword. She can perform aerial combos and even jump, all abilities the fallen warrior is going to need to survive the Everywhen.

We don’t yet know what this game means for future Kratos-starring entries, but I can’t wait to find out.

When the Nintendo Switch 2 was first unveiled, there were plenty of parts of its specs sheet that drew attention, but the inclusion of a 120Hz display was surely one of the most eye-catching inclusions. This means that games on the Switch 2 with some headroom in terms of performance can enjoy ultra-smooth performance, whether in handheld mode or when connected to a compatible display.

The reality, though, is that the there haven't been all that many games in the year since the Switch 2 arrived that have taken advantage of the feature. While the Switch 2 is drastically more powerful than its predecessor, it's also far from the power of a PS5 Pro, for instance, so only less graphically demanding games have a shot at utilising 120Hz mode properly.

It's been a little while since I've played a game that offers it, frankly, so I was really pleasantly surprised by its inclusion in Mina the Hollower, an indie game released last week that deserves the praise it's been getting (and some more sales, too). The game was actually announced with its 120fps mode as a flagship offering, so it's great to now get my hands on it to see how it fares.

The short answer is, "smoothly". The difference between 120fps and 60fps isn't always that obvious, but when you play both extensively you'll start to feel the extra smoothness offered by the higher refresh rate option, and it really does help with a game that's as fluid and responsive as Mina.

The whole game's built from the ground up to mimic the best titles from the Game Boy era, as a love letter to that time. That said, it expands on the sort of experience you could get on that old handheld, not least with a widescreen presentation and freer movement thanks to analogue sticks replacing D-pads.

The game sees you take on the role of Mina herself, a small mouse whose big plans have gone awry when a series of generators she designed malfunction due to evil influences. You then have to journey around an island fixing them, with a structure that's very Zelda-like, including some freedom to tackle things outside of the suggested order.

While doing so you'll juggle weapons and sidearms in a way that recalls the Castlevania series to mind, while a mechanic that sees your XP put at risk when you die is also quite Dark Souls. That's a heady blend of influential titles, but from the same developers that made the excellent Shovel Knight, it all knits together really nicely.

Tying things together is the extremely fluid action that makes it really fun to take on new areas and platforming challenges, as well as surprisingly crunchy and difficult combat. Impressively, the game's pause menu hides a wide array of modifiers and difficulty settings that you can tweak if you're finding it too frustrating, an approach which really should be copied by more game developers.

A couple of hours in, I'm still grinding away without activating any of them, but I make no promises about sticking to that, given that having fun is the whole point of gaming. Still, it's that 120fps smoothness that I've been enjoying most of all. If you pick up the game, be sure to head to the settings menu to turn it on, as it'll default to 60fps at first.

It was only recently that Valve confirmed its Steam Machine console is still on track for a summer launch. But it now seems that it could be even closer than many thought.

Public regulatory documents have been found that suggest it could, in fact, be released in the next few weeks – even before June is out.

Redditor wayTooManyBugs claims to have found some interesting dates contained within files associated with the Steam Machine.

All products that utilise wireless communications technology must be approved by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) before being allowed on sale in the States. It posts the filings on its website, but often with some documents redacted or embargoed.

That's the case with FCC ID 2AES4-1016 – Valve's "Video Game Machine". While some of the reports and technical documents are viewable (and have been since the end of 2025) a selection are still locked.

These include the user manual and internal photos of the test unit, which are not yet available to click on – presumably because they reveal information that Valve doesn't want to reveal to the public yet.

However, as found by the Redditor, they will become available on 29 June 2029 – less than three weeks from the time of writing. And that has sparked speculation on a potential release date for the console.

WayTooManyBugs suggests that the filing for the Steam Controller – which is now available – successfully hinted at its release. The manual and photos were made public on 20 May 2026 – a few weeks after initial orders of the controller started to ship.

If the same pattern is followed with the Steam Machine, it could actually be formally launched any day now.

There is a mighty caveat to all of this. Valve didn't exactly expect to release its Steam Controller ahead of the Steam Machine, but market conditions and the ongoing RAM crisis forced its hand.

In addition, the FCC filing was submitted at the tail end of last year, which is when the 29 June embargo may have been set. It might be that the Steam Machine was planned for release by the end of June, but the components issues in the interim have caused delays.

Still, looking on the positive side, we shouldn't have too long to wait until we find out more, either way. And, at the very least, we'll be able to get a look at the user manual and internal photos.