Gaming

Digital Foundry put the $600 laptop through some benchmarks and came away underwhelmed. It was possible to get a playable 30FPS out of Control and Death Stranding with quality dialed back. But, more demanding titles required dropping to 720p or, in the case of Cyberpunk 2077, refused to play at all.

The next installment of the Sonic movie franchise just wrapped filming. It won’t land in theaters until March 2027. But to celebrate the milestone, director Jeff Fowler posted our first full look at Metal Sonic, glowing eyes and all.

Earlier this week, Xbox boss Asha Sharma posted a poll asking “Xbox or XBOX?” A few minutes ago, she tweeted a picture of the Xbox profile on X with all-caps branding. I don’t like it.

Yesterday I posted about my my PC woes. I successfully completed an AIO water cooling transplant, though it took me more hours than I expected. What I didn’t expect was how valuable the LED lighting setup I bought years ago from Neweer was. My apartment doesn’t have great natural light, so I’m now a big believer in having a powerful spotlight on hand to do work at home.

This year’s Summer Games Done Quick has an excellent lineup, with promising runs featuring a Wind Waker co-op randomizer, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as the closer, and, uh, a mod that puts Half-Life mechanics into Jak and Daxter.

Before Star Fox mania descends on the Switch 2, Nintendo has an adorable platformer launching next week. And the new trailer makes it seem like there are going to be lots of strange critters to uncover, including what looks like a weirdo take on Kirby.

Subnautica 2 is off to such a fast start that I just had to update our story from yesterday: the game has now sold 2 million copies in 12 hours, and reached a peak concurrent player count of 651,000 across all platforms.

The Swap Arcade is a Raspberry Pi 4-powered arcade machine with a 27-inch screen and two sets of controls featuring Sanwa joysticks that transforms into a nondescript wooden cabinet when not being played. It’s available on Kickstarter discounted to $1,197 and expected to ship as early as October.

So says Valve designer Lawrence Yang in an interview with NerdNest. After the Steam Controller quickly sold out, Valve introduced a reservation system so people wait for their turn to buy. The launches of the Steam Machine and Steam Frame, whenever they happen, could be even more competitive — maybe a reservation system would ease a little bit of the chaos.

Bobby Prince’s 1993 soundtrack for Doom is one of 25 recordings being inducted into the Library of Congress this year, a lineup that also includes Taylor Swift’s “1989” album and Beyoncé‘s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It).”

The AIO water cooling unit for my homebuilt PC just failed, and so I briefly considered building a new system. Then I looked at current RAM/SSD prices. They’re so outrageous that I’ll indefinitely stay out of my usual five-year cycle of a rebuild. I’d love to hear from my fellow PC builders in the comments whether they’re also feeling stuck with their hardware.

Bandai Namco and Fender have collaborated on a limited edition version of the Player II Telecaster guitar. Its alder wood body is finished in black with a blue maze design and a dot-gobbling Pac-Man being pursued by Blinky, Inky, Pinky and Clyde. It’s available now for $1,099.99.

The new additions include Space Invaders Virtual Collection, V-Tetris, Jack Bros., Virtual Bowling, and Vertical Force. Of the 22 games released for Nintendo’s first 3D console you can now play 12 of them using the new Virtual Boy accessory for the original Switch, Switch OLED, and Switch 2.

At least according to a leaked listing from Best Buy, which suggests pre-orders for the next Grand Theft Auto on May 18th. Which means we might finally find out just how much the game will cost. And hey, trailer number three would be a nice bonus, too.

New Xbox boss Asha Sharma is asking fans whether it should be Xbox or XBOX, when the real answer is right there, if only she could see it.

The new premiere date is April 30th, 2027. Per Nintendo’s X account:

Back in 2015, somebody wrote a program to make the original Steam Controller “sing” Doom’s theme song and other music. Catch up to 2026, and people are already making music with the new Steam Controller. Here’s “Still Alive” from Portal, and I love this rendition of the Super Mario Bros. 2 theme.

The live-service field is a mess, Fortnite included, but maybe the solution is to mash every online shooter into one experience.

Xbox boss Asha Sharma is running a poll on X where you can make your voice heard. Much to my dismay, as I write this, XBOX currently has about two thirds of the vote. I know the history, but I firmly believe we shouldn’t all-caps brand names.

Discord has announced some big improvements available now in its Linux client. Phoronix notes that they include official support for more distros, support for hardware-accelerated video encoding, improved screen capture, better power efficiency on Steam Deck, support for Discord’s official auto-updater, and more.

We’re still a ways out from Pokémon Wind and Waves’s release on the Switch 2 some time next year, but The Pokémon Company has just uploaded a video of the NHK Symphony Orchestra recording the games’ main theme to tide us all over.

It’s too late at night to eat, but you’ll still enjoy this Easter egg. Turns out if you drop Valve’s Steam Controller it will let out the legendary Wilhelm Scream — an unavoidable sound if you, like Dwight Schrute, have seen over 240 films. PCGamer verified this tiny joy, citing this Reddit post from RF3D19.